Below I've distilled what I know from 40+ years as a writer, mostly in business.
1: Warm up your writing skills. Summarize ten big ideas, each in a single sentence of less than 30 words. See if your mother understands them.
2: You are writing to whom? Know what your readers want and speak their language. Learn the verbs they value and loathe.
3: Writing is thinking. Ask questions. Try out your ideas on yourself and on others.
4: Just write. Until you complete a first draft, do not obsess about details.
For example, misspelling is rarely deadly unless it accompanies rambling, vague sentences. But some errors are deadly and must be edited out: long paragraphs, sentence fragments and run-ons, puzzling clumps of nouns, and ambiguous or missing "referents" (aka old information). The deadliest source of error? Writing sentences that you *hope* will impress readers.
5: Use the four editing algorithms:
1. Give each chunk a main-idea sentence.
2. Put old information in each sentence’s beginning, new in the end.
3. Put all first-time actions into active verbs (the DAD Rule).
4. Design (format) each page to please readers.
That’s it. Those are the basics. From here on, we explore the fine points.
Flesch Reading Ease 75. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 4.8
