Easy reading is damn hard writing
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
We assume that because we can read, we naturally can also write. Well, yes, on one level that’s true. We are all capable of stringing words together on a page. Whether anyone would find our stream of consciousness compelling enough to read is another question altogether.
I read blogs daily, and there are times when I feel both frustrated and humbled by the skill of their writers. I would dearly love to have their flair. The ability to create pictures with words is magical in my view and makes for compelling reading. The thing with that sort of writing is that, because it reads so well, it looks so easy. The author’s ideas seem to flow off the page and if we think about it at all, we may well assume that it was just as easy to write as to read. I’m not so sure. Most great skills take many hours of focused attention to develop. And writing is no exception.
So why is this important? In my view, it’s massively important to be able to communicate well. How does a team become inspired without first being enthused by an idea? You may think you have the best employee programme in the world, or the most exciting business this century – but if you can’t tell people about it in a way that gets them just as excited as you are, nobody will know about it.
Don’t think that just because you have marketing and creative people in your company that you don’t have to be concerned about writing well. Every piece of written communication you produce has the ability to inspire or to bore its readers. To some extent, you get to choose which; put the effort into writing better, and your ability to inspire and engage people will increase. Kinda obvious when you think about it.
[Tip: A couple of good blogs to read on the subject: Copyblogger and Men with Pens]
If you found this post useful, please feel free to share it with a friend. You could also subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog, or sign up to receive our blog by email.
Article by Vandy Massey
If you liked this post why not subscribe to the 'Consultants' feed via RSS, email or follow us on Twitter.