Write Better At Work

Doing better next time: Revision as a learning opportunity

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With the right mindset, mistakes fuel learning.

Liggy Webb isn’t the first person to say that, but her article “A Positive Approach to Modern Living” has four powerful questions to help people acknowledge mistakes and move on:

• What was the mistake?
• Why did it happen?
• How could I have prevented it?
• What will I do better next time?

Asking these questions can transform an error from a dead-end disaster into an opportunity for growth.

One reason these questions are so powerful is that forgiveness is built-in. No time is wasted on recriminations like How could I have been so stupid? or Will I ever learn?  The first question accepts that our effort fell short. The last question recognizes our intent to do better. Failure may still sting, but this approach makes it possible to shift our focus from what we messed up to what we can learn.

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A manuscript page from Great Expectation shows Dickens’ many revisions.

By adopting this mindset, writers can make revision more productive. The first step is to accept that drafts, by their very nature, fall short of our best intentions. Knowing that writing is a process of discovery, we can acknowledge that a draft is only a first attempt. We don’t need to berate ourselves for any gap between the draft and our intent; we have only to narrow the distance. To do this, we ask questions to identify the gap and explore its possibilities: What is working in this draft? Where does it fall short? How can I shape it to better fit my intention and my reader’s needs?

This nonjudgmental approach frees us to accept the imperfections in our draft. By accepting them, we can move past them to make our next draft closer to our best.

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.

Separate deciding from doing: how Natalie Houston's Rule#1 makes writers more productive

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Natalie Houston, who teaches English at the University of Houston, likes productivity systems so much that she has to discipline herself to stop building systems and start doing the work.

Her first rule is “separate deciding from doing.” Houston identifies her priorities before she schedules her time. Then, when she’s ready to start working on her task list, she can plunge right in.

The principle of separation benefits writers as well. Productive writers plan before they draft and draft before they edit. An efficient allocation of 60 minutes of writing time, according to Kenneth W. Davis, would be up to 20 minutes planning, about 5 minutes for a “quick and dirty” draft, and 25 minutes for a revision. Davis also suggests that writers take  a 5-minute break before they revise so they can make changes from the reader’s point of view.

Davis’s numbers have no inherent magic. They illustrate a principle: expert writers draft quickly and invest most of their time in planning and revising.

Writers who use the time management practices recommended by Houston and Davis are more productive when time is scarce or tasks are routine. However, no rule covers every circumstance, and in one situation writers can productively ignore the advice to separate planning and drafting.

Sometimes writing is not a task, but a discovery. William Zinsser, author of Writing to Learn, says that “writing is thinking on paper.” When you’re writing to explore an idea, plunge right in and follow the flow of thoughts and images wherever it takes you.

Does this take longer? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes, if you want to develop new ideas or find a fresh approach to a problem. Going with the flow is also worth it if you want to indulge in the fun of bringing order out of chaos.

I remember a paper written for my introductory literary criticism class, several decades ago. The name of the story we were assigned to critique escapes me, but the experience of writing the paper is still vivid. I had drafted five pages proving that the way a character treated his ward showed him to be a detestable, egotistical, insensitive jerk, despite his gentlemanly airs. As a final flourish, I typed, “It could be argued that this treatment was inspired, not by a defect of character, but by the guardian’s desire to cure his ward’s indolence and self-centeredness.” A few more sentences about why that argument was mistaken would have finished the paper. But suddenly I knew that this sentence was more true than anything else I had written.

My draft was no longer an almost-completed assignment; it was now a candidate for a major rewrite. I revised the assignment, turning every piece of evidence on its head to support the new thesis. The revision cost me some sleep, but I’ve seldom enjoyed writing more. As the new argument took shape, I had the exhilarating feeling that a new idea was being born from my wrestling with words.

When you’re writing to do, be disciplined in the way you use your time. When you’re writing to learn, let your words go and see where they take you.

Notes:

Natalie Houston’s post on “My Productivity Rules” is available on GradHacker: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/gradhacker/my-productivity-rules She also blogs at nmhouston.com

Kenneth W. Davis shares his advice on writing productivity in Manage Your Writing 3.0, available at prosperosbooks.typepad.com/manageyourwriting/ManageYourWriting3_0.pdf and his blog: http://www.manageyourwriting.com

Browse inside William Zinsser’s Writing to Learn at http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780062720405

Read more about why writers should befriend chaos in this excerpt from Write More, Stress Less: https://writebetteratwork.com/downloads/Write_More_Stress_Less_excerpt.pdf

“Writing is very difficult, especially in the short form.”

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Novice writers usually think that having to rewrite is an admission of failure. A really good writer would write it right the first time.

Actually, expert writers revise more than novices. While novices tend to correct a word here or a comma there, experts can see many possibilities in a piece. They literally re-vision a piece, stripping away nonessentials and exploring new directions.

E. L. Doctorow’s struggle to write a note to excuse his daughter Caroline’s absence is an example. His first attempt began “My daughter, Caroline…” But, he reflected, that was redundant: “Who else would be writing a note for her?” Next he tried the standard “Please excuse….” but rejected that on the grounds that he shouldn’t have to plead her case: “She had a virus. She didn’t commit a crime.” After several more attempts failed to produce a note, his wife realized that Caroline would never get back to school unless she intervened. She dashed off a note and Carolyn left for class.

Helen Doctorow could write a brief note because she focused on the information her daughter’s teacher needed to know: Caroline had been absent because she had a cold. Her novelist husband would probably have found a letter easier to write than a note. With only a few lines to work with, he felt the need to weigh the implications of every word. After wrestling with Caroline’s excuse, he concluded. “Writing is very difficult, especially in the short form.”

Notes: Roger Rosenblatt describes E. L. Doctorow’s difficulty in writing an excuse for his daughter in “The Writer in the Family,” The New York Times Book Review (May 13, 2012).

Freedman, Dyson, Flower, and Chafe compared experts’ and novices’ revision patterns in “Research in Writing: Past, Present, and Future” (Technical Report No. 1, 1987). Available from National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Web site: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/585

Putting the “how” in how-to

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I just wasted 10 minutes listening to a guru talk about the importance of having a professional-looking cover on a self-published book. Throughout the podcast, I kept waiting for substance:

      • What makes a cover professional?
      • How can I make my book cover stand out?
      • How can I find someone to help me create a great book cover?

The speaker shared general principles I already knew. However, he provided no guidelines or recommendations that would help me translate general principles into specific actions. Without those specifics, his advice was simply empty platitudes.

Granted, it’s possible to provide too much information. If you’re writing a recipe, you generally don’t need to define salt or explain how to beat an egg. However, you should anticipate questions or problems a typical reader might have: for example, Scrambled eggs are done when they are firm and the sheen disappears.

How can you judge how much information your reader needs? One of the best ways is to test your writing with actual readers. What questions do they have? Where do they have trouble following instructions? In most situations, however, that’s overkill. Generally it’s more practical to imagine a typical reader and write for that person.

Writing with a specific person in mind works for Warren Buffett, who is renowned for his ability to write about finance in simple, direct language: “When writing Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report, I pretend that I’m talking to my sisters. I have no trouble picturing them: Though highly intelligent, they are not experts in accounting or finance. They will understand plain English, but jargon may puzzle them…..No siblings to write to? Borrow mine: Just begin with ‘Dear Doris and Bertie.'”

How would writing for a specific reader have helped the guru provide more substance? For one thing, he would have realized the need to define professional and provide criteria that distinguish professional covers from amateur designs. For another, he would have helped nonexperts find ways to use his expert insights.  He might have listed characteristics of effective covers and explained how to use the list to judge ideas for listeners’ own cover designs. He could have recommended resources to help people find good cover designers.

For an example of how to do how-to right, see Kenn Schroder’s article on the “Chicken Scratch Testimonial Model.” The Before-During-After structure is clear, the action steps are straightforward, and tips guide you through executing the steps correctly. You’ll find an example of the results you get when you follow the process, along with a gentle nudge to action. And if you think the title is funny, be sure to read the copyright line.

When you’re sharing how-t0 information, you’ll probably write first from an expert’s perspective. That’s fine, as long as you review what you’ve written from a readers’ perspective. Ask yourself

      • What terms might confuse Doris or Bertie (or my typical reader)?
      • What do I expect readers to do with this information?
      • Have I anticipated readers’ questions?
      • Have I given readers the information and resources they need to act on this information?

Keep revising until the answer to the last question is yes, readers have everything they need to understand and use what I have written. With this reader-centered approach, you can turn general principles into substantive, actionable advice.

Notes:
“Preface” to A Plain English Handbook (1996) by Warren Buffett: http://www.plainlanguage.gov/whyPL/testimonials/buffet.cfm

For great how-to advice about book covers, visit Joel Friedlander’s site: http://www.thebookdesigner.com/

Kenn Schroder’s “Chicken Scratch Testimonial Method for Selling Coaching” is an October 5, 2012, post to CoachingSitesThatWork: http://www.coachingsitesthatwork.com/chicken-scratch-testimonial-model-for-selling-coaching/

Image: Hen staring at camera bHen staring at cameray Pufferfish4 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons