Have you ever baked a loaf of bread, or witnessed a masterful baker at work? Through a mysterious process of beating, kneading, waiting, and baking, an unappealing, gluey mass of dough transforms into fragrant and delectable food. Freshly baked bread is one of the wonders of the civilized world. Baking bread is eerily similar to […]
Writing
Shut Your Monkey: A Book to Keep You Writing
Have you ever told yourself that you weren’t good enough to try something new or difficult? Do you put off writing that book because you doubt that you do anything worth reading? And even if you managed to complete something major, have you felt like an imposter? Often our biggest barriers are internal, and finding a path around them can be […]
Writing in the Brand Voice
Marketers often stress the importance of a consistent brand voice. Customers want to feel that they are interacting with a coherent entity, even though they understand that many people participate in the business. So we work to develop a distinctive “voice” and style for the brand that carries through all communications. When you work for the same business long enough, you […]
Another Book for Writers: The Sense of Style
Does thinking about grammar rules make your eyes glaze over? Here’s a book to unglazed those eyes: The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker. Despite having a formal education in English literature from a fine academic institution, grammar terminology gives me the creeps. Pluperfect, prepositional objects, predictive […]
The Revision Process in the Workplace
Many people know that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. You may not realize that other members of Congress edited it. Imagine sending your carefully crafted draft to the United States Congress for revision. When comparing Jefferson’s first draft to the final, it’s clear that many changes led to substantive improvements. That’s what happens when Benjamin […]
Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors [Review]
Do great writers occupy a unique subspecies of the human race? Are their brains wired differently, or are they people who manage to work through the barriers that stump others? In the course of working on my upcoming book on optimizing the writing process, I discovered Sarah Stodola’s wonderful book Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors. If writing is […]
