Writing the Way You Speak, page 4

Writing is Written Communication, continued

I’ve met people who are absolutely great verbal communicators and who are convinced that they cannot write.

For example, one man I worked with for a while was a great sales closer. He could literally sell anything to anyone, up to and including the proverbial freezers to Eskimos. What is this kind of selling if not a slick, manipulative, superb form of verbal persuasion?

But ask this man to write a simple document, such as a business letter, and he couldn’t. He was convinced that he “couldn’t write.” He was so convinced that he couldn’t that it had become the truth for him.

Don’t fall into this trap. Don’t believe you cannot write, because everyone who can communicate can write. That means almost anyone can write unless they are stone blind and deaf and catatonic in an institution. (In that case they are unlikely to be reading this book.)

What is Writing About?

To ask the question “What is writing about?” is actually to ask a number of different related questions. These questions include:

• Why does the writer write?

• Who is the writer?

• What is the subject matter that is being written about?

• What is the subtext, or emotional content, of the writing?

• What does the written piece mean to its author?

• Is the writing about ideas? Or does it primarily tell a story?

You get the idea! These questions could go on and on. The truth is that there are many potentially valid ways to look at the question of what is writing about. Some of these ways are even useful.

Let’s take a narrower focus. Leaving aside the reductively obvious stuff, like words and sentences, what makes writing “good?”

I’m not going to include “good use of language” in the list of answers to this question because:

• It is an obvious answer.

• This book is really not about how you use language.

• Good use of language is really the outer skin of the skeleton that consists of the deeper qualities that mark good writing.

Continued next page

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