Your Writing is?Terrible

Learn to Read Books or Get Fired

As a Marketing Director at a tech startup, I spend most of my time thinking about how to get the word out about Keepsafe Software to new people. I devote hours each week on “messaging” — how to reach your target customers at the right time and place. The creative writing adage “show don’t tell” applies to product marketing as much as it applies to novel writing. If you can “show” people how your technology can solve their problem with sleek product design, you have a higher likelihood of winning them over.

“Telling” remains a necessary evil for marketers. It’s our only recourse for talking to people who haven’t tried the product about the reasons they should. “Content marketing” has taken off, because you reach people in your own words, on your blog and social channels for free, and offer them tips and tricks in exchange for a short plug about your product (and sometimes for an email address). You catch people at the interest and consideration phase of the typical marketing cycle when they are thinking about getting a product like yours. This is the critical moment, because you can share your company’s vision, its culture, and the reasons your brand aligns to someone’s values.

I love my job, but slogging through bad writing day in and day out is exhausting. From terrible business books to partners’ blog posts and content marketing submissions; sometimes I’d rather pull out all my hair than rewrite another paragraph. I know writing doesn’t come easily to many. Like me, people struggle with balancing productivity with an endless instinct to revise.

The problem with bad writing is simple. The problem is people don’t read. By “read” I don’t mean listicles on BuzzFeed, and I don’t mean the episode titles at the top of their Netflix queue. I don’t even mean the 400–1,200 word articles we scroll through on our favorite “legitimate” news outlet. I mean complex, longform books by professional writers. I find fiction particularly instructive because writers have to be imaginative to tell stories in novel ways. If authors of fiction want to stand out, they can’t subscribe to the bubblegum style so common in pop nonfiction today (what the still-reading public demands!)

Here’s what I encounter every day: tortured phrasing that amounts to poor mechanics, lame word choice, needless adverbs, and convoluted sentence structure. Endless sentences written in a passive voice with a conditional verb tense that sounds inconclusive and uninspired. Sentences that need restructuring because they don’t make sense. All of these elements sit beneath a veneer of complex grammar and the jargon du jour. I see few concrete or personal examples to illustrate points, irrelevant data that confuse arguments, cliche shortcuts, and a compilation of words that just don’t sound right together. I have to wonder: if these writers read their own pieces aloud, what would they sound like to them?

Let’s be clear, the people who submit these pieces are often communications professionals. I recently mentioned my frustration (and surprise) to a friend in PR and corporate communications. She summed up the lack of originality, curiosity, and depth I described this way: “Let me guess, the pieces you read reek of a half-hour long Google search wherein they rephrase the meaningless content you’ve read a million times and end up saying nothing at all. It’s not exactly plagiarism, but it’s pretty close.” Exactly. Ouch.

“Allow me to show you what I mean.”

[Can you get this done with fewer words?]

“In today’s world…”

[Shortcut for I know I should provide context, but I don’t have it and it’s a pain to get.]

“She was given an explanation.”

[Passive voice, bears no responsibility, sounds like explanation came from omniscient god.]

“As self-driving cars have become ubiquitous, the ways in which we depend on them has also seen a staggering increase.”

[Baseless and wordy claim without data to back it up.]

“Business conditions can be difficult to control, and as markets crowd with competitors, holding mind share with millennials can become a challenge.”

[Passive, run-on generalized sentence in the conditional tense with a note of jargon.]

“Outside of the most popular uses — which include turning pages, earmarking, and taking notes — the majority are also using their books to read, spark discussion and impress others.”

[Complex sentence structure that drops subject-verb agreement and makes the statement confusing.]

When I get lazy, I’m guilty of every crime I just listed. Good writing is the antithesis of these examples. It’s simple. It’s clear. Its use of facts and examples elegant. Making sense of the words before you feels like slipping into a warm bath. When a sentence is really fine, it transports you in an instant. It’s easy and satisfying to read beautiful writing, and it’s getting rare. There are more writers than ever, but the writing has never been worse. (Because writers aren’t reading!)

If you are a communications professional who doesn’t read books, you’ll be spotted from a mile away. You even risk having your cover blown if you haven’t read anything of substance lately and have been binging on your favorite TV series. You’ll be edited so swiftly and thoroughly that you’ll wish you had read War and Peace rather than cope with the red revisions you get from your client.

If you don’t like to read, that’s fine! Just make sure that you’ve mastered another skill. People can only get by on marginal writing when they excel at another craft (and even then, they are more likely to succeed with the hard-won gift of expression). My best friend growing up hated books, but guess what? She didn’t become a writer. She works in visual media that better suit her interests. If you plan to write anything meaningful at work, you should read literature. If you want to improve your writing, you must read.

To high school and college students, I also say major in business or marketing at your own risk. If you plan to research, write, or communicate cogent ideas of any kind during your career, use your time in school to take liberal arts classes, or even better — major in the liberal art of your choice. Expose yourself to intellects you won’t encounter in the business world.

And do the “actual” reading. Not the “art of reading,” a phrase I coined referring to the hacks in my college English courses who could bullshit their way through class. Perhaps reading a Wikipedia article can prepare you for a networking happy hour or even allow you to pass an exam. But you will shortchange yourself. No Wikipedia article on the Grapes of Wrath will immerse you in Steinbeck’s mastery of the English language and his sense of humanity. You may even shortchange your character, but I’ll save that for another tirade!

Some of my favorite writers of creative nonfiction have dedicated their lives to vastly different professions. Atul Gawande is a surgeon by day. Siddhartha Mukherjee is a physician and biologist. Patti Smith is a singer-songwriter and artist. Read any of their works, and you will also know them to be students of great literature. Want to get started with the most ambitious and inspiring writing happening right now? Read anything recent by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

And one more thing. Parents, if you want your kids to grow up to be great writers, it’s your job to connect the dots. Your children will never be able to write well unless you read to them and set an example by reading yourself (and I don’t mean on your phone!) There are countless studies on literacy. It’s important to model reading for your children and read aloud to them for twenty minutes every day. Only if your child has this background in reading will he or she ever be able to write well … and work for me!