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 dont 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 justication 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 lter, but not anymore. Standards have dropped and too many people have too many degrees. How many MBAs 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 qualies as doing something , it immediately shows an employer how you think. And if you think this only applies to hip soware 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 rst 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. Aer the Epic of Gilgamesh, its 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 wasnt 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 innitive. 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, inuence people and help get things done. Not getting to the point (or not having one in the rst 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. Its not fair. Its not sane. Its 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 persons 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 nd 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. Its not that you cant or shouldnt ever use expensive words. Its that, when you do, you should make sure you get good value for them. You dont wear a $1000 suit to dig postholes. You dont 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-ve nouns, twenty-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 writers 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 doesnt make you any better at handling the ball. Knowing music theory doesnt mean you can play the guitar. Between the rules and the skill there is something else. is is not to say that you shouldnt 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.

 Writers block was

invented in California by people who couldnt write.

the output of a process is bad, you dont 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

If your car wont start, you dont say that you have Drivers 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 study of grammar isnt an efficient way to improve your writing.

e skill of writing involves at least ve 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 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 sucient if you want to become a better writer.

The static page isnt a very good way to teach writing.

Writing is misnamed. e skill of it is really rewriting. And its almost impossible to learn to rewrite by staring at a page of text soaked in red pen corrections. Rewriting is the highly uid process of seeing all your choices and making the one that ts best with all of the other choices youve made or could make. (See how hard that is to explain with static text?) Luckily, were 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 signicantly easier.

Questions? Comments? Cries for help?

http://www.goodwordsrightorder.com patrick@goodwordsrightorder.com