Most months have 30 or 31 days. Take around 10 percent away and what do you get?

February!

Here’s the challenge this month: can you trim your writing by 10 percent?

• Important emails
• Blog posts
• Social media posts

Yes, even social media.

Find the evidence in the study Causal Effects of Brevity on style and Success in Social Media published in the Communications of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. Researchers found that social media messages were more successful when edited down. The sweet spot was 10 and 20 percent shorter.

Look at your writing this month. Can you trim the words by 10 percent?

About these challenges

Here’s the theory behind these challenges: small, incremental improvements that become habits pile up.

These challenges ask you to practice different aspects of the craft one month at a time. By year end, your writing skills will have improved.

Let me know if it works!

Previous monthly challenges

January Writing Challenge

If you write long, elaborate sentences with multiple asides or interjecting clauses—and many of us do—you might experiment with a sprinkling of shorter sentences.

Short sentences give big ideas room to breathe.

When I work with nonfiction authors on their manuscripts, I frequently ask the authors to break up a few of their longer sentences into shorter ones.

The authors are smart people, explaining complex ideas. The writing mirrors their thought processes, guiding the reader through the author’s reasoning.

But when too many length sentences chain together, the reader has to pick their way through the prose carefully. Adding a few short sentences clears a path for the reader’s comprehension.

If you love writing long sentences, here are three reasons to break a few of them up in your work.

1. Readers will understand you more easily

If you ever see a “reading level” assigned to writing, it’s probably based on the Flesch Reading Ease assessment.

This score sounds very scientific, but in fact it’s a simple calculation based on two factors:

• Number of words divided by sentences (or average sentence length)
• Number of syllables divided by words (or average word length in syllables)

This equation tells us something important: Shortening your sentences makes your work easier to read.

Longer sentences require readers to dedicate brain cycles to navigating the sentence, rather than appreciating your ideas. The more complex your ideas, the simpler the sentence structure should be.

2. Avoid common grammar glitches

Many thorny grammatical issues only crop up in long sentences.

• Problems with parallel structure in a sentence
• Verbs that don’t agree with their subjects (because those subjects appeared so far back that you’ve forgotten what they are)
• Overuse of semicolons, dashes, and commas

Sure, you can fix each of those problems individually. But break that tricky sentence into two or more, and your grammar challenges disappear!

3. Your strongest ideas will pop

If you want an idea to shine, don’t cram it into a sentence with a lot of other clauses. Give it its own home so the reader can savor it.

Look at the opening sentences of this post. I started with a long-winded sentence, then isolated the key idea in a short one: Short sentences give big ideas room to breathe.

Rhythm is key. If all of the sentences were short, then it wouldn’t work as well.

While you write, consider the rhythm of the work in the reader’s inner ear.

Caveats

Don’t go overboard and chop everything down. Sentence length affects the rhythm of your writing—aim for a blend of long and short. Keep the reader engaged with a changing cadence.

Online writing needs shorter sentences overall. To make your ideas pop online, you might isolate that short sentence in its own paragraph.

A quick experiment with sentence length

Here’s an exercise that a number of writers find super helpful.

Take something you’ve written and put one sentence on each line.
If a sentence has multiple clauses,
Make each clause its own line.

Like this.

You’ll see the rhythm of your sentences with this strategy.

Give it a shot!

(This exercise is inspired by Verlyn Klinkenborg’s excellent book Several Short Sentences about Writing.)

Related Reading

Shopping for Words

Simplify Sentences to Spare the Reader’s Brain

You may start learning how to write in school, but that’s only the beginning of the story.

As long as you read and write—from emails to social media posts—you learn. You feed your sense of the written language and practice your craft.

Sounds great, right? But “passive” learning presents two problems:

1. Without focus, you don’t make rapid progress.
2. Worse, you often learn or practice the wrong things.

Even if you write a lot, you may reinforce habits that don’t serve you well. Eventually, you you can feel “stuck” in your writing voice.

Pay attention to the writing habits you form. Over time, habits rewire our brains and reinforce themselves.

If we spend our days reading bloated corporate memos and spouting marketing jargon, we reinforce those lessons.

If our only writing happens during quick exchanges on messaging apps, how do we build the skills we need to write our dreamed-of fantasy novel?

But wait, you may say. I get paid to read those bloated corporate memos and write short emails and messages. What should I do?

Here’s where the fun part comes in: make ordinary life your writing masterclass.

Deliberate practice

Anders Ericsson was a psychologist who studied expertise and high performers. He introduced the concept of deliberate practice as a key to expertise. (You can find more in his book Peak.)

According to Ericsson, practicing for 10,000 hours is not the path to expertise. What and how you practice matter.

When we choose a specific, challenging but reachable skill and practice it with intention, we are more likely to make substantive progress. (Feedback and coaching accelerate the growth.)

How do you add deliberate writing practice to a life that is already full?

Look for small opportunities and target your time.

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, you can find elements of the craft in the work you do regularly.

Think of it as a puzzle—one that will be fun to crack!

Building the practice into your life

Pick nearly any writing skill you’d like to improve. How can you fit it into your daily writing life?

Look at the work you do and ask yourself questions like:

• Can I include an element of suspense in an email to the team?
• Can I practice dialog in emails to my family?
• Is there room for a three-sentence story in this presentation?

If your work life doesn’t leave room for this kind of exploration, set aside a journal and focus on a specific aspect of your craft.

For example, you might dedicate 10 minutes every evening to write an anecdote from the day, tuning your storytelling skills. Or draft a daily observation to focus on your descriptive skills. Perhaps challenge yourself to identify one unusual metaphor each day to describe something in your life.

Focus on one skill at a time

If you want to make progress, choose one specific skill to focus on for a period of time. A month would work.

All month, work on that skill. Through targeted repetition, you will start to build better habits.

Take charge of your writing education, but do it with a sense of fun and exploration. You’re not in school, no one is grading you. You’re in charge, so get creative.

Related reading

Subscribe to the Writing Practices list to get a monthly challenge, if you need something to focus on.

See the January Challenge.

Want to work on your writing craft, even if you’re busy with other things? Tackle your skills one month at a time.

Once a month, I’ll suggest a single writing skill to work on.

Focus on it for the month—in your emails, your work or personal writing, your journals, or anywhere you write.

Rotate through different aspects of the craft one month at a time, and you will strengthen your writing skills.

January: Beginnings

We often think about beginnings in January. Use this month to work on the way your writing pieces start.

When you write anything this month, pay extra attention to the start. This includes:

• Email subject lines
• Email first lines
• The first line of a social media post
• The introduction to a report
• The beginning of a chapter

 As you look at the beginnings, ask yourself a few questions:

Does this compel the reader to continue?

If not, how can I make it more interesting?

If it’s an email, is the first sentence about me, or about the recipient? (Hint: try making it about the recipient.)

Start by doing this after you draft, but before you publish or send. As you get more comfortable, you can try to integrate the strong starts into your drafting process.

Do this for a month, and see what happens! Let me know if it makes a difference for you.

If you want to get all the monthly challenges in 2023, use the form below to sign up for my Writing Practices list.

Every other week you’ll get writing-related advice by email.

Once a month, you’ll get this challenge, and the chance to enter a drawing for a writing-related book.

Serving the Biliterate Brain

Here’s an experiment: Try reading an 18th of 19th-century novel today. It could be Austen, Dickens, Eliot—choose your favorite.

Even if you loved the book years ago, you may find you have to slow down your brain to get into it. You need to switch reading modes, and it may feel awkward at first.

You have more than one way of reading.

Maryanne Wolf is author of Reader, Come Home and a scientist and scholar who studies reading. She coined the term the biliterate brain, referring to digital reading and deeper reading.

• Digital reading consumes much of our time. We navigate a sea of digital content by skimming and filtering, extracting what we need despite distractions.
• Deeper reading is more immersive or reflective. It happens more often with physical books and printed matter.

Most of our ordinary reading lives in the digital realm. This reading is valuable and important, and the neural pathways in charge of digital reading get plenty of practice.

Deeper reading is becoming rarer, but precious.

In her excellent book Reader, Come Home, Wolf argues that we lose proficiency at deeper reading unless we specifically practice or cultivate it. Our brains, seeing those deep reading pathways neglected, simply repurposes them for skimming.

As readers, we need to be aware of when we are deploying the different systems.

What does this mean for writers?

Most people are better at skimming than reading

When we write for online formats (website copy, emails), we are dealing with the first type of reading: surface skimming. We should package the information accordingly.

Whether emails, blog posts, or online articles and web pages, support that digital reading and help people know when to dive in further with:

• Careful subject lines
• Short sentences
• Short paragraphs
• Subheadings

How about writing books? You might think that these rules don’t apply.

But the world of book readers is made up of people like you and me, who are spending less and less time in deep reading.

Write for all of your readers

Many people, when they set out to write a book, pull on their “writerly” hat. They think of the classic books they have read, or that sit on their shelves.

They write books for immersive readers.

But remember: Your reader’s brain is biased toward the online reading mode. That’s what it practices, day in and day out.

If you want people to luxuriate in our sentences or wrestled with tough concepts, lead or tempt them back into that deeper reading experience.

Not everyone will get there. Your readers may be distracted, tired, or overwhelmed.

Decide what to do about that. Do you leave them by the side, or give them guideposts?

Genre matters

When people read fiction, they want to become absorbed in the book. Even then, you need to bring the reader into that world carefully. Reward their time, engage their curiosity or their senses—don’t take their attention for granted.

Nonfiction might serve both the surface-level and the deeper readers—sometimes both in the same book.

If you’re writing prescriptive (how-to) books, consider the reader’s mental state as you adjust your writing voice.

• If you’re writing a book for parents of young children, assume they are sleep-deprived and stressed, and unable to read deeply. Bring the most important concepts to the surface clearly.
• If readers might find your subject stressful (the tax code, for example, or making a job transition), the same thing applies. Help people get what they need, and give them options for diving deeper.

Even if your audience does want to immerse themselves in your story, remember that second reading mode might be harder for them than it was even a decade ago. Remove any unnecessary obstacles. Show them some grace.

Want to go deeper?

Listen to Maryanne Wolf talk about deep reading on the Ezra Klein podcast.

Read Wolf’s book Reader, Come Home.

Writing a book is a major endeavor. When you reach the end, like the traveler after a long journey, you look for the stories or lessons in the experience to share with others.

Those stories hold wisdom that applies beyond writing.

I’ve written six books, and coached or supported many authors on theirs. A few patterns emerge from these varied experiences—simple lessons that apply to all kinds of endeavors.

Here are the top three lessons I’ve absorbed from working as an author and book coach. Perhaps they’ll resonate with you as well.

Rule 1. Honor the time it takes

Writing a worthwhile book, like most meaningful work, requires time.

Perhaps you can write a book in a weekend, but should you? You’ll likely cheat both yourself and your reader if you do so.

In my survey of over 400 nonfiction authors, more than half said that writing their book took longer than they expected.

Why is this? Are nonfiction authors rotten planners?

All human beings are terrible at planning complex projects. It’s the planning fallacy in action — we can’t envision the many unexpected ways things go wrong.

Sometimes, the delays make a positive long-term impact.

• We realize we need more research or uncover a new angle to explore
• Feedback from early readers leads us to expand or change the content
• Revision and editing takes more time than we planned

These activities improve books. We should not resent the time they take.

When you acknowledge and give tasks the time they deserve, you’ll avoid rushing into careless mistakes.

My mantra: This will take as long as it needs to—not longer.

Rule 2. You can’t control everything

The longer your writing project, the greater the chances that the world will intervene.

You might have to put your work aside if you get sick, or if a fantastic opportunity arises. We can’t control an uncertain world.

We also rely on other people who face the same uncertainties. Too often, our planning doesn’t account for their schedules:

• A subject-matter expert is slow to respond to questions
• Your early readers are busy and take a long time to deliver feedback

We often assume everyone will drop everything and work full-tilt on our project without experiencing their own scheduling glitches. Best-case scenario planning rarely plays out.

When publishing, a small team of people may be involved in your book. You want others involved in your project to observe rule #1: giving the work the time it deserves, rather than rushing through it.

How do we live in a world where things outside our control take too much time?

Ease up on the pressure and assume that something will take longer than it should. Plan for obvious delays and glitches ahead of time. Have a Plan B (and C, and D). Leave time in the schedule for the unexpected.

Yes, set deadlines. But when you accept, with certainty, that something will inevitably delay your deadline, good things happen.

• You’ll relax. You might even enjoy the process.
• You’ll have better relationships with others. People prefer working with someone who is not in crisis mode.
• If everything goes to the original plan, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Rule 3. Be impatient for the work, not the result.

As a book coach, I often talk with people as they embark on writing their books. These writers generally fit into two groups:

• Some are eager to get to writing. They have pages of notes and ideas bubbling up in their heads.
• Others show up with aggressive schedules and a sense of urgency to be done and published, but see the work ahead as daunting.

Those in the first group generally meet their schedules, or come close. Their projects move quickly.

Those in the second group are at risk. In this mindset, almost anything can knock them off their course. Inevitable delays discourage them, because they are impatient to be done, rather than doing.

Writing goes quickly when you’re committed to the process, not when you’re impatient.

Aspiring authors in the second group may simply need to shift their mindset and get excited about the work. Or, they may need time to feed and incubate their idea, like a sourdough starter.

Applying writing lessons to life

Not to get too philosophical, but these maxims apply pretty well to the rest of life. Try them out:

Rule #1: When doing a tedious but important task, honor the time it requires. Remind yourself: This will take as long as it needs.

Rule #2: Accept and plan for uncertainty beyond your control. Create contingency plans so that glitches don’t become crises.

Rule #3: When you focus on the process instead of the result, you may find joy in the journey. Oddly enough, you may finish more quickly.

These rules help me with all kinds of tasks, from doing the careful, detailed work of publishing books to the long-term effort of building and sustaining relationships. See what they do for you.

Related Reading

Read the results of the Nonfiction Author Survey.