Write Better At Work

Writing advice for Halloween: Think skeletal when you write

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The best way to create polished writing, paradoxically, is to write a terrible first draft.

Anne LaMott begins with what she calls a “shitty first draft.” Her goal is to get something—anything—down. By drafting freely, she creates momentum. She then goes with the flow, trusting she can shape the piece later.

Carolyn Kaufman agrees that writers should “Always Write Terrible First Drafts.” However, she thinks of the first draft as building a skeleton. Her first draft lays out the bare bones of a piece. Each successive draft adds a layer to fleskeletonsh out the framework: plot twists; character development; “the stuff,” she says, “that makes your story (forgive me for using this word) meaty.” She adds the finishing touches, such as skin and hair, only after the skeleton is fully fleshed out.

Her strategy, like LaMott’s, separates drafting and polishing. Either method can silence your inner critic and create flow. Some writers may revel in the freedom of letting a “shitty first draft” sprawl it may. If you crave a little more structure, try Kaufman’s skeletal approach:
http://querytracker.blogspot.com/2012/10/always-write-terrible-first-drafts.html

Image by Mikael Häggström https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHuman_skeleton_front_-_no_labels.svgFile:svg

Becoming a better leader using an authentic voice

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Singers and writers are often urged to find their authentic voice, but leaders?

Kouzes and Posner believe that as a leader, you must speak in an authentic voice: “If the words you speak are not your words but someone else’s, you will not, in the long term, be … credible. ”

In The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner offer several long-term strategies for developing an authentic voice, including imitating other leaders and clarifying your values.

But what can you do when you have a short-term deadline—two hours to compose a memo preparing employees for bad news or two days to write a speech inspiring your whole organization to change?

Here are some ways to find your words in challenging situations.

1. Ask yourself, “What do I need people to know or do?”

2. Find a simple way to tell people what you want them to know or do. One way to pare your message down to essentials is to ask,”If I had only 30 words or 30 seconds to share this idea, what would I say?”

3. Experiment with different wordings until you find one that feels right. You might sense, “That’s it!’ You might notice a shift in your body, such as a feeling that your head is clearing or your gut is relaxing.

4. Once you have a basic message that feels authentic, test your wording. Consider how your audience might react to your message. One strategy is to imagine yourself speaking your message in front of an audience. What reactions might you expect? Would your audience be likely to be enthusiastic? confused? offended? You can also ask for feedback from trusted associates or typical members of your audience.

5. If your message resonates well with you but not so well with your audience, go back to Step 2. Ask yourself, “If I had only 30 words or 30 seconds to share this idea with this audience, what would I say?”

6. Continue refining your message until it feels right to you and for your audience. If you start to feel that you’re just looping through the steps without gaining additional clarity, take a break or start to develop a rough draft. Either strategy will give you a fresh perspective. You can also switch modalities. If you’ve been speaking, try writing. If you’re stuck writing, try speaking aloud or creating a presentation. If your ideas refuse to come together, talk them through with a sympathetic listener. If you need ideas, try reading or consulting a colleague.

7. Read your final draft aloud. Revise any wording that causes you to stumble. Notice whether your words sit comfortably in your voice, or whether they feel stiff and too formal or lightweight and too casual.

The end result will be a unique combination of your message, your personality, and your relationship to your audience: your authentic voice.

Notes:

The quotation from Kouzes and Posner is from The Leadership Challenge (Jossey-Bass , 2002), p. 44.

For more on noticing bodily shifts, see “An Introduction to Focusing: Six Steps”: http://www.focusing.org/sixsteps.html

 

Breaking the back of a project

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I conquered a project today. Finally. What started as a simple editing project turned into a major rewrite.

Instead of smoothing language, I found myself gutting whole sections and  researching and writing new material. The deadline hadn’t changed, but the scope of my task kept expanding and I found myself wondering if there was any hope of getting the piece into shape by the deadline.

Then it happened. I finished writing a section and, in an instant, the sense that the project was now under control snapped into place. Sure, there were still citations to format and table numbers to sequence. But the beast was tamed. The content that needed to be added would fit into the framework I’d created and the work remaining could be completed by the deadline. In the struggle to shape this piece into something solid and actionable for reader, I had won.

That got me thinking about how often the words we use to describe writing and editing are physical, tactile. Take the phrase “break the back,” for example. Although I couldn’t find a good explanation of its origin, it’s easy to observe: just watch a terrier subduing a toy.

A friend regularly scouts garage sales for cheap stuffed toys. She takes them home to her dog, Ruthie the Rat Terrier. Ruthie pounces on the toy, grabs it in her mouth and shakes it to break its neck, then methodically scrapes her paw down the stomach to disembowel it. The result: polyester stuffing strewn everywhere and a terrier with head and tail held high because she’s conquered yet another wretched rat.

How does writing or editing feel to you? Do you gently shape an emerging idea, strip a thought to its essentials, or hack away at verbose language?

This sentence needs an editor: Clive Cussler

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Trojan Odyssey coverCussler’s thrillers are one of my favorite reads when I’m overtired and my brain won’t shut down. High-stakes action keeps my neurons firing, exotic locations provide escape, and—best of all—no matter what crises his heroes face, it’s nothing I have to do anything about. Many of his characters have expertise in science or historical research, so my brain can feel that it’s stretching even as it relaxes into Cussler’s storytelling.

Cussler’s fast-paced plots and admirable, expert, quirky characters are absorbing. However, he’s not a literary stylist. Occasionally I’m jolted out of my happy suspension of disbelief by an awkward phrasing that makes me think, “This sentence needs an editor.”

As I know all too well from my own editing experience, editors are fallible. The editor of Trojan Odyssey (2003) might have gotten caught up in the story and missed some sentence-level issues. Perhaps the schedule forced the editor to rush or the budget wasn’t generous enough to cover careful line-editing.

Whatever the reason, Cussler’s books offer lots of opportunities for editors to correct or sharpen sentences.

Here’s one from Chapter 6 of Trojan Odyssey: “Six four-foot barracudas materialized out of the gloom, their lower jaws protruding beyond their noses and displaying rows of needle-sharp teeth. They ignored the divers and glided past without the slightest sign of interest.”

That last sentence is redundant. How about “Ignoring the divers, they glided by” or “They showed no sign of interest in the divers as they glided by.”

English teachers looking for examples of dangling modifiers will find plentiful examples in Cussler’s prose. In his retelling of The Odyssey at the beginning, Cussler describes how Odysseus and his men flee the monster Scylla: “Escaping out to sea, thunderbolts began shattering the sky.” But it’s not the thunderbolts that are escaping; it’s Odysseus and the remnants of his crew.

Are redundancies and dangling modifiers hurting Cussler’s sales? His numbers don’t appear to be suffering. However, smoothing the infelicities from his prose would make it easier to stay caught up in Cussler’s great escapes.

Want to look smart? Write simply, says Ig Nobel winner Oppenheimer

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Puffer Fish

The puffer fish is a slow swimmer in a sea of bigger, faster predators. When chased by a large hungry fish, a puffer rapidly inflates its stomach. This doubles its size and makes its spines stick out. Many pursuers are warned off by this display, but it is not the puffer’s only defense. Even predators with large teeth will have a hard time getting a grip on a tough-skinned, spiny sphere. Puffers are also among the most toxic species on Earth.

Inflation works for the puffer fish. Writers often assume it will work for them too. They think that using big words will make their ideas seem bigger. They also hope that stringing polysyllables together will make them look smarter.

The effect is likely to be just the opposite. A 2006 study by Daniel Oppenheimer found that the more writers inflated their language, the less likely they were to be seen as intelligent.

Judge for yourself. Here are two acceptance speeches. Which writer seems smarter?

Writer 1: “Formal studies conducted under controlled conditions have led to the inescapable conclusion that composers of written materials who avoid proliferation of words, needless digressions, and polysyllabic words are perceived to be more intelligent than writers who indulge in prolixity and eschew concision. So I wish to express my gratitude for your recognition of my research endeavors.”

Writer 2: “My research shows that conciseness is interpreted as intelligence. So thank you.”

The second example is Daniel Oppenheimer’s acceptance speech for the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize for Literature. The Ig Nobels, awarded by Annals of Improbable Research, recognize research that first makes people laugh and then makes them think.

Oppenheimer hopes his results will help writers avoid inflated language . “I think it’s important to point out that this study is not about problems with using long words, it’s about problems with using long words needlessly. If the best way to say something involves using a complex word, then by all means do so. But if there are several equally valid ways of expressing your ideas, you should go with the simpler one.”

Do you tend to use inflated language? Two online tools can help you simplify your language. Take the Writer’s Diet Test at http://writersdiet.com/WT.php or get suggestions for shortening your sentences from this online readability checker: www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp

Notes:

Picture of puffer fish is a public domain image from http://a-z-animals.com/animals/puffer-fish/pictures/2909/

Oppenheimer’s acceptance speech was quoted in “The Ig Nobel Winners’ Circle,” Nature, October 12, 2006, p. 617. His Ig Nobel-winning paper,”Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly,” was published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20(2): 139–156.

Oppenheimer’s comment on his results is from Jody Bruner’s July 25, 2009, post, “How to Impress Your Boss”: http://brunerbiz.com/tag/daniel-oppenheimer/

The official Ig Nobel site is http://www.improbable.com/ig/