Friday, April 23, 2021
I sometimes see marketing teachers or coaches say that it doesn’t matter if your writing is “creative” or even “good.” From their point of view, strategy — and only strategy — drives business results.
But when I look around at the businesses that are driving incredible business results with content, that’s not what I see.
There’s plenty of purely strategic content that just isn’t particularly interesting.
Which makes it easy for your audience to skim or skip, so they can get to more videos of kittens giving pugs back rubs.
When you focus on the quality of your writing, you make it more interesting, more memorable, and more distinctive.
Sally Hogshead is known for saying that “different is better than good.”
But for a writer, getting really good is a great way get different. It’s also actually fun and rewarding.
You don’t need to choose
Your writing can be strategic and vivid and show people that you give a damn and reflect a higher level of craft than the thoughtless junk that most sites are publishing.
You might start by adopting a different definition of excellence.
Excellent writing isn’t necessarily something that’s going to get published in The New Yorker.
Excellent writing has color and life.
Hannah Gadsby is an excellent writer. So is Stephen Wright. And Chris Rock. And Ellen DeGeneres.
You may not think of them as writers, because they’re known as stand-up comedians. But great writing is the cornerstone of great stand-up.
Writing for stand-up isn’t about knowing the difference between synecdoche and simile. (Or how to pronounce either of those.)
It’s about writing with a strong and original voice, using language that’s true to an experience, and shaping an audience’s emotions to get the response you want.
Those are pretty big topics, and I’ll be diving into them more deeply in future issues of The Fierce.
But to get things started …
A few ways to start improving your writing
I’ve written a lot about how to bring more artistry and excellence to your writing. Here’s a post I wrote for Copyblogger with some of my favorite techniques: 7 Ways to Bring More Artistry to Your Writing
You certainly don’t have to work on all seven at once … think about adopting one or two to focus on, then expanding from there.
If you wanted a suggestion on what to try right away, my vote would be for reading your work aloud. It feels a little weird at first, but it shows you a lot about the individual rhythm of your own writing voice.
The art of exfoliation …
My friend (and former colleague) Stefanie Flaxman — sometimes known as the Revision Fairy — is a champion of content excellence. She’s editor-in-chief for Copyblogger, and often writes about the craft of writing there.
Here’s just one of her posts demonstrating tangible ways to improve your craft: 3 Advanced Ways to Craft Better Sentences.
(I also recommend her Revision Fairy YouTube channel. She’ll tell you what synecdoche is!)
“Exfoliation” is Stefanie’s term for taking a piece of writing and gently smoothing off the rough parts. You can do just a little, and for daily writing, that might be appropriate. For a bigger post, or a post that will hit a larger audience, spend the time to get things really silky.
Exfoliation is another of those topics we could spend a lot of time on … and we will, in future issues.
Ann Handley shares an example
Ann Handley is also known for her own commitment to excellence in content. She wrote a couple of terrific books about it, in fact.
This is a nifty look at what the edit of a single paragraph can look like. You can think of it as exfoliation in action: How to Write better (live edit)
She walks you through a few specifics of editing a single paragraph, to get you into the mindset of how to approach rewriting.
At first, you won’t spend this much thought on every single paragraph. But as you get more into the habit of looking closely at your own work, it becomes second nature.
You’ve got time
One lovely thing about working on craft is that even a small amount of work will start to pay off right away.
Every technique you learn will make your work a little more vivid and memorable. It will help you to stand out in the sea of content mediocrity.
And that will help you to get the results you want from all that hard work.
As a writer, that kind of “different” actually is better.
Next week I’ll be talking about what I call Invisibility Removal — getting more people to actually see all of this good writing you’re doing.
The “strategy” part I mentioned above? Yeah, this is that.
Until then, May the Fierce be With You.
Sonia
