A nice little article in Forbes magazine on improving your writing, part of a continuing series. Business mags are full of useful tips. After all, they work in the real world, they expect results**.
Takehomes?
- If you want to write better, offer to edit manuscripts of your friends. Mistakes which look perfectly good when you make them stare out accusingly from manuscripts you are editing.
- Read more? Sure, but not if what you are reading is crap. Read the greats, and some of it will make its way into your writing.
- Even if it isn’t fiction, it is. Every manuscript you write is a story. The great unknown. The noble attempt to push back the boundaries of ignorance. The mistakes made along the way. The hard-won conclusions. The horizon beckoning in the future. Good writing is good teaching is good story-telling.
**Ghostbusters, one of the great films about academia, in a backwards sort of way. I remember sitting in a theat34 in Ft. Collins Colorado, taking a break from the ESA meetings, when I heard a line which changed my life:
Dr Ray Stantz: Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything! You’ve never been out of college! You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve *worked* in the private sector. They expect *results*.
This is priceless….
mycoignofvantage reblogged this on Mycoignofvantage's Blog and commented: Being a student right now and in the last 3 weeks of the semester, this reminded me of when I attempted to go into Professional Writing. It was a complete waste of time as a degree and I am far more creative a thinker without professional coaching. Just as this cartoon illustrates!