The Workplace Writer's Process: Getting the Job Done
By Anne Janzer
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About this ebook
The Secrets of Business Writing Success
If writing is any part of your job, you owe it to yourself to figure out how to get it done consistently, efficiently, and successfully.
This book covers the business communication skills no one teaches you in writing class:
- How to collaborate effectively with stakeholders or subject matter experts
- Why the style guide is your friend, and how to create one for your business
- The most efficient way to approach revision
- How to set up your projects to sail through reviews and approvals
The Workplace Writer's Process is filled with actionable advice that you can use immediately to finish more projects in less time and create content that fuels your career success.
The Workplace Writer's Process won a 2018 IndieReader Discovery Award for Nonfiction, and was named one of the Best Business Writing Books of all time by BookAuthority.
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Reviews for The Workplace Writer's Process
3 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a great how-to book written in simple English with lots of super practical tips. I love the way Anne Janzer describes best practice processes for planning, writing, editing, delegating and other tasks and then quietly picks out common problems and offers solutions. If I’d read this twenty years ago, she would have saved me a lot of pain!I’ve been a freelancer for decades and have been rethinking some of my processes recently in order to fit in with new markets. This was a very useful overview and it’s given me some good ideas for preventing problems.The Workplace Writer’s Process by Anne Janzer is brilliant. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to write: college students, managers, bloggers and fiction authors included.I received this book from the publisher via Net Galley and am reviewing voluntarily
Book preview
The Workplace Writer's Process - Anne Janzer
I
Writing Rules That No One Teaches You
Before you commit to doing more writing at work, get your mindset in order.
Common myths and misconceptions can lead you astray. If you take a narrow view of your responsibilities as a writer, you leave a great deal to chance.
The chapters in this section expand the traditional definition of the writer at work. In addition to assembling words, successful and valued writers practice project management and basic cognitive science. They are team players at work, yet advocate for the reader.
No matter what kind of workplace writer you are today, the lessons of these chapters are key to long-term success.
1
Five Myths That Can Hurt You
Common misconceptions about writers and writing can hurt your chances of success. Let’s identify and debunk them here and now.
The Destiny Myth: Writers are special people
The Universal Writer Myth: Everyone can write
The One-Size-Fits-All Myth: Writing is writing
The Big Idea Myth: The idea is the hard part
The One-Step Writing Myth: Writing is just drafting
The Destiny Myth
Myth: Writing is destiny that people are born to.
Reality: Writing is a skill developed through effort and intention.
Some people imagine that writers are special creatures, sprung from the womb with a thoughtful look and a pen in hand. That’s the Destiny Myth, and it quickly becomes a limiting belief.
If you don’t think of yourself as a natural-born writer, you’ll avoid jobs or assignments that entail writing. Ultimately, buying into this myth may constrain your career options.
What if you pride yourself on your prose? If you believe that only writers
should take on writing tasks, you risk becoming the writer for your group or workplace, pigeonholed into the role. This may limit your career options as well.
It’s no myth that writing comes more easily to some people than others. But as the psychologist, professor, and MacArthur genius grant recipient Angela Duckworth points out in her book Grit, natural talent is only the starting point for achievement. Effort counts much more. We prefer to attribute success and achievement to talent instead of effort, and that’s a problem. Duckworth writes:
The ‘naturalness bias’ is a hidden prejudice against those who’ve achieved what they have because they worked for it, and a hidden preference for those whom we think arrived at their place because they’re naturally talented.
Our persistent belief in talent as the source of success damages both those with natural talent and those who labor diligently for their achievements.
How to counteract the Destiny Myth: If you identify as a writer, let other people know the variety of the tasks involved. Expose the processes. Expose the activities of planning and revising as well as drafting. Encourage others to contribute and write.
The Universal Writer Myth
Myth: Everyone in the workplace should be able to write for the business.
Reality: Not everyone writes effective content.
This misconception is almost the opposite of the Destiny Myth, yet it can do as much damage.
The people who promote this belief are often adept with words, exhibiting strong verbal intelligence. They assume that writing is as easy for others as themselves. (People often undervalue their own strengths, not understanding that they are difficult for others.)
The Universal Writer Myth marginalizes the effort involved in effective writing.
Writing can be easy if you don’t care about who reads your content, or what they think or do after reading it.
In the business context, effective writing is trickier.
To be a valued writer, you must write valuable content.
Anyone can write 600 words on a topic vaguely related to the job and put it in a blog post. But what does it accomplish?
We’ve all seen blogs that result from the Universal Writer Myth, populated with content of little value for the prospective audience.
When you write without consideration for the reader, that’s called journaling. It’s a fine activity for personal development and deep thought, but holds little value beyond yourself.
Writing effectively for business requires that you execute several tasks, including:
Finding the right tone and style
Creating content that serves the target audience or advances business objectives
Fitting the writing work and deadline into existing obligations
Navigating internal approval and publication processes
How to counteract the Universal Writer Myth: If your workplace adheres to the Universal Writer Myth, the processes described in this book provide critical structure that helps everyone become more effective.
The One-Size-Fits-All Myth
Myth: If you’re a good writer, you can write anything with equal ease and success. Writing is writing, right?
Reality: Writing has many specialized skill sets; success in one format does not translate automatically to success in others.
Congratulations, you wrote a terrific LinkedIn ad campaign. Since you did so well, why don’t you write the product documentation next? This happened to one writer I know at a company she joined. She ran into the