Twelve Things They Should Have Told You About Writing.

Twelve things they should have told you about writing. a good words (right order) ebook by Patrick E. McLean

“ Writing is how we

define ourselves for someone we don’t get to meet.” Richard Saul Wurman, founder of TED

In the job market, the better writer wins. In Rework, Jason Fried of 37signals advises entrepreneurs to “hire the better writer.” His justification for this is simple – the better writer is the better thinker. But the issue is much bigger than writing. How does an employer choose the best employee? A credential like a college degree used to be a good filter, but not anymore. Standards have dropped and too many people have too many degrees. How many MBA’s does the world really need, anyway? Smart employers, at the kind of companies everyone wants to work for, pay

more attention to what a person has done than the padding on their resume. Writing about a subject, industry or issue not only qualifies as doing something , it immediately shows an employer how you think. And if you think this only applies to hip soware development companies like 37signals, consider that when the National Commission on Writing surveyed 120 major American corporations they concluded that writing is a “threshold skill for hiring and promotion among salaried employees.”

The business of writing is business. e current emphasis on literature-based instruction confuses this issue. While the spoken word has always been an object of invention and recreation the written word evolved to get things done. e earliest samples of writing known to man are a recipe for beer and a record of oil deliveries – a manufacturing process and a ledger. ese first writing samples date from 2700 B.C. It is not until 2,000 years later

that there is any evidence in the historical record that someone wrote down a story. Aer the Epic of Gilgamesh, it’s another 2,000 years before we get to anything that resembles a modern novel. For the majority of human history literature has not been the point of writing. And, until recently, it wasn’t the point of writing education. is change in focus has led to the crisis in writing that faces us today.

What you say is more important than how you say it. As most of us have come through school, the methods used in an attempt to train* us to write have created a counterproductive feedback mechanism. In preparation for standardized tests we have been rewarded for using words that no one should ever use. Papers have minimum page lengths where they should have maximum word counts. Arbitrary concerns of style (MLA vs. Chicago vs AP) are emphasized more than clarity and power of writing. G en erati ons o f stu d ents have b e en bludgeoned with false and counterproductive

rules such as “ou shalt not split the infinitive.” As Winston Churchill so observed of this variety of literary insanity, “Not ending sentences in prepositions is something up with which we shall not put.” Having a point, making it clearly and well, these are the only sure and durable rules of writing. * e skill of writing is far too personal and complicated to be a trainable skill. Training is for rats, feeder bars and high-school kids who work in ozen yogurt anchises for the summer.

No amount of work can help a bad idea. You cannot polish a turd. Writing and rewriting are the process of discovering where your thinking is sloppy or wrong. is is not your failure as a writer, this is your success as a thinker.

Only 20% of us do productive work. The other 80% are trying to kill us with crappy email. Crisp subject lines, clear requests for action and as few words as possible will win friends, influence people and help get things done. Not getting to the point (or not having one in the first place) costs time

and money. Email puts your writing front and center every working day. Send a bad email and it can be forwarded to everyone in the world in an instant for free. It’s not fair. It’s not sane. It’s just the way it is.

The kindest thing you can do for your audience is not waste their time. As Arthur Miller said, “Attention must be paid.” No matter how wealthy some of us may be, none of us are rich in attention. e fewer words you can use to get your point across, the less of a person’s attention

you will use. And the more they will like you. Get to the point, and the 20% of the people who keep the world turning will recognize you as one who is worthy of time, attention and assistance.

Use words like you are paying for them. Not from an expense account, not on a credit card, but like you were counting your money out and saying sad farewells to it as it slides across the shop counter. It should hurt to use more words than you have to. You should feel like you are saving money when you find a way to cut a word out. Big, exotic, fancy words are more expensive than small, simple and ordinary words. Split is a good 10 cent word. Bifurcate costs $5.00. It’s not that you can’t or shouldn’t ever use expensive words. It’s that, when you do, you should make sure you get good value for

them. You don’t wear a $1000 suit to dig postholes. You don’t wear a pair of overalls to the opera. e 100 most used words in the English language make up 50% of all written material. Twenty-five nouns, twenty-five verbs, twenty-six adjectives and fourteen prepositions grant you an astounding command of the language. To be able to convey weighty and momentous ideas with simple words is the height of the writer’s skill. A Spring may be refulgent, but describe it that way and no one will know what you are talking about.

The rules are not the game. A knowledge of the rules of soccer doesn’t make you any better at handling the ball. Knowing music theory doesn’t mean you can play the guitar. Between the rules and the skill there is something else. is is not to say that you shouldn’t be concerned with grammar. Grammar, style and usage advice is nothing more

than the work of thoughtful people trying to explain how the language can best be used. As with any kind of problem solving, seeing how someone else has solved a similar problem is a good thing to do. But recognize that you can follow all the rules and still lose the game.

“ Writer’s block was

invented in California by people who couldn’t write.”

If your car won’t start, you don’t say that you have Driver’s Block. You check to see if you have the right key. You check the gas tank. You make sure the battery has a charge. Although writing is more complicated than an automobile, it is still just a series of interlinking processes/systems. If

the output of a process is bad, you don’t check your horoscope. You check the process. Do you have enough information? Is there a clearer way to organize your material? Have you generated enough ideas? Have you given yourself enough time? Is it better to write nothing at all? Quote om Terry Pratchett

The study of grammar isn’t an efficient way to improve your writing. e skill of writing involves at least five parts: 1) General knowledge 2) subject matter knowledge 3) problem solving skills 4) language use, which includes: syntax, grammar, usage, diction 5) dealing with the emotional challenges of writing.

All five of these links must be strong for you to write with ease and power. Grammar is a part of a part. Just as it is impossible to make a chain stronger by strengthening one link, the study of grammar is not sufficient if you want to become a better writer.

The static page isn’t a very good way to teach writing. Writing is misnamed. e skill of it is really rewriting. And it’s almost impossible to learn to rewrite by staring at a page of text soaked in red pen corrections. Rewriting is the highly fluid process of seeing all your choices and making the one that fits best with all of the other choices you’ve made or could make. (See how hard that is to explain with static text?)

Luckily, we’re living in the 21st century. So we can do a little better than the static page. You can go to goodwordsrightorder.com to see video examples of rewriting in real time. e knack of cutting, tightening and polishing can only be learned through practice. Being able to watch someone do it well (the essence of apprenticeship) makes learning to write significantly easier.

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