Manage Your Writing

Thanks, Daphne!

This week, Daphne Gray-Grant, the "Publication Coach," has some very nice things to say about this Manage Your Writing blog.

And I'm not just reciprocating when I say that Daphne's excellent blog is one of the handful I especially recommend. For others, scroll about halfway down the left column.

Thanks, Daphne!

This week: Don't be a wuss

In their book You Send Me, Patricia T. O'Connor and Stewart Kellerman note:

Some puffed-up writers use long words, techie talk, trendy terms, and convoluted sentences to cover up or deceive or sound important or go along with the crowd. Most people who inflate their writing, though, are simply insecure, often for no good reason. They don't feel their ideas are strong enough, and they prop them up with elaborate language.

They continue:

If your ideas are any good, they can stand on their own. So kick away those unnecessary props. All they do is turn a strong writer into a wuss.

This week, as you revise, kick the props away.

This week: Check your organizational culture

My late friend Kitty Locker, in her book Business and Administrative Communication, wrote:

If you think your boss doesn't want you to write simply, ask him or her. A few bosses do prize flowery language. Most don't.

You may think you work in an organization that favors fancy, pretentious language. But it's worth checking.

This week, look at the e-mail and other writing you get from your boss, and from people at higher levels. If it's concise and clear, look for ways to learn from it. If it's not, look for ways to change your organizational culture--and advance yourself--by becoming the model of a clear, effective writer.

This week: Write without thinking

Don Marquis, American journalist and creator of the characters Archy and Mehitabel, said, "I never think when I write; nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well."

That's a good practice to follow. This week, do your thinking at the planning stage of your writing process, then again at the revising stage. In between, try to draft without "thinking." That is, try to turn off your inner critic (I call him or her the Internal Editor), give yourself permission to be "wrong," and draft as thoughtlessly as you can. Then, and only then, go back and think!

 

Pay attention to subject lines

A participant in a writing workshop I once led taught me something. (That almost always happens.) The hardest thing about writing messages, she said, is "filling in the subject."

"So you just throw something in there," she continued. "When the reader gets it, it's the part he or she reads first. And the subject line may not be what you want them to get out of it."

She was right.

This week, pay attention to Subject lines in the e-mail messages you write. If you've really thought about what you're going to say, and to whom, and for what purpose, go ahead and write the Subject first. It will focus your work on the message itself.

But if you're not sure exactly what you'll be saying in the message, save the Subject line for last.

(Actually, save it for next-to-last; don't fill in the To line untl your message is absolutely ready to send. You'll avoid those terrible premature dispatches.)