Manage Your Writing

This week: Don't be afraid

Journalist Gene Fowler once said, "Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead."

What Fowler is describing is, of course, writer's block. We've all had it. And at its root is fear, the fear of not "getting it right."

To overcome writer's block, we need to follow Frank Smith's advice (emphasis mine):

Do not expect the writing to come out right the first time. Do not be afraid of the possibility that what you write will fail to live up to your expectation, or those of the schoolteacher on your shoulder. Anything you write can be changed. Anything you write can be thrown away. You have nothing to lose.

This week: Leave out the parts that readers skip

Elmore Leonard, author of Get Shorty and other hugely successful books, was once asked why his books were so popular and easy to read. Leonard answered, "Simple. I just leave out the parts that readers skip."

This week, when you start revising, imagine yourself as your reader. What parts of the message would you skip?

Leave them out.

 

This week: Take as many swings as you need

Playwright Neil Simon has written, "In baseball, you only get three swings and you're out. In rewriting, you get almost as many swings as you want and you know, sooner or later, you'll hit the ball."

OK, we business writers can't always take as many swings as we want. But we can almost always take more than we think we  can. Isn't that important e-mail message worth another five minutes of your time? If so, don't click "Send" as soon as you've drafted it. Keep it for a few minutes, or a few hours. (One trick is to not fill in the "To" line until after you've revised. That'll keep an unrevised draft from getting away from you.) Then come back and spend five minutes on it. Maybe do that again. Maybe again.

This week, take as many swings as you need to hit the ball out of the park.