I learned a lot of things from this book such as writing motivation, methods, tips, and so on. Here, I want to share some of my findings. I hope they are helpful for you.

Why you need to write well

The first one is about writing motivation.
And I find the answer.

If your writing is artless and sloppy, they may assume your thinking is the same.

If I write a boring sentence, readers think I’m a boring person. If so writing is critical for our business!

Learn from good articles

The author suggests reading at least one good article aloud each day to improve our writing skills. By reading aloud, we can check the rhythm and readability of sentences. Those are the base of writing.
Reading aloud gives us additional outputting from the mouth and inputting from the ears to stimulate the brain more and we keep them in our memory.

The author picks out that good articles are the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, or Sports Illustrated.

Get to the points quickly and clearly

We should not forget about

Your readers are busy – very busy.

So we should start with the most important point.

If our purpose is to share information, we should start with a summary of key messages.
If our purpose is asking for some actions, we should start with the requests that we want readers to act.

Writing process consists of 4 tasks

• The Madman gathers material and generates ideas.
• The Architect organizes information by drawing up an outline, however simple.
• The Carpenter puts your thoughts into words, laying out sentences and paragraphs by following the Architect’s plan.
• The Judge is your quality-control character, polishing the expression throughout – everything from tightening language to correcting grammar and punctuation.

I think this breakdown of the writing process is the most important discovery. And I realize that it is similar to my method of How to prepare a business presentation.

• The Madman task is Step1: Collect information
• The Architect task is Step2: Make a Plan
• The Carpenter task is Step3: Desing slides
• The Judge task is Step4: Review

I know each step of presentation preparation, but I didn’t write as I prepared a business presentation.
So I think this is a very good hint to improve my writing skills.
All I have to do is to write like preparing a business presentation.

Write as quickly as possible

The author suggests writing each section for 5 to 10 minutes. If we did the “Architect task”, or “Making a Plan” correctly, we know what we should write. So we just focus on writing, writing, and writing without hesitation.

Use graphics to illustrate and clarify

Maybe it’s better to use more graphics in this blog…

Other writing tips

The fewer words, the better

This is also a new finding to me for example;

• • Use “before” rather than “prior to”
  • Use “April 2013” rather than “April of 2013”
  • Use “hung” rather than “is hanging”

Learn the basics of correct grammar

• • “either”, “neither”, “each”, or “every” is a singular pronoun
  • Avoid double negatives
  • the singular subject after the “or” mandates a singular verb
  • the plural subject after “nor” makes the verb plural.
  • It is perfectly acceptable to start a sentence with “And” or “But”

Finally, I like the example sentences with “NOT THIS:” and “BUT THIS:” as shown in this book. Because we can easily compare both sentences to see what’s different and how they’re different.

Thank you for reading this post.

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