"Writing is Re-Writing" #96

On this the 12th in the series, Larry Wilson shares how very important re-reading and re-writing anything you do before sharing it. The value of taking a couple mins to re-write a text, email, or even more important forms/reports/etc; can all be improved with a re-write. It is so important to re-read and write before you submit or share...make sure it is communicating the message exactly as you intend.

Hosted by Larry Wilson
Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions
Producer: R. Scott Edwards
Sponsored by: The Wilson Method

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Transcript

Larry Wilson: 0:03

Hi, this is Larry Wilson and this is how to talk to humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far, I can show you so easily how to change that. Now, I can only do it with humans. If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies, extraterrestrial, this is not the show for you. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned from 40 years in show business, working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world. And their secrets are unbelievable.What I'm going to be teaching you during this course of this podcast every week, are tools that you can use to communicate toward success.Hi, I'm Larry Wilson. Thanks again, for joining me on this podcast about communication and the importance of clarity.In the I was going to say in the last episode, but who knows how these episodes will be presented, or how you'll hear them. In a prior episode, I was talking aboutthe importance ofgood communication skills, not just in verbal communication, but in written communication as well.Andthere's a lot of reasons why writing is so important. I encountered people from time to time whoI just realized what the analogy was. Sometimeswhen I was a kid, we had to learn certain multiplication tables, by rote you were forced to memorize them. And then as technology advanced andhandheld calculators became affordable by regular people.More kids started see why do we need to learn this stuff? You know, I'd have a calculator? And the answer to this age old debate? My answer is, I have no idea may have hits good. I don't know. I always think that your brain is like a muscle. And that using it exercising it makes it stronger.I'm told that certain people in longevity programs who are studying people who live long and live well and are healthy, have a tendency to agree with me that they find certain older people who, for example, uh, do crossword puzzles,have better memory retention, they have better cognitive facilities. And it may simply be because they're using their brain, they're exercising their brain all the time.This, of course, sounds like a good time for me to point out that this may be why television is not so good for you. Because as Marshall McLuhan said, it's acool medium. And he didn't mean that in the sense that it was hip, he meant that nothing came off of it, that you just sat there as a passive receptacle, as yes, it poured into you. But, again, I digress. I'm sorry. I guess I'm trying to say that.There are all kinds of things that technology makes easier for us. And sometimes we lose sight of the fact thatfor example, knowing how to start a fire in the wilderness, probably you'll never have to use this skill. But if you did, it'd be so fantastic if you knew how to do it. In that same way. I've had people say to me, Oh, nobody needs to know how to write, or punctuate or spell. You know, you just if you really have to, you just use AutoCorrect. And I think you know how that one always turns out.But there are some people who feel that all communication now nowadays should just be verbal, that there should be no examples. There's no reason to have anythingcan not even text? Well, those of you who do text a lot, I'm sure you feel strongly that it's very useful. And of course, it has fantastic purpose, it can be used in a lot of ways, very efficient, very effective, very powerful. However, like all things I think having to do with technology,it can be abused. And there are some people whoprefer texting, to actually speaking, live to other humans.I hope that you will forgive my bias. But of course, I think this may not be the healthiest behavior, I understand the appeal of tax, there are a couple of elements to it. One is that you can think long and hard before you respond to it.If I bump into you getting out of the elevator, and I say, Oh, pardon me, that has to happen, right, then when it happens, I can't text you two hours later and say, that time when I bumped into you in the elevator, I'm sorry, excuse me, but it doesn't really carry the same weight.And I understand that it's very appealing, especially for young people who sometimes have a lot of feelings flying around inside them. And they aren't always sure how they feel about something. I think that's a very legitimatereason tohesitatein your response.However, sometimes,text messages that come through to you require a little bit faster response. And sometimes they require clear response. I know that there's a great contingent of people who feel that punctuation is old fashioned, and a sign that you're, you know, one of those ancient people over 25.But truthfully, punctuation, of course, as you know, saves lives. You know, if, if you say, it's time to eat, comma, Grandma, you're telling your grandmother that it's dinner time.If you leave out that comma, then you're announcing that your grandmother is the main course at dinner. We're going to eat grandma. Now, I know. Some of you listening, you're thinking no one really thinks we're going to eat grandma. No, I realize they don't. But what it does is it interrupts the flow of communication.If now in the case of your grandmother, you probably know you're not going to be eating grandma for dinner. But in more simple conversations or text messages,the use of a comma separates ideas.And it makes your message clear.And that's all we're ever going for his clarity.If you insist onshortening words, abbreviating them, all right, as long as it's clear, if W t r means water to the people you're texting to Okay. I always think it takes just a moment or two longer to actually spell wa t er. Butclarity is the goal here.And I realized that it's sometimes seems at cross purposes. I seem to be picking on people who text here and I don't mean to be I think it's incredible thing. I just think that there's a great preponderance of people who use it to hide behind.And if you're one of the people who has your own business, maybe you work for someone, maybe you're in school.If you really want to excel at what you do, you do not want to be hiding behind anything.You want to be front and center and communicating as clearly as possible.The thing about text, it lends itself to passive aggressive behavior, because you can be so unclearthat if someone were to be offended by something, you texted them, you could say, oh, that's not what I meant. That's not what I meant at all.But by the same token, your communication lacks power, because it lacks specificity.And so I would urge you to consider now, I'm told by some people that if you put a period at the end of a sentence, it's very aggressive, it's considered in a text very aggressive, well, perhaps it is, then the people who receive those texts from me with a period will simply have to bear the weight of my aggressive personality.I want to make certain that you understand where each thought andall come pick you up at 10.Period.Very hard to misunderstand that. Now, I understand that a lot of young people will read long run on sentences as texts, and sort out the meaning and they go, yeah, yeah, I know what that means. Sometimes. But I know myself, in my own family, there have been some situations where things weren't as clear as they could be. And someone misunderstood the intent.And this brings us, I think, to a very simpleand poise this can sound old fashioned. But it's powerful techniquethat I emphasize in Wilson method.writingis rewriting.It's very, very common that people think, oh, you know, great authors sit down, and they just bang that book out. And how fantastic wouldn't. When people say he was a great author, they, they meant that he just sat down. And, wow, Emily Dickinson, she just sat down and banged it out, and there was nogreat writing is the result ofgreat rewriting.The first draft you get down, whether it's on paper or on computer, is to capture your ideas.And frequently, you will find if you apply yourself diligently to this, that your ideas are great. But you find that they may be disordered, they may not be in the best possible order to have the greatest impact.And this is one of the advantages of rewriting. As you look at it, you say, oh,that first sentence I had. That's really the closing sentence. That that sort of summed up the whole thing that's really supposed to be the end. Well, maybe that's why it came out in your mind is the most important. And then he said to go, oh, that paragraph in the middle. That should be the first thing, because it lays out the idea of what this whole thing I'm writing is about.Now,we all frequentlyare faced with theunseen critic, whether we're speaking, whether we're writing, it is extremely prevalent, with public speakers. So many of the people I work with, who want to be professional speakers.That's one of their biggest problems is the critic in their head, who's looking over their shoulder and second guessing them.I would urge you not to try and fight that critic.Just acknowledge them. And continue on your way.When you're writing when you're speaking.Don't fight that critic. Because what you resist has a tendency to persist.Let it go.If you have the thought, Oh, this isn't as good as Shakespeare. Well, I have news for you. Nothing you write is going to be as good as Shakespeare. As far as I'm concerned. Nothing anybody writes is going to be as good as Shakespeare.The guy wrote this stuff 600 years ago, and every word rings true today. How you do that? I don'No, in fact, it's, well, I sorry, I digress. Again, I shouldn't go off on this. But if you accept that you're not going to be as good as Shakespeare, then you can free yourself to be as good as you. And I guarantee you, Shakespeare wrote and rewrote and rewrote his own material. Because as you're looking at the things you've written, you have more thoughts about them. If you think of them in that idea as capturing your ideas,that first draft, the first thing you write down, is just about capturing the raw information. Then, take some time, go have a sandwich, walk around the block, call a friend, do something that'll take you away from what you've written. If it's only for five or 10 minutes, then go back and look at it again. Suddenly, you think, Oh, that's not the word I meant to use. This other word is better. Or, like I was saying before, these ideas are in the wrong order. Now, this is one of the places that technology, of course, is extraordinary. I remember when personal computers were just becoming popular.As a writer, I thought this is the most incredible thing. I can grab a chunk of text and move it on the page. And if I don't like it,I can just hit the backspace key. I'm not sure what that key is called.But to put things back the way they were before. And then if I think no, wait, I was right the first time, I can hit the backspace key again, and put it back the way it was the first time it. That's an unbelievable feat oftechnology for writers in particular. So take advantage of it.You can make copies. If you think well, I wrote this one way. But I have a whole other idea about how to make it longer or shorter, orwhatever the criteria is that you're looking for, make a copy of it, save it as the way you want it, then go back in on the new copy, and knock the walls out and spray painted in deep fried and do everything else you want to do with it.But I promise you,the more you rewrite,the better your message will be.I say this, I cannot be contradicted in this. I know there's people who think, Oh, well, it makes me a you know, less authentic. It makes me like I'm phony. Because no, what it makes you is someone in pursuit of clarity.Sometimes you have an idea, that's so great.Butyou just feel like you're not quite making the point you want to make.If you come back tomorrow, and look at it again. You'll see it with fresh eyes. Sometimes you'll think, Oh, this is terrible. I don't know what I was thinking. Other times you think, Wow, this is really very good. But it should bea little shorter, or should be a little longer should be a little bit more developed. All these things are the function of rewriting.Andif I wanted to be extremely clever, I would have prepared a whole satire of Romeo and Juliet here showing his Shakespeare's first drafts. But I'm not that clever. So I'll leave that to someone out there who's really good with that.Although I have seen people doing satires of it, and it's hilarious, you know, because when you I don't know why this line popped into my head right now.I I cannot explain why this line popped in my head.But when Romeo hears Juliet on the balcony, he says to himself, how silver sweet sound lovers tongues by night, like softest music to attending yoursand I think600 Youyears ago, that's, that's pretty good that we can understand what he means. How silver sweet sound lovers tongues by night. The words, when you're in love that someone says, they sound so fantastic,like softest music to attending IRS.Well, I guarantee you've nobody sat down and banged out that line that way.I, I have no proof. So no one can prove I'm wrong. But I guarantee you,the more rewriting you do on anything, whether it's a thank you note, you've written to someone, whether it's an email, requesting updates on the latest department figures that were supposed to be there. If it's, I know this is hard to believe, but even on a text, if before you click that send button, you just read it over a couple times, you might decide, oh, you know what, there's a little better way to say this.And the more you practice rewriting your writing,it's a quantum leap in the quality of your writing. Some people again, come to me and say, oh, I want to write a book, or I want to do this or that. And they say, but I'm not that good a writer. Well, I can tell you, the first thing you should do if you want to be a writer, be a reader. Because the more you read, the more you'll see how people write. It's not that you're supposed to copy them. But you can see how they put ideas together. And the second best adviceis to start writing.Stop thinking about it. Stop procrastinating. STOP WISHING, start writing.And thenrewrite. This has been Larry Wilson, I want to thank you for spending this time with me. And I hope you found this information useful. If you're looking for more you can find it at the Wilson method.com There's a ton of stuff there. In fact, if you want you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email at info at Wilson method.com Because I read every single one.

Unknown: 22:48

I hope that you will join us next week in this continuing journey. And you'll be with me for the next episode of how to talk to humans.