Anne H. Janzer's Blog, page 21

Should You Really Get Up Early to Write?

I’m a little tired of reading about successful people who rise and write for hours before daybreak. How about you?

I’m filled with admiration for their work ethic and discipline. But it’s not my process, nor is it necessarily yours.  And for reasons grounded in neuroscience, waking early to write might work against you.

Writing first thing in the morning has many benefits. By doing this work early, you write while you’re fresh. And, you get the work done before the urgencies of the day arise.

The relevant question is this: how early do you start?

Perhaps your only uninterrupted time to write happens before the sun comes up. Fair enough. But, crawling out of bed in the dark may have unintended consequences on your creativity.

A Cognitive Approach to Creative Thought

What makes an idea creative? It’s useful or beautiful, but also unexpected.

Creative insights don’t arise from the same linear thought processes that everyone else is using. Psychologists have a name for this non-linear idea-generation: divergent thinking.

Recently, neuroscientists have examine brain patterns during divergent thinking and found a high degree of connections being forged between three distinct regions of the brain. (See a description of this research on the Psychology Today site: Your Brain on Creativity.)

The brain is an enormously complex network, and our understanding of it is still emerging. But the research makes sense: creative insight often results from combining existing but disconnected knowledge, memories, and even dreams.

Let’s agree on a working definition of creative thought as:

Forming connections between different regions of the brain to generate ideas that others recognize as valuable and unexpected

The brain is constantly changing. Although we cannot consciously control all of its operations, we can affect it with our behavior. One way to influence creativity is through sleep.

Sleep’s role in creativity

During the Rapid Eye Movement (or REM) phase of sleep, guess what our brains do? That’s right—they make connections between experiences and memories.

In his book Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker suggests that during  “Sleep cycle by sleep cycle, REM sleep helps construct vast associative networks of information within the brain.” REM sleep creates new mental connections that can fuel creative thought during waking hours.

This explains why you hear stories of writers, poets, and others receiving ideas for their masterpieces directly from dreams, or why, on rising in the morning, you find the creative output flows easily.

Here’s the sticking point for writers: Most of your REM sleep happens in the second part of the night, and particularly the early morning hours.

If we force ourselves out of bed early, before the natural conclusion of the sleep cycle, we reduce amount of REM we achieve. By doing so, we limit this connection grooming and imperil the creative output of our minds.

The well-rested writer

What should you do with this information?

Get enough sleep: If you want to be creative and productive, don’t skimp on sleep to lengthen your writing time. (Sleep offers many other critical health benefits as well; creativity is just one of many reasons to protect your sleep.)

If you enjoy rising early to write, go to bed early enough so you have a full sleep cycle. Most of us adult homo sapiens need over seven hours a night. (If you don’t agree, I’ll refer you again to Matthew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep.)

Use REM sleep strategically. Set yourself up to welcome the creative insights that come from sleep. Many writers keep a notebook by their bedside to catch ideas that occur to them during the night. Leave an overnight break in your writing cycle to give yourself time to “sleep on” the project.

Stop feeling guilty. If you read those articles about the 5am writers, you might believe that to be a “real” writer you need to cheat your sleep.

Forget that worry. We each have our own internal processes, seasons of life, and reasons for writing. No one can say your process is right or wrong.

If you haven’t gotten at least seven hours of time to snooze, you have my permission to roll back over in bed with the warm and reassuring feeling that you’re working on your creativity.

Related posts

Boredom and Creativity: A Review of Bored and Brilliant

Managing the Muse

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Write on, Sisters! A Book Review and Interview

If you’re a woman who wants to write a book, or if you want to support a woman on this path, pick up a copy of Write On, Sisters! Voice, Courage, and Claiming Your Place at the Table by Brooke Warner.

Brooke Warner has spent 15 years publishing books by women authors, first at Seal Press, then as co-founder and publisher at She Writes Press, a hybrid publishing house with a solid reputation.

If you’ve seen her TEDx talk on green-lighting your creative life, you’ll know to expect a clear-eyed assessment of the publishing industry combined with words of encouragement.

(If you haven’t seen the talk yet, go watch it. I’ll wait.)

The experience of publishing can be quite different for women than men. Not only are systemic biases built into the publishing industry, but women also face years of social conditioning that may prevent them from getting their ideas out into the world. This book laid out these many obstacles and offers sound advice for handling them.

Because the book resonated so much with my experience and observations, I contacted Brooke to ask her about the book. Here’s a quick summary of our conversation. (My questions are in bold.)

An Interview with Brooke Warner of She Writes Press

AJ: Why write a book specifically about publishing for women? What’s different for women?

BW: I’ve been working in women’s publishing since 2004, so I’ve noticed a lot of things over the years that are unique to female authors, and I wanted to share those observations in this book.

From my time at Seal Press, I understood the psychological barriers and social issues around being a female author. And then She Writes Press exposed me to another layer of financial barriers, because authors subsidize their own projects. In my experience, men don’t struggle to authorize themselves and their projects in the same way.

You write about the Impostor Syndrome, or the sense people have of being a fraud. Do you feel that women are more prone to experiencing the Impostor Syndrome in a way that prevents them from writing or publishing?

I do think women are more susceptible to acting on the impulses of the Impostor Syndrome. Men are conditioned to feel comfortable with the “fake it till you make it” approach. Our society encourages men to get out there and do it. That’s not as true for women.

This relates to the problem that women don’t resubmit their work as often as men. Traditional publishing is filled with rejection. When men submit a manuscript and it’s turned down, they tend to not take it personally. They rework and resubmit. Women, however, often personalize rejection.

By writing this book, I hope to make women aware of their psychological and social conditioning so they can stop responding in limiting ways.

How do you recommend that women authors address their fears and enhance their confidence?

It’s hard to tell people to be more confident. The best thing women can do is to feel the pain and write and publish anyway, and hopefully feel less pain the next time around.

We also have to build up self-protection mechanisms to deal with detractors and critics.

For example, I wrote an article for Salon recently, and the trolls came out in force in the comments. I allowed myself to stop reading the comments. One of my authors sent me a message on Facebook to share that she’d had a similar experience on another outlet, but she kept reading the comments, until she finally asked the site to take her piece down.

We have to find ways to protect ourselves and to rise above the negativity, even if that means putting parameters around what we’re willing to absorb.

It’s important that women do this for the same reasons that it matters that we have diverse voices in Congress. I think about how our children are growing up and what they see represented. Women’s voices need to be out there as a model so young people normalize it.

Nonfiction authors need to adopt an authoritative writing voice. How do you advise women who struggle with finding an authentic yet authoritative voice?

I encounter this issue when I teach memoir writing. I stress to memoir authors the importance of reflecting and making universal conclusions from their experiences. Women will worry often about being preachy, or say, “I don’t have the authority or expertise.” Social and psychological conditioning can hold us back in this way.

Beyond that, women’s speech patterns can be problematic. Qualifying words and phrases drive me crazy. I’m prone to editing out any form of qualification because it sounds like an apology, and makes women writers seem less authoritative.

You’ve spoken eloquently about “green-lighting” a creative life, and you run a hybrid press that helps women do just that. Yet as an indie author, I’m aware of people who scoff at the green-lighters. Do you have any advice for dealing with them?

Some people don’t see the value in green-lighting, but then change their minds when they run into high barriers to traditional publishing that exist today.

I have worked with countless authors who were dead set on traditional publishing. Then they realized that it wasn’t going to be their destiny. People either kick and scream, or they change their tune and say, “I am going to say yes to myself.” These are the people who become green-lighters. They make room for a new dream.

Need more encouragement?

Let me repeat two quotes from Write On, Sisters that may inspire you:

Few events are more life-changing and soul-affirming than offering up your work in the form of a published book.

And, at the end of the book:

Remember this: real power comes from authenticity of expression and incremental, small actions that effect change. No one determines who’s deserving in this life, so you’ve just gotta reach out and grab hold of the belief that you are. Big enough is a state of mind.

I could go on, but the book speaks for itself. Read it, and get writing.

Related posts

If you enjoyed this book, you might also like my review of these books:

Writing to Persuade by Trish Hall

The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman

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Writing with Confidence About Uncertainty

Strategies for using indirect language patterns with intention

When writing to communicate expertise and authority, you want to avoid language that makes you seem uncertain. My previous post here described indirect speech patterns that make you seem less confident or knowledgeable when they creep into your written words.

However, indirect speech isn’t all bad.

Indirect statements and expressions of uncertainty are useful for:

Communicating accurately about uncertain situations
Inviting collaboration or input from others
Observing social conventions or hierarchy (not appearing“bossy”)

Here’s the dilemma: You want to appear authoritative and confident in your writing, yet need to use these invaluable communication strategies.

What’s a writer to do?

Express uncertainty with intention—confidence, even.

Don’t let hesitation and indirectness become your default writing style. Use these patterns with intention when they meet your needs. Here are some strategies for communicating intentional uncertainty.

Explore the causes of your uncertainty

Search for any of “hedge” words or phrases (kind of, some, may, perhaps) and consider why you’re using them.

Is the situation explicitly uncertain or difficult to nail down? If so, be explicit about the unknown.

For example, if you are forecasting a future event, you cannot be sure of the outcome. Perhaps the situation involves information inaccessible to you. If I were writing about marketing on Amazon, I might say, “Amazon does not reveal how its algorithms work, but experience so far suggests…”

In academic writing and other situations in which accuracy is essential, communicating uncertainty will earn credibility, rather than diminish it. When you disregard conflicting evidence that your audience knows, you will lose their trust.

Are you uncertain about something you could find out but haven’t? If that’s the case, you might want to either do the homework or tell the reader where to find the information.

Are you using indirect language or hedging your bets out of a general feeling of unease? Identify what’s bothering you and fix it. If you’re still uncertain, try using the next practice: stating the odds.

Express certainty in probabilities

This piece of advice comes from Annie Duke’s excellent book Thinking in Bets. Duke is a retired poker player with a psychology background who studies risk and decision-making.

She suggests that you express confidence in percentages, as if you were wagering: I’m 70% confident this is the right decision based on the facts available to me.

Using this approach leaves the door open for other people to contribute information that might change your confidence level.

When working in groups, this strategy invites collaboration and defeats the “group think” that happens when everyone converges on the opinion of the first person to speak. Duke writes,

Uncertainty not only improves truthseeking within groups but also invites everyone around us to share helpful information and dissenting opinions.

Give advice without being bossy

What if I told you to never, ever, use semi-colons in your writing?

Chances are that you’d protest, even if you haven’t used a semi-colon since college. You’d think I was overstepping my bounds. You might dig in and start using semi-colons to revel in your independence.

No one likes losing their sense of control over their actions (or agency, in psychological terms.)

In the book The Influential Mind, psychologist and author Tali Sharot describes why it’s important not to boss people around when you hope to influence them:

When people perceive their own agency as being removed, they resist. If they perceive it being expanded, they find it rewarding.

Using indirect language respects the reader’s agency and improves the odds of the reader following advice.

The trick is not appearing wishy-washy or weak. “You could do this…” does not inspire confidence or action.

Try changing the actor in the advice from the recipient to yourself. Instead of telling someone what to do, share with them what you would do: Here’s what I would do in your situation … and this is why…

You can then write with great confidence about the situation and your take on it, without appearing uncertain or indecisive. The recipient of the advice is free to take or leave it, but you have expressed confidence in your opinions.

Related posts

Polite or Pushover? Indirect Speech in Business Writing 

Speech Patterns that Threaten Authority in Writing

 

 

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Speech Patterns that Threaten Authority in Writing

Indirect speech is one way that we communicate politeness, willingness to collaborate, modesty, and other worthy attributes when we speak with each other. Despite the American love of “getting right to the point,” people who always speak directly may sound brusque, impatient, or rude.

However, indirect language patterns often read differently in print. In writing, we lose conversational cues. Plus, not all of our readers use the same conversational patterns.

As mentioned in my last post on indirectness in writing (Polite or Pushover?), if readers do not perceive the conversational pattern you’re using, they interpret the words literally.

Unfortunately for many of us, these indirect expressions filter into our writing without our noticing them.

If you want to assess or correct the problem, you must first identify it. Happily, linguists have identified the primary culprits.

Beware the Four Horsemen of Hesitation

Robin Lakoff, a professor of linguistics who studies language and gender, has identified four patterns of tentative speech. As I’m unrestricted by an academic writing style, let’s call them the four horsemen of hesitation.

Expressions of uncertainty: I think, perhaps, or disclaimers like I may be mistaken, but…
Hedges: Weakening words and phrases like sort of, kind of, or somewhat
Tag questions: Phrases or questions seeking immediate confirmation (isn’t it? Don’t you agree?)
Intensifiers: Words like really or very that, despite appearances, weaken rather than strengthen the point (I’m really serious.)

When you know what to look for, you’ll see them everywhere in your own writing and that of others, mowing down authority and weakening the prose. In my experience, they appear frequently in emails, where we often type as we would speak.

Corralling the Horsemen

Search them out in your own writing and determine if they belong.

Tag questions are easiest to spot, and least likely to work their way into your writing.
You can find and correct common intensifiers by searching for words like very, really and quite.
Searching for some, sort of, and kind of will uncover many hedges.

Subtler expressions of uncertainty may embedded in your thought patterns. That doesn’t mean they must stay. Remember, you can edit and revise your thoughts in writing.

You may use hedges to express necessary unknowns, particularly in academic or industry writing. If the hedge words increase accuracy, keep them. Be clear about it. The data isn’t conclusive, but the evidence leads me to believe that…

Don’t hunt out every last bit of tentative language. Phrases like Would you be willing to… express politeness.

But when you want to appear professional, confident, and authoritative, keep the horsemen of hesitation away from the stronghold of your ideas.

Related Posts

Polite or Pushover? Indirect Speech in Business Writing

 

 

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Polite or Pushover? Indirect Speech in Business Writing

If you send business emails, write blogs in a professional capacity, otherwise write in a professional context, I think this might be a really important topic for you you should read this post.

Indirectness.

Copyeditors will find it and delete it. Writing coaches give you grief about it. My online course on revision includes a section on eliminating“weasel words” from your writing.

Yet, I admit that my first drafts include all sorts of hedges and apologies, especially when writing emails.

Until recently, I beat myself up about it. Then I read Talking from 9 to 5 by Deborah Tannen, and everything became clearer.

Indirectness Has Its Uses

Deborah Tannen is a linguist and prolific author who studies how men and women communicate. In Talking from 9 to 5, she analyzes communication in the workplace, and it’s fascinating. (Read my review here.)

According to Tannen, indirect speech is a natural conversational technique that serves many purposes, including:

Leveling the playing field when someone with more authority in a situation asks something of a person with less authority
Inviting collaboration and contributions from the other person
Expressing politeness or courtesy

It’s not all bad. Expressing yourself indirectly doesn’t mean that you’re a pushover or insecure. Some cultures value indirect speech as a form of courtesy.

Writes Tannen, “I challenge the assumption that talking in an indirect way reveals powerlessness, lack of self-confidence, or anything else about the character of the speaker. Indirectness is a fundamental element in human communication.”

The success of any conversational ritual requires that both parties participate. To someone not attuned to that conversational style, indirectness might sound like prevarication, delay, uncertainty, or ignorance.

Why Women Should Worry

Research shows that women use indirect and tentative speech patterns more than men, although not by a huge margin. That’s the conclusion of a the study  “Women Are More Likely Than Men to Use Tentative Language, Aren’t They? A Meta-Analysis Testing for Gender Differences and Moderators” by Campbell Leaper and Rachael D. Robnett, in Psychology of Women Quarterly.

The authors examined multiple studies to demonstrate a small but statistically significant difference between genders.  (They state that women are “somewhat more likely” to use tentative language, clearly enjoying messing with tentative language here and in the title.)

Even if the differences are small, the perceptions are problematic.

When using indirect language, particularly in a work environment, women are more likely to be perceived as being unassertive or unsure of themselves.

These speech patterns carry a negative connotation–which is why I get upset with myself when I find them in my writing.

Indirectness in Writing

Our conversational styles often leak into our written words. If you’re writing a quick blog post or email to a colleague, typing as you think, you are more likely to deploy your usual conversational rituals. And that can hurt you on the job.

Your email recipient or blog reader lacks the conversational context and thus is likely to interpret your words literally. If you write, “This might be a stupid question,” they’ll might infer that you don’t know your facts.

Even if you’re writing an email to someone you know well and chat with frequently, remember that the recipient may forward it to others who lack that background.

Your words represent you when you are not present. Make sure they project the image you want them to.

What You Can Do About It

If you’re writing in a business context, take care that you don’t let innate speech patterns creep into your writing and weaken others’ perceptions of your capabilities. This is doubly important for women.

Pause before you send an email and scan it for signs of being tentative or unsure. A few small changes can have a big effect on the overall tone.

Look for qualifiers like “somewhat”, or hedges like “I think” or “I’m not sure.”
If you worry about the tone sounding impolite, leave in one or two flourishes and delete the rest.
Don’t put qualifiers or hedges around your expertise.

Be tentative about the weather, but confident about your job.

Related Reading

Talking from 9 to 5: A Book Review

A Quick Trick for Writing Better Emails

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Talking from 9 to 5: A Book Review

Short Version:

In this fascinating book, Deborah Tannen explores how mismatched conversational styles affect women and men in the workplace. I highly recommend it for writers, as well as anyone who works with other people.

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Long Version:

We each develop certain conversational habits and styles during our lives. The words we use when speaking reflect our patterns of thought and speech habits, but also learned social interactions. (We are social animals, after all.)

In Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work,  linguistics professor Deborah Tannen illustrates with striking clarity how our ingrained conversational patterns affect us at work.

Tannen has spent a career studying and writing about how everyday language and conversation affects our relationships. In Talking from 9 to 5, she turns her focus to the conversations we have in the workplace—private conversations that may have lasting, public consequences. Tannen and her researchers have compiled countless hours of transcriptions of conversations in the workplace. She’s followed people around their offices and sat in on meetings, recording their words. Volunteers have recorded their days and given the data to Tannen’s team to transcribe.

When you read the transcripts, you may recognize the workplaces you’ve been part of. You may even hear your own voice and rethink the way you speak or interact with others.

What’s happening behind the words

Conversations are more than words—they are communication rituals. Different individuals use these rituals in different ways. And when people don’t follow the same rules, problems arise.

Step back and you’ll find these rituals everywhere. When a new acquaintance asks How are you?, you recognize it as a polite ritual rather than a genuine inquiry. You’ll probably answer briefly and return inquire after them. When your physician asks you in the examination room, you may respond with a list of physical complaints. You interpret the question literally.

If you answer the physician with Fine, and you? and give the gory medical details to the new acquaintance, you’ll damage both of those relationships.

That example is obvious. The subtler conversational mismatches in the workplace may be harder to detect, but just as damaging.

People may use apologies, disclaimers, or indirectness to “level the playing field” or make the other person feel welcome and comfortable contributing. For example, a manager might make an indirect request of a direct report, which gives that person a chance to volunteer rather than being told what to do. The listener who understands this ritual may consider this style as a polite collaborative exercise of power. But if the listener expects explicit instructions, they may ignore the hint and neglect the requested task.

Another conversational style revolves around establishing dominance, determining who is in a “one-down” or “one-up” position in a hierarchical order. This pattern shows up in friendly banter or trash-talk. Again, if both participants recognize the rules, it’s effective. If not, someone may feel trampled on.

Women are more likely to adopt the collaborative, level-setting rituals. This style can backfire in workplace environments based on the one-up styles. If a woman expresses uncertainty in a meeting to solicit contributions, others not familiar with that ritual might assume that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about—they’ll take it literally.

Writes Tannen: “Problems arise when peoples’ styles differ. And styles characteristic of many women put the speaker in a one-down position in conversations with those who have styles characteristic of men.”

The book includes chapters on topics including:

Apologies
Indirectness
Women and authority
Status and connection
Speaking in meetings

Here’s why it matters: conversational mismatches can harm women’s opportunities in male-dominated workplaces. Writes Tannen:

In practice, conversational-style differences result in unequal opportunity.

Key take-aways

What can you do if you’re in a workplace with people who don’t share your conversational style? Trying to adopt the style of others can backfire.

The first step is having insight into of your own communication style and those of your colleagues. Tannen writes, “My hope is that an understanding of conversational style will make the world safe for individuals with a vase range of styles, including styles that mix elements commonly associated with one gender or the other.”

Amen.

I’d recommend the book to anyone who wants to collaborate with diverse colleagues. An understanding of conversational styles will help you sort out or deflect damaging miscommunications.

This book is included in my “books for writers” category for several reasons:

For business writers: If you write with a conversational tone, take care that your conversational rituals don’t work their way into the prose. Remember, many readers will miss the “ritual” part of the conversational tone and interpret your words literally.
For women authors/speakers: The book offers important lessons about speaking with authority, without trying to emulate male speakers.
For fiction writers: Mismatched communication styles are a ripe source for conflict and character building. You might check out Tannen’s best-selling You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation .

Related Content

Writing to Persuade: A Book Review

Writing with Authority

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What I Learned about Writing from Narrating Audiobooks

Creating an audiobook is not a trivial task. As a nonfiction author, I’ve decided to narrate my own books rather than hiring it out to the professionals.

I hope that audiobook readers cut nonfiction authors some slack. There is something authentic about hearing the author’s own voice in the words. Or so I tell myself. In that firm belief, I recently recorded the audiobook of my latest book, Writing to Be Understood.

This is the fourth audiobook I’ve narrated (the fifth if you include the two editions of Subscription Marketing), and each has improved on the one before.

Even if you’re not recording an audiobook, you can learn a great deal by reading your work aloud, from start to finish. Every last word. Really.

Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned from narrating my books:

Narrating isn’t as easy as it seems

When reading silently, you imagine how wonderful you’ll sound reading aloud. We all sound pretty great in our own minds.

That imagined voice is much more fluid than your physical speaking voice. When you get in a recording studio, with a microphone inches from your head, fluidity is even more elusive. You may trip over your own tongue, or get distracted by something as you read, or lose your place and not see what’s coming next.

As a singer, I find that narrating is kind of like sight-singing (reading unfamiliar music as you sing.) You put yourself in a zone of intense focus; part of you monitors the current notes while another part keeps track of what’s coming up and starts calculating tricky intervals in advance. Narrating requires a similar kind of intense focus. One small distraction can cause a train wreck. I suspect that listeners can detect if your attention wanders, too.

Don’t be judgmental about typos until you’ve narrated your own writing

Each of my books goes past a professional copyeditor and then, after layout, has another proofreading/copyediting pass. Even so, small things slip past: a missing word here, a homophone there. I suspect that most of them happen when I make “just one tiny change” to the text.

I spotted a few of those doing the slow work of reading aloud. Happily, I could fix them. But still, the book has been out a year already.

The persistence of typos is a testament to the Curse of Knowledge, or our inability to forget what we already know. Because we remember the meaning of a sentence, we “see” what’s on the page, even if it’s not there. This reading process is like how your visual systems fill in what’s in your real blind spots. (If you don’t believe it, try this blind spot experiment from the San Francisco Exploratorium.)

It’s tempting to feel superior when pointing out the typos in published works. It’s distressing to find them in your own.

Conversational prose is harder than you think

The real test of whether your writing seems “conversational” happens when you read it aloud. Long or complex sentences test your oratorical skills.

If you find yourself using vocal inflections to make the meaning clear, think about the poor reader who doesn’t have the benefit of those hints.

I pride myself on writing fairly short sentences, but I did encounter a few that went on for a while, forcing me to find a place to catch my breath.

Writing in an easy, conversational tone requires careful revision.

Relish the sound of the prose

Reading aloud surrounds you with the sound and rhythm of your words. There’s inherent poetry in prose, even nonfiction writing. Construct your words with care, and leave the occasional gems for readers to enjoy.

Spend a little time on a carefully crafted sentence, alliterative phrase or pithy observation. Even if your subject is technical or abstract, your writing can sparkle.

The careful, deliberate reader and the attentive audiobook listener will notice and appreciate the effort. Polish your words for them, and for yourself.

Applying the lessons of narrating to writing

I believe that narrating my own audiobooks has made me a better writer. As I work on book after book, the experience of recording the last one informs decisions about the next.

No matter what kind of writing you do, try reading your finished work aloud. Better yet, record it and listen. How does it sound?

Check for clarity. If you struggle to get through a passage or sentence when reading aloud, see if you can fix it to flow better, so the reader won’t get stuck when encountering it for the first time.

Monitor your “boredom” meter. If you start to feel bored when reading aloud, or listening to the recording, think about your poor reader. Add more anecdotes, metaphors, or clever turns of phrase to keep them engaged.

Enjoy the rhythm and sound of the prose. If there’s a passage that’s particularly fun to read, pay attention. What makes you enjoy it? See if you can include more of this in your next work.

Related Resources

Mind Your Tone of Voice

Writing for Overloaded Readers: It’s Not Dumbing Down

Listen to an excerpt from Writing to Be Understood:

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The Misinformation Age: A Book Review

Short Version

The Misinformation Age by Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall offers important insight for scientists, journalists, nonfiction writers, and anyone who wants to combat the spread of false beliefs.

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Long Version: How Misinformation Spreads and What We Can Do About It

“Individually rational agents can form groups that are not rational at all.”

If you have had this feeling lately when reading the news, then I suggest you read The Misinformation Age by Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall.

The authors are both professors of logic and philosophy of science at the University of California Irvine. In this book, they examine how how we learn from those we trust and how beliefs spread through communities. The very fact that we count on the knowledge of others means that we are susceptible to misinformation.

As they write, “Most of us get our false beliefs from the same places we get our true ones, and if we want the good stuff, we risk getting the bad as well.”

A focus on science

The book focuses on those beliefs that can be verified, or at least demonstrated with enough statistical credibility to inform a general consensus. The best place to study their spread is in the realm of science: a community that is, on the whole, in pursuit of demonstrable truths.

Like you and I, scientists arrive at their beliefs from their own experience (experiments that they conduct) combined with findings of trusted sources in their network.

The authors use a mathematical model of social learning to demonstrate how this works in a perfect world. The model serves as a starting point for examining the effect of various real-world factors that disrupt or impede the arrival at a truthful consensus. These include:

Small sample studies: Smaller studies are more likely to deliver anomalous results. (For example, if you flipped a coin ten times you cannot expect it to come up heads exactly five times. The larger the sample size, the more the results converge on the true probabilities.)

Selective sharing: Imagine that nine studies report that a drug is harmful, and one reports no harm. To reach a consensus, the scientific community (and public at large) need to be exposed to all of the results. Propagandists can skew the perception of truth by sharing and promoting only those results that support their position. The press does something similar when they only publicized the surprising, unexpected results of research.

Biased production: When industry sponsors research, it can delay or derail the formation of a truthful consensus by funding those methodologies most likely to deliver the desired results.

Beyond the world of science

By flooding us with false perceptions through trusted networks, purveyors of fake news can skew the social learning networks.

Propagandists can take advantage of the “social” part of our learning networks by building trust with people, and then spreading false beliefs. Apparently, these tactics were deployed in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election.

Simply reporting on the fake news can contribute to the problem. According to the authors, “we generally expect evidence favoring true belief to appear more often. Sharing equal proportions of results going in both directions puts a strong finger on the scale in the wrong direction.”

The book offers suggestions for both science and journalism to counteract the effects of unintentional and active misinformation. Between inadvertent skewing of results and active manipulation, we’ve entered an age of escalating misinformation tactics. We all need to raise our games to combat the bad actors.

What writers need to know

It’s important for writers to understand where and how misinformation may spread about your topic, so that you may combat it. As writers, we also must take care not to unintentionally spread false beliefs.

These are my take-aways for writers of nonfiction topics:

Select your sources with care, especially when citing surprising results.
Support and share consensus opinions or rigorously tested results wherever possible; remember that people expect to see the truthful results more often than the false ones. Use your creativity to make the truth less boring than the falsehoods.
Understand the role of trust. Earn your readers’ trust, and share and amplify the message of other trusted individuals who similarly share a commitment to the search for objective, demonstrable truth.

If you contend with misinformation in your writing, I suggest you read this book.

The post The Misinformation Age: A Book Review appeared first on Anne Janzer.

Be Impatient. Be Patient. Write.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

First-rate writers need to do something similar: sustaining patience and impatience. Being patiently impatient, if that’s possible.

Impatience motivates 

Many writers are driven by a sense of urgency. We are eager to get our ideas out in the world, our books published, or our blog posts in the hands of those who need them. We want to share our messages, change people’s minds, perhaps even transform the world.

Impatience can spur you to write or take action. It gets you out of bed and back at work. It prompts you to stretch the boundaries of your comfort zone and learn.

But it’s not enough. The impatient writer, untempered by patience, quickly runs out of steam or reaches the limits of their abilities.

Patience keeps you on the right path

The writing path is usually long, with no fixed endpoint. Real change and growth take time.

With patience and luck, the apple orchard you plant and care for will produce more fruit than you can eat. The garden you design and tend will develop into its mature self. The same is true for your writing.

Your writing career may not yield a visible harvest right away.

Writers need patience to:

Revise their work to meet audience needs

Learn from editors (rather than railing at their suggestions)

Finish a book

Build a blog audience

Repeat and expand the message multiple times, from different angles

As you share your thoughts with the world, you may not see the progress or the impact you’re having. Patience and persistence pay off in the long run.

Hope feeds patience, and patience, hope.

The Fitzgerald quote at the top of this post comes from his essay “The Crack-Up.” After that famous observation, it continues as follows: “One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

You may feel that your task is hopeless, that no one is reading what you write or that your voice is too quiet to make a difference.

If you write about important issues, progress may seem invisible.

When a sense of hopelessness rears its head, return to your juggling act of patience and impatience.

Be impatient to make things better, to take action, to renew your efforts. Be patient in expecting tangible results.

Your words may contribute to a tipping point, your voice join others in a chorus that eventually overwhelms the noise. You’ll never know when that point is about to happen. Keep writing.

Related Content

Writing and the Unseen Impact

Feeling Lazy? In a Rush? Lame Reasons to Short-cut the Process

 

The post Be Impatient. Be Patient. Write. appeared first on Anne Janzer.

Are You Preaching or Persuading?

Tell me if this is familiar: You read an opinion piece in the local paper in which someone lays out an impassioned case on an issue. If you already agree with the writer, you think, “Amen!” And if you don’t, you think, “Geeze, that person is really ranting about that topic.” That is, if you read it at all.

When you write for people who already share your general outlook or opinion, you have a great deal of latitude. You may be “preaching to the choir.”

There’s nothing wrong with preaching to the choir. Every time I send one of these blog posts to my email list, I’m preaching to a choir of people who value writing.

When you understand and agree with your target audience, you can reach them more easily.

But here’s the problem: you have to adjust your writing techniques when addressing people who don’t share your views. The task is particularly challenging when readers have already made up their minds about your topic.

Too many writers preach to the choir when they’re trying to persuade the congregation—or even reach people outside the building.

Writing to persuade requires a careful approach. Here are a few things to remember when you’re writing to change minds.

Don’t Rely on Data for Persuasion

We often assume that people don’t share our beliefs because they lack the right data. If we share the data, they’ll change their minds, right?

Not always.

When writing to a like-minded audience, you can lead with data that supports your views, because most readers will interpret it the same way you do. If nothing else, they’ll be open to understanding your interpretation.

Data alone rarely changes entrenched beliefs. When people have made up their minds about something, they may not even draw the same conclusions as you do. (We’ve all seen examples of the same study being used to support opposing viewpoints.)

If you want to change minds, don’t lead with data. Start out with something more emotionally compelling, like a story, that will shift the reader’s perspective. Data may be necessary, but it’s not enough.

Forgo the Need to be “Right”

When persuading others, don’t insist on being right, because it automatically makes the person who disagrees with you wrong. How often have you changed your mind because someone yelled “You’re wrong!” at you? Readers might just dig in further.

Your goal is to shift perspectives, not to show up as being right. You have to take yourself out of the picture. Something may seem obvious to you, but it’s not obvious to those who disagree with you.

Respect the reader who disagrees with you if you hope to persuade them.

Uncover the Hidden Values

If you’re writing about deeply held values, you’d better understand those values in yourself and your readers.

Jonathan Haidt has written a wonderful book called The Righteous Mind, in which he compares ethical values to taste buds. We all have different assortments of them. Maybe I liked spicy food and you don’t; it’s easy enough to accept the differences.

The same is true with ethical values. We have different ones.

If your topic touches on one of those ethical taste buds, then choose your words with care.

We often cannot see beyond our own moral values and assume everyone else shares our outlook. You may have to reframe your argument to appeal to the things your readers value, like loyalty, respect, or sanctity.

The next time you read something from someone you disagree with, pay attention to how they navigate these factors of data, “rightness” and beliefs. How do you feel about what they write? What can you learn from them, even if they don’t change your mind?

I admire those writers who seek to change minds, because it’s hard work and success rates vary. It’s much easier, and safer, to preach to the choir. But those wonderful writers who can shift our perspectives and beliefs play an important role in the world. We should all try it.

Resources for Persuaders

If this is the course you have chosen in your writing, here are a few resources that you may find useful:

Download an excerpt from Writing to Be Understood about on writing for a tough audience.

Refer to Trish Hall’s book Writing to Persuade. (Read my review here.)

Read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind.

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