Words and phrases to avoid 
Aren’t these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?
— An unnamed writer for the Krusty the Klown Show
I’ve been in a bit of a testy mood this last week. A variety of reasons for that, but I’ve managed to keep it under the surface. Well, at least for the last couple of days. Little things, though, have set me off. Mainly words and phrases that I’ve heard and read recently, ones that have always grated on me.
In my current mood, these are more than minor irritants. And, as someone who writes for a living, these words and phrases offend my delicate sensibilities.
Like what? Here are a few:
All-time high/greatest/etc.: Unless time has ended (and no one’s told me), or that company/field of endeavour has ceased to exist, then nothing is all-time.
Free gift: Isn’t every gift you receive free? I know, I know. Some gifts do have strings attached, but …
Functionality: I cringe whenever I read or hear that word. What does that word mean? Features? Functions? I still haven’t figured that out, and I’ve been a technical writer for a long time.
Synergy: Unless you’re talking about Larry Fast’s electronic music project, I never want to hear that word applied to business or relationships. Or anything else.
Proactive: Is there such a thing as being antiactive?
Paradigm: I wish that word would just shift away.
Squaring the circle: The only time this sort of metaphor has come even close to working was in the title of the documentary Kings of the Square Ring.
I could go on, but for the sake of my mental health I won’t.
Are there any words or phrases that you find particularly annoying? If so, leave a comment.
Confusing your readers
There’s nothing worse than prose that confuses. Good non-fiction writing is supposed to explain, clarify, entertain, and educated. The same can be said for fiction, too, I assume. But sometimes writing just confuses readers.
This post looks at the ways in which you can confuse your readers. Chances are you’ve read examples of writing like that. You may have even been guilty of it at least once in your career.
Two writers come to mind when I think of confusing prose: Michel Foucault and Buckminster Fuller. Both had some very interesting ideas (Fuller more so in my opinion), but their writing was so dense and convoluted that following their threads of thought became impossible at times.
My advice? When I feel that my writing is becoming long and convoluted, I go back to basics:
- Keep it simple: short, punchy sentences, one idea per paragraph, and short paragraphs.
- No fancy language: keep the terminology simple, and use common words. If jargon does crop up, explain it as clearly as possible.
- Break things up: use bullets and headings to ensure that there’s not just a long flow of text.
- When in doubt, axe it: be ruthless when editing.
How do you handle a situation like this? Feel free to leave a comment.
Writing a book using Google Docs
I make no secret of the fact that Google Docs is one of my favourite tools for writing. It’s easy to use and convenient — no matter where I am or whether I’m using Linux or Windows (sorry, haven’t gone Mac yet), I get the same interface and features. If and when I need to, I can later download what I’ve written to my computer and open it in a word processor.
One of the projects I’m working on now is an ebook that’s being written using Google Docs. Before I embarked on that project I wondered whether or not such a thing was possible. And it is, as Philipp Lenssen has shown quite convincingly.
In a blog post, Lenssen discusses how he wrote the book Google Apps Hacks (titled Google Office Hacks during the early phases of writing). There’s a lot of useful information in Lenssen’s post, and while some of it is a bit techie you can learn a lot about what I call writing in the cloud.
Writing a lot, in a hurry
I’ve been known to bang out decent (and better-than-decent) work in a hurry. Like what? I’ve written 1,200 word articles in 45 minutes, and have on several occasions plowed through a week’s worth of blog posts (for three blogs) in just over an hour.
But all that pales in comparision to what Laura Spencer recently did. Spencer blogs on the b5Media blog network and she and several other b5Media bloggers took part in a blogging marathon. Twenty-four posts in 24 hours. While I’m sure that the participants in this exercise weren’t blogging every hour on the hour, they did have to prepare a lot of posts in advance. And that can be a challenge at the best of times.
Spencer offers five tips on how to write a lot of blog posts quickly. You can easily apply the information in this piece to writing a bunch of short articles as well.
My favourite pieces of advice? Use a set structure and Keep the posts simple. Reminds me of the speed writing formats that I blogged about.
Give them something more than words
As freelance writers, we tend to think in words. For obvious reasons: without words, we can’t write. If we can’t write, then we can’t make a living.
But there’s more that we can offer client, according to this article. Even if you’re not the most visual person (I know I’m not!), you can still expand your collection of services.
My business partner and I have, for example, been seriously considering adding podcast consulting, screencasts, and presentation consulting to our list of services. We’ve been considering that for a while, actually. With our experience, and that article as an impetus, we’ll definitely be doing that and more.
Why not you?
Because we can doesn’t mean we must
In this space, I frequently talk about being untethered. I admit that I my wireless notebook computers are a boon — they allow me to work anywhere, while keeping me connected to the Internet.
But, to be honest, I’m a reluctant mobile phone user. I have one, but it’s nothing fancy. It makes calls, can send and receive text messages, and supposedly can do some basic Wbe browsing. I say supposedly because I haven’t tried that yet. My mobile really can’t compare to my business partner’s Blackberry which has everything except a death ray.
That said, all of this mobile technology creates a number of unreasonable expectations. Not only for us, but for clients as well. And I don’t think those expectations are always a good thing.
Read the rest of this entry »
A (writing) room of one’s own
A little while back, I stumbled across this piece at the Guardian Online. It looks at the rooms in which a number of British writers — past and present — have plied their craft. It’s an interesting mix of spaces, that’s for certain.
I have to admit that I’m partial to the rooms used by John Banville, Margaret Drabble (without the curtains, though), Martin Amis, Ian Rankin, and David Lodge. I can easily see myself working in any of those spaces, or a variation thereof. A good fantasy, no?
My reality, though, is slightly different. I don’t have a dedicated writing room. One of my laptops occupies a space on a desk in my basement, and my main one has a (fairly) permanent place on a table in my dining room. Since I use laptops, my writing space is anywhere there’s a place to sit — which could mean the living room, my porch, or my deck. All I have to worry about is having a power outlet handy to plug in when my battery is running dry. I’ve also been known to do work in coffee shops with wireless access and at a large public library, which also offers free wi-fi.
What’s your writing space like? Feel free to leave a comment.
Research, research
The other day, I was idly leafing through my copy of The Copywriter’s Handbook when one heading really leaped out at me: Become a research fanatic. The thrust of that section of the book was that in-depth research brings more credibility to your writing. To quote the book:
[W]hen copywriters don’t bother to dig for facts, they fall back on fancy phrases and puffed-up expressions to fill the empty space on the page. The words sound nice, but they don’t sell because the copy doesn’t inform.
Writing with a wiki: an update
A few months back, I wrote in this space about an experiment with writing with a wiki that I was going to undertake. Well, I actually started the experiment and stuck with it. And it’s going pretty well. Here’s an update.
Writing distilled, in around 1,000 words
All advice should be simple. This is especially true for writing advice. And Dustin Wax has done a great job of distilling the keys to writing in this blog post.
He offers 16 succinct pieces of advice that every writer — beginning or experienced — should follow. I’ve covered a few of those in this space, like Write naturally and Have a plan. There are others bits of wisdom that I haven’t tackled, and now probably don’t have to.