{"id":1001,"date":"2014-09-02T10:59:23","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T22:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1001"},"modified":"2014-09-02T10:59:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T22:59:23","slug":"the-advantage-of-getting-it-down-on-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1001","title":{"rendered":"The advantage of getting it down on paper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=1000\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1000\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1000\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/write-it-down-287x300.jpg\" alt=\"write it down\" width=\"287\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/write-it-down-287x300.jpg 287w, https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/write-it-down.jpg 447w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 287px) 100vw, 287px\" \/><\/a>A year or two back, we were approached by a fast-talking (literally) businessman with a bunch of almost totally unrelated ideas and sentences that he wanted us to assemble into \u2018a key document\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018What\u2019s the key message of this key document?\u2019 we asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The key message?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Yes.\u00a0 What do you want the reader to take away?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018What I\u2019ve just told you,\u2019 he said.\u00a0 \u2018Oh, and there are a couple of diagrams that you need to include.\u00a0 They\u2019re really important.\u00a0 I\u2019ll email them.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The more that we thought about his \u2018notes\u2019 and \u2018thoughts\u2019, the more clear it became that he really had no idea of what he wanted to say.\u00a0 He had some glib phrases and some almost-impressive sound bites.\u00a0 But he had no real message.\u00a0 He had no clear objective.<\/p>\n<p>He had given us 30 or so plausible-sounding sentences.\u00a0 But, taken as a whole, they didn\u2019t say anything that made sense.\u00a0 Tossed off at a dinner party, some of them may have sounded vaguely interesting.\u00a0 A couple may even have sounded slightly impressive.\u00a0 But, written down, they added up to \u2018So what?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s why writing it down can be so useful.<\/p>\n<p>As the American cartoonist and commentator Dick Guindon once said: \u2018Writing is nature&#8217;s way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>If you think you have a great idea \u2013 or something important to say \u2013 write it down, carefully, in the simplest language that you can muster.\u00a0 And then put it aside for an hour or a day before reading it back.\u00a0 Does it in fact say what you want it to say?\u00a0 Does it say something worthy of your reader\u2019s attention?<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, not everything that trips off the tongue says something worth saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A year or two back, we were approached by a fast-talking (literally) businessman with a bunch of almost totally unrelated ideas and sentences that he wanted us to assemble into \u2018a key document\u2019. \u2018What\u2019s the key message of this key &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1001\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1002,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions\/1002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}