Twelve Things They Should Have Told You About Writing.
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Transcript of 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
8/3/2019 Twelve Things They Should Have Told You About Writing.
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Richard Saul Wurman, founder of TED
Writing is how we
define ourselvesfor someone we
don’t get to meet.”
“
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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http://www.goodwordsrightorder.com [email protected]
Questions?
Comments?Cries for help?