{"id":979,"date":"2014-07-12T17:05:15","date_gmt":"2014-07-12T05:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=979"},"modified":"2014-07-12T17:05:15","modified_gmt":"2014-07-12T05:05:15","slug":"writing-is-hard-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=979","title":{"rendered":"Writing is hard work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Writing\"<\/a>I was doing a bit of \u2018housekeeping\u2019 recently and I came across a draft of a document that a client had sent us to tidy up.<\/p>\n

It was Grade A gobbledygook.\u00a0 But its author, a senior manager in a technology firm, thought that it was \u2018pretty near perfect\u2019.\u00a0 Unfortunately (for him), his boss didn\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n

The author was a man with both vision and energy.\u00a0 He had an impressive CV.\u00a0 And his persistence was legendary.\u00a0 But, on paper, he was barely literate.\u00a0 As we worked through his draft document \u2013 cutting and polishing and rewriting whole chunks \u2013 the reason for his poor writing skills became clear: he thought that writing was easy.\u00a0 Really<\/em> easy.<\/p>\n

\u2018Anyone can write well,\u2019 he said.\u00a0 (Although, clearly, he couldn\u2019t.)<\/p>\n

This man had spent many, many hours \u2013 years even \u2013 thinking about \u2018hard stuff\u2019 like technical solutions and business processes.\u00a0 But writing?\u00a0 What was there to think about?\u00a0 You just did it.<\/p>\n

Over the years, we have encountered many poor writers who, nevertheless, have thought that they were pretty good.\u00a0 Many of them have been business people, but more than a few have been academics or public servants.\u00a0 Most have worked long and hard at their \u2018day job\u2019.\u00a0 But writing is something to which they have seldom given a second thought.\u00a0 Writing is something you just do.<\/p>\n

Becoming a good writer requires the same degree of effort and dedication as it takes to become a good accountant or a good administrator or a good engineer.\u00a0 In the words of William Zinsser: \u2018Writing is hard work.\u00a0 A clear sentence is no accident.\u00a0 Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time.\u2019<\/p>\n

If you find it easy to write well, there\u2019s a very good possibility that you\u2019re not trying hard enough.\u00a0 And if you find it hard work, that\u2019s simply because it is.\u00a0 It really is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was doing a bit of \u2018housekeeping\u2019 recently and I came across a draft of a document that a client had sent us to tidy up. It was Grade A gobbledygook.\u00a0 But its author, a senior manager in a technology … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979"}],"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=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":980,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions\/980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}