bookmark_borderHow to Write

What a wonderful group of people you are, my dear readers and fellow Twitterers. I asked for some suggestions as I’m pulling together a short, internal, workshop covering some simple techniques and tips for the “non-writers” in our organisation.

I received some great suggestions and a couple of excellent links and, as promised, here is a generic version of the presentation.

The one I’ll run internally has some examples that are specific to the audience and our organisation, so I’d suggest if you are going to use the presentation I’ve provided, that you add in your own examples. Much easier for people to understand if they see real examples in action.

bookmark_borderMystery

Two things happen to me on a semi-regular basis. Well, a lot of things happen to me on a semi-regular basis but I’m only going to mention two of them in this blog post. Frankly if I was to list all the things that happen to me on a semi-regular basis I’d be here all day and you’d be somewhere else because that would probably be THE MOST BORING BLOG POST IN THE WORLD, EVAH!

So I’ll limit it to two things that happen to me, mainly because there is no pattern as to when they happen and I’ve never been able to figure out what causes them.

Now let me just stress that these things are, in the grand scheme of things, not a big deal at all and they certainly aren’t things that I lie awake at night worrying over (that pleasure is reserved for trying to figure out WHAT THE HELL THE CAT HAS DRAGGED IN THIS TIME).

Well, that’s not quite true as one of the things is precisely that, waking up at 2am wide awake and no matter what I try I just know there is no point fighting it. So I get up, either watch TV for a few hours or aimlessly surf the internet and finally start feeling sleepy by about 5am. I go back to bed and get up at 6.30, bright and breezy and ready for another day at work. Or, you know, not.

Thankfully I’m usually pretty grumpy of a morning so no-one really notices.

I’ve tried cutting back on my caffeine intake but these ‘episodes’ happen on an irregular basis and it’s only a handful of times a year so it’s almost impossible to figure out why.

I won’t dwell on the second issue too much, but I do get nosebleeds now and then, again seemingly at random. I figure they are down to what is probably termed “local environmental artefacts”.

Or maybe I should just stop picking my nose…

The thing is that, in years gone past, I’d have worried and pondered and thought about these two things in great detail, scrutinising every scrap of evidence I could think of to try and understand the cause.

These days I just accept that they happen and it’s just another few things to add to the randomness that is life.

Some would say “older and wiser”, but I just think it’s acceptance that you just can’t understand everything.

bookmark_borderAlways Learning

In using up the last of my holiday allocation for the year, I find myself finishing up on the 17th December and not returning to work until the 5th of January.

Previously I’d have viewed that as a good chance to get some things done (and there are two things I MUST get done before the end of the year) but being yet another year old and wiser I’ve decided not to bother making any plans.

Sure if I end up with a free day I have a few things in mind, but by and large I’ll be taking things as they come. It’s gonna be a chilled out Christmas.

bookmark_borderWriting techniques

How do you get started? Faced with that pristine new document, all that whitespace, what do you generally do to start writing that document?

Like most companies, we have a number of people who create content in a number of different styles and formats. The main producers are, of course, the technical writing team, but after that there is still a fair number of documents which fall into the “creative writing” bag including whitepapers, proposals, product sheets and so on.

The people involved in writing these documents are, for the most part, promoted internally and have had no formal training in how to write. I was chatting with one of them recently and he said that the biggest issue he had was just getting started, and once started he couldn’t really tell if what he was writing was particularly well structured.

“Hey” he said, “could you train us to be writers?”

One day I’ll learn not to say YES to such questions, but it seemed a reasonable request at the time.

The thing is, I’ve never been trained as a writer either, and writing technical documentation follows patterns which other types of document don’t necessarily follow. On the other hand, any pattern is better than no pattern and if I could introduce some basic methodologies, surely it’s better for everyone?

Luckily for me I had still had fresh memories of attending a particular session at the Technical Communication conference. Kim Schrantz-Berquist presented If you can write an article, you can write anything! in which she covered a couple of writing techniques which I think will be perfect to introduce to the ‘creative writers’ in our company.

The first one I’ve adapted quite a bit to better fit with the intended audience, but the principles of the 5Ws and 1H remain the same. If you cover Who, What, Why, When, Where and How you won’t missing anything, and it’s a good way to kick start the brain, and get past that first blank page.

Kim also covered the Inverted Pyramid, something more typically used in journalism, that loads all the important information at the top of the article, ideal for business writing as it allows people to ‘get out’ of the document without missing out on crucial information.

I’ve taken the techniques she covered, crafted some examples specific to our organisation, and a little bit about Active vs Passive, a few slides on grammar that build on advice from Prof. Pullum (basically, don’t sweat it and write as you would speak) and will hopefully deliver the first workshop next week.

But before I do that, I’d love to hear if you have any other techniques that could help.

bookmark_borderCurious Daylight

I’ve spent most of the evening retagging MP3s in my iTunes library in an effort to get them all cleaned up. I tried this with a bit of software before but it did more damage than good so I’m just slowly working my way through by hand and, as it turns out, it’s quite fun for no other reason than it is allowing me to revisit some music I’ve not played for ages.

It’s also kicking off a bit of nostalgia at times as well, as I pick over different eras in my music taste, particularly when I stumbled across an old Kevin McDermott Orchestra album which I played so much the CD started to wear through!

There was a time, in my late teens, when I was heavily into the Scottish music scene, Simple Minds, Love & Money, The Silencers, The Humpff family and Del Amitri, and given that I was ‘growing up’ at that point it’s fair to say that a lot of the lyrical content seemed to resonate deeply with me.

Now I’m not saying that any of the aforementioned bands were particularly adept at song writing but remember, I was a bag of hormones and emotions so even the simplest line of melancholy had me proclaiming it as the best song EVER.

However what took me by surprise, as I flicked through some of the tracks, was how deeply they STILL resonate. One perfect example is on the Kevin McDermott album, Bedazzled, a track called Curious Daylight:

I hope this song makes sense tomorrow,
My words keep falling on the floor,
It’s nearly dawn and soon I’ll follow,
It’s time you helped me to the door.

So now we know that something’s wrong.
We’ve been on this ship too long.

I can’t wait, til we’ve got it made,
I can’t wait, til we turn the tide,
I can’t wait, cos I see everything,
and it sure looks strange in this curious daylight.

Wish we could talk about the weather,
Fall asleep and wake as friends,
but I can’t talk about forever,
and I’m the villain once again.

We’re getting further from the shore,
but I’ve sailed this sea before.

But I can’t wait, til we’ve got it made,
I can’t wait, til we turn the tide,
I can’t wait, cos I see everything,
and it sure looks strange in this curious daylight.

Though I need you more than ever,
Because the cards I have are always wild,
I’m trying to keep this ship together,
so try to understand the thankless child.

I don’t expect to be forgiven,
There’re things that I could never be,
No well intentioned break upon the shores of heaven,
No endless refuge.

I’ve been on this ship so long,
and I’ve never felt this strong,
Now I can’t wait, til we’ve got it made,
I can’t wait, til we turn the tide,
I can’t wait, cos I see everything,
and it sure looks strange in this curious daylight.

Nothing special, for sure, but it still made me stop and sit back and just listen to the music. Not something I do all that often, and it evoked a powerful set of memories, of people and places, laughter and tears.

It also reminds me that memories, good ones, are very important and I should try harder not to leave them to tarnish.