Business Writing

Object : To write your message quickly and easily — without frustrating pauses or blocks. Average time for a doublespaced page: five to ten minutes.

Now that you have your list, the next step is the most obvious and inevitable: writing. Ideally, writing should be as simple as sipping a soda, the scene at your office looking something like this:

You sit at your desk, computer keyboard or pad of paper before you. You start writing. The first few words flow easily; the ones that follow, even more so. You consult your list as you move along, reminding yourself of otherwise lost points, spontaneously adding extra examples or support. Within five or ten minutes you’ve finished your letter or memo. Within an hour or two you’ve breezed through several pages of your proposal or report. Yes, you think to yourself, you’ll make your deadline, no problem.

The sad reality is that most people find that their words drip or stumble onto the computer screen. When describing their feelings about writing, my clients have used such words as agonizing, excruciating, and torturous. Rather than create fresh copy, others have confessed to ignoring important letters, sending a colleague’s dubious proposal, and using forms that were seriously outdated. Even if you are an avoidance junkie and have an impressive set of your own confessions, you know that you can’t escape writing altogether.

Unfortunately, your feelings about writing interfere with your ability to write. Why? When you hate doing something you grow tense when doing it. Think about driving in traffic. Chances are your stomach gets knotted and you feel distracted, restless, impatient. Perhaps you shout epithets that would make Quentin Tarantino blush. When writing, you probably experience the same anxieties, ranging from irritation to frustration to outrage. And while you may not swear or shout aloud, your writing slows, words dropping stiff and stilted. The more you struggle, the slower the words flow, the stiffer they get. Naturally, this experience adds to your dread the inevitable next time you must create that letter, report, or E-mail message.

Perhaps you, like many people, invent excuses — albeit groundless excuses — about why writing really isn’t important.

The Businessperson’s Most Popular
Excuses for Not Writing Carefully

1.	No one reads business writing.
2.	No one reads beyond the first paragraph.
3.	Our readers only look at dollar signs.
4.	Graphs are much more important.
5.	Our telephone conversations cement our client relationships.
6.	We should put time into more important things.
7.	We should put energy only into our strengths — and writing isn’t one of mine.
8.	Our readers receive too much written material anyway — why add more?
9.	The marketing department writes the really important pieces. Ours don’t really matter.
10.	Our readers know what they think. Writing to them won’t help either way.

Excuses give you license to lunge through the writing stage, calling up old letters and signing your name, writing without a list, writing without planning to rewrite.

The obvious solution to this word-wilting dilemma is to relax. Yet, as the old adage goes: Easier said than done. Much easier. The truth is, though, that you can relax and the words can flow and, yes, you can enjoy writing. Really. The best place to start is with a look at why you hate writing.