{"id":634,"date":"2012-08-23T11:41:05","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T23:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=634"},"modified":"2012-08-23T11:41:05","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T23:41:05","slug":"all-in-a-days-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=634","title":{"rendered":"All in a day\u2019s work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A friend of ours reckons that he has yet to meet a man who does not consider himself to be a better than average driver and a better than average lover.<\/p>\n

I sometimes feel that my own experience of would-be writers in the corporate world is somewhat similar.\u00a0 Not only does the vast majority consider themselves to be better than average writers \u2013 often way<\/em> better than average \u2013 they also consider themselves to be faster<\/em> than average writers.<\/p>\n

\u2018I can type at about 60 words a minute, so that\u2019s north of 3,000 words an hour,\u2019 one manager said recently.\u00a0 It was his rationale for allowing only 30 minutes to prepare a board paper.<\/p>\n

Mary Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge and the author of a very readable blog for the Times Literary Supplement, recently invited writers to \u2018fess up\u2019 to what they considered to be a satisfactory day\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Some thought that as few as 500 finished<\/em> words was a respectable effort.\u00a0 (That was Graham Greene\u2019s daily quota.)\u00a0 Most aimed for somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 words.\u00a0 And a few ambitious souls aimed for 3,000 or more.\u00a0 But that was 3,000 words a day, not 3,000 words an hour.\u00a0 And these were professional writers.<\/p>\n

Effective writing involves thinking, writing, and revising.\u00a0 (One writer we know cheerfully admits to \u2018throwing away\u2019 at least two-thirds of the words from every first draft she has ever written.)<\/p>\n

When you sit down to prepare a board paper or something similar, you have probably already done quite a bit of the thinking.\u00a0 But it is almost inevitable that more thinking will be required.\u00a0 And then there\u2019s the writing: selecting just the right words and putting them into just the right order to achieve just the right effect.\u00a0 And, finally, there\u2019s the revising \u2013 which may well take longer that the initial writing.<\/p>\n

So next time you are faced with the prospect of having to put together a well-thought-out, coherent, and persuasive document, it might be useful to stop thinking like a sales manager or an HR manager or a finance manager.\u00a0 And definitely stop thinking like a typist.<\/p>\n

Instead, you need to start thinking like a professional writer.\u00a0 And that means allowing yourself more than just an hour or so to think, write, and revise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend of ours reckons that he has yet to meet a man who does not consider himself to be a better than average driver and a better than average lover. I sometimes feel that my own experience of would-be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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\/634"}],"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=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":635,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}