Joel Orr: Get More Done By Practice Writing

If you write easily, you can skip this article.

But if you don’t, I have good news for you: Like any other muscle, your writing muscle can quickly build up with practice.

So much of our professional and entrepreneurial work involves communicating in writing.

Think about it:

• Blogs
• Web sales pages
• Emails
• Reports
• White papers
• Newsletters
• Ebooks

…and that’s just for openers. Writing is the key to success in business, whether you are in the corporate world or out on your own. The reason? The Internet.

The great connecting frame that gives us access to millions of people all the time requires that we communicate in writing. Even if our main message will be packaged as an audio file or a video, we need to write enough about it to get people curious, so that they will want to hear what we have to say.

But the school system has not been kind to everyone. Many people I know feel uncomfortable when they have to write a blog post or a newsletter article, not to mention a sales letter. “I’m just not a good writer,” they tell me. They stare at the blank screen for a long time, and are not sure how to proceed.

Here’s something I do before I write: I cluster. Clustering is a simple exercise for getting stuff that is in your head out and onto paper (or onto the computer screen). Here’s how it works:

Have a writing implement and something to write on; pen and paper are fine, as is a whiteboard and marker. I recommend not using a computer for clustering; I find that it gets in the way, at least initially. Once you are an experienced clusterer, you may enjoy using the computer to do it.

1. Find a quiet place to cluster.

2. Find the calm within yourself. Take a deep breath; let it out slowly. Again.

3. Write the idea, goal, objective, or whatever you want to cluster in the middle of the paper. Draw a circle around it.

4. Now write other words around the circle, circling them. Connect them with arrows to the central circle.

5. If you feel like connecting a new circle to a peripheral circle, rather than to the central circle, do so. Don’t think about hierarchy. Just write down what comes to mind.

6. Keep your hand moving. If no new words occur to you, go over the outlines of the circles or the arrows.

7. Keep going until you feel as if you are finished. I experience this as a kind of “kerchunk.” Gabrielle Rico calls it a “felt sense.” It will probably happen in five to twenty minutes.

That’s clustering.

I learned about clustering from Gabrielle Rico, in “Writing the Natural Way,” which I highly recommend. Clustering gives you access to what you know, but you don’t know that you know.

Once you’ve clustered your topic, answer this question: What is the one thing I want the person who reads this to take away?

Now write it. Just write. Do not edit while writing. Do not stop to look anything up. Just write until you are done. Then you will edit your writing.

This is a powerful approach for writing a few hundred words. If you are writing a report or a book, you will want to create an outline first. But that’s another story.

Practice writing daily. I use a free site, 750words.com, to encourage me in my practice; I recommend it to you.

Write! You won’t be sorry!