twelve things they should have told you about writing

8/3/2019 Twelve Things They Should Have Told You About Writing.

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Twelve things

they shouldhave told you

about writing.

a good words (right order) ebook by Patrick E. McLean



Richard Saul Wurman, founder of TED

Writing is how we

define ourselvesfor someone we

don’t get to meet.”

“

http://localhost/Users/pmclean/Desktop/ebook%20images/b&W/Anonymous.pxm












In Rework, Jason Fried of 37signalsadvises entrepreneurs to “hire the better writer.” His justification for this is simple –the better writer is the better thinker. Butthe issue is much bigger than writing. Howdoes an employer choose the best

employee?A credential like a college degree used to

be a good filter, but not anymore. Standardshave dropped and too many people havetoo many degrees. How many MBA’s doesthe world really need, anyway?

Smart employers, at the kind of companies everyone wants to work for, pay

more attention to what a person has donethan the padding on their resume. Writing about a subject, industry or issue not onlyq u a l ifies as doing something, itimmediately shows an employer how youthink.

And if you think this only applies to hipso ware development companies like37signals, consider that when the NationalCommission on Writing surveyed 120major American corporations theyconcluded that writing is a “threshold skill

for hiring and promotion among salariedemployees.”

In the job market, thebetter writer wins.



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 from2700 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.

Aer the Epic of Gilgamesh, it’s another2,000 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 hasled to the crisis in writing that faces us today.

The business ofwriting is business.



What you say ismore importantthan 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 counterproductivefeedback mechanism. In preparation for

standardized tests we have been rewarded for

using words that no one should ever use. Papershave minimum page lengths where they should

have maximum word counts. Arbitraryconcerns of style (MLA vs. Chicago vs AP) are

emphasized more than clarity and power of

writing.

Generations of students have beenbludgeoned 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 workin ozen yogurt anchises for the summer.



Noamount

of workcan

help abadidea.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 yoursuccess as a thinker.



Only 20% of us doproductive work. The other 80% aretrying 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 getthings 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 everyonein 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 youcan do for youraudience is notwaste 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 youare paying for them.Not from an expense account, not on acredit card, but like you were counting your

money out and saying sad farewells to it as itslides 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, youshould 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-fi ve nouns, twenty-fi ve

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 noone will know what you are talking about.



The rules arenot the game.A knowledge of the rules of soccer

doesn’t make you any better at handling

the ball. Knowing music theory doesn’tmean 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 wasinvented in

California by peoplewho 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 makesure 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 aclearer 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 ofgrammar isn’t anefficient way toimprove your writing.e skill of writing involves at least fi ve

parts:

1) General knowledge 2) subject matterknowledge 3) problem solving skills 4)

language use, which includes: syntax,

grammar, usage, diction 5) dealing with theemotional challenges of writing.

All fi ve 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 suffi

cient if you want to become a better writer.



The static page isn’t

a very good way toteach 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 textsoaked 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 toexplain 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 tosee 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 ap prenticeship) makeslearning to write significantly easier.

http://www.goodwordsrightorder.com/





http://www.goodwordsrightorder.com [email protected]

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