{"id":1469,"date":"2015-10-31T22:49:14","date_gmt":"2015-10-31T22:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mylessonslearned.co\/?p=1469"},"modified":"2015-10-31T22:49:14","modified_gmt":"2015-10-31T22:49:14","slug":"be-a-better-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mylessonslearned.co\/?p=1469","title":{"rendered":"Be A Better Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am ruthless as an editor. If you put a presentation in front of me, I will try to edit it until it is (in my mind) a precisely written thing of beauty.<\/p>\n<p>A blog I like, The Minimalists, focus on minimalism in general&#8230;.including writing. I like their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theminimalists.com\/eleven\/\">11 things<\/a> to focus on, but in particular:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<strong>Writing is 30% composition, 70% editing<\/strong>.&#8221;\u00a0 The goal here is to <em><strong>use as few words as possible without\u00a0the reader needing to ask questions<\/strong><\/em>. Too often, we use\u00a0too many words to try and explain something&#8230;.which only\u00a0confuses the reader. We often pick the wrong word when precision matters, we omit the words we need to clarify.<\/p>\n<p>Be ruthless when you write. Cross\u00a0out every unnecessary word. Put it away, and look at it again. See where the gaps are: where you might lose people because you&#8217;re not clear. Rewrite it so it&#8217;s clearer.<\/p>\n<p>The best presentations are the ones where you&#8217;re doing a minimum of explaining.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am ruthless as an editor. If you put a presentation in front of me, I will try to edit it until it is (in my mind) a precisely written thing of beauty. A blog I like, The Minimalists, focus on minimalism in general&#8230;.including writing. I like their 11 things to focus on, but in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1472,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-perform-better"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Be A Better Writer - My Lessons Learned<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mylessonslearned.co\/?p=1469\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Be A Better Writer - My Lessons Learned\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I am ruthless as an editor. If you put a presentation in front of me, I will try to edit it until it is (in my mind) a precisely written thing of beauty. A blog I like, The Minimalists, focus on minimalism in general&#8230;.including writing. 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