Somewhere along the way writing acquired a reputation as a lonely activity. This seems weird to me.
We don’t go around saying “car driving is lonely” because it’s difficult for two people to operate a car at the same time. You can still drive a car with other people in it or while talking to someone on the phone. The same goes for writing. It’s hard for two people to share a keyboard, but there’s no reason you need to be lonely while writing.
But I need peace and quiet to write!
This is a totally legitimate cognitive need. Other people write best with music playing or in crowded spaces (at least back in the day). But needing quiet or privacy doesn’t mean that writing needs to be lonely. Here are 6 ways to rethink writing as a social activity.
1. It takes two to write
Writing implies an audience. Your audience are actually the stakeholders in your writing. If you’re writing something for PMs their needs will be different than if you’re writing for VPs. The secret to really effective writing is understanding and meeting the needs and expectations of your stakeholders. In other words, writing is a design problem. This means making choices about the information you include, your tone, and the jargon you do (or don’t) use. Writing is always a dialogue.
2. You are your own audience
But what if you’re just writing for yourself? Isn’t that a solitary activity? Well, not quite. Having an “offstage” area for writing is actually critical to a healthy writing practice. It’s hard to face an audience if you don’t have a protected space to try out new concepts, warm up, and rehearse that is free from judgment—even yours. But even when you’re writing for yourself, writing is a way to externalize thought such that you become your own audience. So while offstage writing may not be directed to an external audience, backstage writing still has an incredibly important audience—you!
Harish Govindarajan, Senior Manager of Product and Engineering at Amazon, describes the value of writing for himself this way:
“When faced with an important life decision to make, I find myself naturally opening a document and just writing down my thoughts. It’s become a way of life, so to speak. It helps me make better life decisions, not just product or work decisions.”
3. Friends don’t let friends write alone
I write “with” people all the time even though we’re not in the same place by using the Pomodoro method. My “pom buddies” and I take turns setting a timer for 25 minutes. This is the single best productivity hack I have ever learned.
Your Pom Buddy does not even have to be writing.
4. Get eyes on your prize
Have you ever wondered would someone understand this if they weren’t on my team or does my humor come across here? You can actually run experiments by putting your writing in front of members of your target audience and asking for specific feedback. If you ask the wrong person or ask a generic question like “what do you think of this?” you’re not likely to get useful feedback.
5. Planting an audience in the text
One way to address the needs of the audience is to call attention to specific stakeholder viewpoints. This is particularly useful when you need to be persuasive. Restating and addressing anticipated “sales objection” is a great strategy. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein call this “planting a naysayer in the text.” That could look like this:
You might be wondering whether our small sample size means that our study has no validity. In fact, small sample size produces outsized insights in qualitative research.
You can do the opposite as well—planting social proof in the text to emphasize the viewpoints of stakeholders who agree with you. As in:
Nearly all the VPs we talked to agreed that investing in writing training would free up team member time currently spent asking for clarification or dealing with misunderstandings.
6. Co-authoring
Many professional documents are collaboratively produced, which means that there are opportunities to interact with other people’s ideas and voices during the writing process. You can also use co-authorship to motivate projects. Think about writing a conference talk with a colleague, interviewing people for your blog, or “drafting” off of a friend’s deadline as a co-author.
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