Writing for management journals.

When people have a writing project, they frequently carry around with them a sense of gloom--I should do it, but I don't want to. They sharpen pencils, go to the bathroom, get another cup of coffee, clean out desk drawers that have been messy for months, go talk to someone at the water cooler--all tasks that seem urgent, certainly more important than putting the first word on the page.

If you want to stop procrastinating on writing projects, pick up a pen and write 10 minutes a day in a journal. A journal is whatever kind of paper you like. I like wideruled, thick, 5-subject spiral notebooks with white paper and blue lines. Maybe you like legal paper, although most doctors I know don't. You can type on your word processor if that suits you better. I write with cheap Bic pens, of which I have an unlimited supply. When I've used an expensive Cross pen I spend all my time worrying about when I'll lose the pen rather than thinking about writing.

The point is--be specific about your likes and dislikes and pamper yourself as much as possible. Writing is a difficult enough process; you want to add as many pleasures to it as possible. Write in your favorite spot, with all the utensils, accompaniments, and frills that please you. Cater to your slightest whim. You don't need to discipline yourself about what materials you use or where you write. In fact, a large part of getting yourself to write is getting over whatever kind of discipline or even abuse you suffered at the hands of some teacher during your education process. If ever your paper was snatched from you and read to the whole class, you probably have significant paralysis to overcome.

In this journal that you have carefully chosen, do a special kind of writing called freewriting. When you freewrite, you write whatever comes into your mind. You don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar, or anything that some English teacher told you to always worry about. Your handwriting or typing does not have to be neat or accurate. No one will see anything you write. There is only one catch. For the process to work well, you need to keep writing until the 10 minutes are up. Set a timer if you have to. I know that two pages of nonstop writing in my spiral notebook always equals 10 minutes. If you can't think of anything to write, just say over and over, "I can't think of anything to write. I can't think of anything to write. This is one of the dumbest things I have every done." But keep moving your pen and writing something even if it is nonsense. There is a reason for this. Ideas will pop into your head if you keep writing that won't come if you just sit thinking.

Keep this freewriting private. If you momentarily hate your boss, it's good to write about it. It's not good for him or her to see it. If you write something that would be especially dangerous for someone to see, tear it up when you finish. You'll probably discover that writing takes you places you didn't know you were going to go. You'll begin writing about one idea and, suddenly, some other thought pops into your head. Write it down. Don't discipline yourself to stay on a particular subject. Your very best ideas may come trailing after the strangest thoughts.

Writing should be a two-part process--generating ideas and editing those ideas. Never do both at the same time. If you are writing and can't decide which of two words to use in a sentence, write both of them down and keep going. "It's an unnecessary burden to try to think of words and also worry at the same time whether they are the right words."(1) If you stop to decide, the left hemisphere of your brain, which passes judgment on the quality of your work, wakes up and begins the censoring process. You have spent a fair amount of time lulling it into a rest mode by writing quickly without stopping. If you let it begin to work while you are brainstorming using the fight hemisphere, the right side may stop sending ideas. All instructions for brainstorming in meetings say you must not judge anyone's ideas during the process of thinking of all the ideas you can come up with. The same is true when you are alone and brainstorming with pen and paper.

When you are having a difficult time making yourself write, start freewriting whether you feel like it or not. You may think you have no ideas at all on a subject, but, as Peter Elbow says about his own writing, "...you are making a serious error....You are mistaking lousy, stupid, secondrate, wrong, childish, foolish, worthless ideas for no ideas at all."(2) If you keep doing 10-minute writing exercises, you will eventually find ideas you like. If you just sit, chew your pencil, wait for the ideas to come, they may never come at all. People use the term writer's block for this condition. It probably should be called writer's procrastination or writer's perfection. We all want great ideas to come on the first attempt, because it feels wonderful to be that brilliant. Also we don't want to have to do the dreaded writing process a second time. Occasionally, people do write great words on the first try, but it is rare. When you decide to freewrite, all the pressure is off. You know it doesn't have to be good so you just get started easier.

It's not hard to write a journal entry if you give yourself permission for it to be lousy. If you will begin te pay your dues to the writing Gods by writing anything that comes to mind everyday for a week, I assure you some good ideas will surprise you and turn up on the page in front of you almost as if you were taking dictation from some other worldly source. "...a person's best writing is often mixed up together with his worst. It all feels lousy to him as he's writing, but if he will let himself write it and come back later he will find some parts of it are excellent. It's as though one's best words come wrapped in one's worst."(3) This is why you need to freewrite and put lots of words on paper so you can find the good ones in the midst of much garbage.

Below are the words of a journal entry that I wrote just before I stumbled into writing a major portion of this article. It is jumbled, barely coherent, but the three pages that followed made good sense:

Well, it's Wednesday. Business writing for the physician executive. So practice what you preach. Do the 10 minutes. I have been and ideas have begun to come. So A is going to see Mills. I'm glad. I'm glad. I do not care what it costs. I won't be saving lots but that's ok. I'm so grateful to be on my feet and working. So keep writing. Help us this afternoon at Leonards. Take the written copy. There is going to be gnashing of teeth and resistance. Need an opening paragraph. Include some of my journal stuff to prove how bad it can be and still help. That feels risky. Yes, yes indeed. The writing about writing is the fun part, the editing is dull but maybe if they like the first they'll hang with me on the second. Tell some of your story. That's what I like about Elbow.

You must put down enough words, whether good or bad, to get the writing process started. You exercise your hand and brain the same way an athlete trains for his or her sport. I find I rarely can skip the training process. If I have not been writing regularly in my journal, and I have a writing project due, it takes 5-10 days of 10-minute writing sessions to get back to producing sentences I like.

Once you have generated enough ideas and written a draft of the paper, it's time to put on the hat of an editor and clean up the copy. "Every word omitted keeps another reader with you."(4) Editing is not as difficult if you have plenty of words to work with. You can pick the good and throw away the bad without worrying that there won't be enough left. Also if you have generated the draft with the freewriting, devil-may-care attitude, you have not sacrificed so much to write the words, and you are more willing to cut. It is especially important to eliminate unnecessary words and use simple words where possible if you are writing a document that is filled with medical terms.

"Editing means figuring out what you really mean to say, getting it clear in your head, getting it unified, getting it into an organized structure, and then getting it into the best words and throwing away the rest. It is crucial, but it is only the last step" in the writing process.(5) I've found if I read a draft the first thing in the morning for about five days, I'll edit more easily. Somehow I see things in the morning that I'll let slip later in the day.

Instead of trying to worry about all the rules of usage and grammar, I've picked a few rules that deal with how to be concise.

Avoid needless repetition. It is fine to use the same word over and over when you are generating thoughts. As a matter of fact, the subconscious seems to send us messages that way. Often, a first draft of a paper will have a word repeated 5 to 10 times. When you are editing, circle all the repeated words and try to eliminate most of them unless you are repeating the word to emphasize its importance or changing the word would confuse the reader.

Example: Businesses want to decorate their offices with low-maintenance plants. Philodendrons and scheffelaria are some low-maintenance plants. These plants are inexpensive.

Improved: Businesses want to decorate their offices with inexpensive, low maintenance plants such as philodendrons and scheffelerias.

Avoid redundancy. Being redundant means that you write the same idea a second time, but use different words. End result, final conclusion, personal opinion, and unexpected surprise are examples of redundancy. Instead of the extra words used in a redundant phrase, cut to the simplest word. Examples:

advance reservations --> reservations

basic necessities --> needs

cease and desist --> stop

each and every --> all

first and foremost --> first

Clarity is better than stuffy sophistication.

Always use fewer words rather than more words to express an idea. Examples:

in the event that --> if

in order to --> to

in the amount of--> for

in view of the fact that --> since

Use precise words that convey a specific visual image rather than vague words.

nice house --> brick house

pickup --> Dodge wide cab

car --> Jaguar

Choose strong verbs rather than verbs hidden in many words.

make application to --> apply

give assistance --> help

make a decision --> decide

Avoid jargon. Jargon, in its broadest definition, is any language that is hard to understand. Sometimes it acts as a shield for those who don't have much to say. It can be specialized vocabulary that a particular group of people understand. Teenagers find a different set of words every two or three years that, ideally, will confuse their parents. Accountants, chemists, bankers, doctors, and others have their special terms that must be defined when they are working with the general public.

Often jargon is phony, inflated, and uselessly complex language. A client told me once, "If I speak and write so others understand me, they will steal my job." I think jargon hurts you more than it might help you keep your job. People get angry if you use difficult words without explaining their meaning. They put your memos in the trash and do not do what you have asked them to do.

Below, a passage from Moby Dick has lost its clarity and beauty by the addition of jargon.(6)

Original: "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse and nothing in particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the water part of the world."

Jargon added: "You may identify me by the nomenclature of Ishmael. At a point in time several years previous to the current temporal zone--the precise number of which is extraneous information--devoid of sufficient monetary resources and lacking physical and/or psychical stimuli within the confines of my sphere of activity on land, I initiated several thought processes and concluded that I would commandeer a vessel of navigation with which to explore the aquatic component of this planet."

Eliminate overused words. Overworked expressions make a reader switch from paying attention to your message to being irritated that you are saying the same old thing. "The bottom line," "the whole nine yards," and "I need your input" are phrases that need a few years' rest.

If you can finish the following statements, they have probably been overused. Try filling in the blanks.(7)

It has come to our...

If you have already paid this bill, please...

Please call at your earliest...

We regret to...

If you have additional questions, feel...

Enclosed...

Use active voice unless you have a specific reason not to. In the active voice, the subject performs the action of the verb and appears in the first part of the sentence (example: The recruiting staff made three visits). Using the passive voice reverses the order of the nouns in the sentence and adds a form of the verb "to be" to the verb (example: Three visits were made by the recruiting staff). Using the passive voice adds unnecessary words to a sentence and robs the verb of its straightforward power. There are times when the passive voice is appropriate. Perhaps you don't want to tell who is doing what (example: Valuable resources are being wasted).s However, most of us use the passive voice too often and weaken our messages.

As you read this article, you probably noticed a dramatic shift in style between the first part and the second part. You may have reacted negatively when I began to say-- don't do this and that. That sensation is exactly what happens when you begin the editing process. It is an essential part of writing, because no one wants to read all the aimless rambling that a human brain is capable of producing, but do not cause that editing shift to happen in the early stages of producing ideas. Once you have a good quantity of words on the page, you'll enjoy arranging them in a pleasing way. But if you have a blank page in front of you and you let yourself think like an editor, you'll probably experience the overriding fear that there are no words in you. You'll have plenty of words when you sit down to write if they don't have to be perfect when they are first born.

References

1. Elbow, P. Writing Without Teachers. London, England: Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 5.

2. Ibid., p. 62.

3. Ibid., p. 69.

4. Ibid., p, 41.

5. Ibid., p. 38.

6. Kolin, P. Successful Writing at Work. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Co., 1986,

7. Brill, L. Business Writing Quick and Easy, 2nd Edition. New York, N.Y.: AMACOM American Management Association, 1989, p. 83.

8. Fielden, J. "What Do You Mean You Don't Like My Style?" Harvard Business Review 60(3):136, May-June 1982.