Larry McEnerney == * ###### tags `writing` * Created: [time=Sun, Apr 26, 2020 8:51 PM] ---- [toc] # LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively {%youtube vtIzMaLkCaM %} https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM professional effective writing is not about explaining what you know and think. writing is about changing what the reader know and think. - 11:00. why no one wants to read your writing, unless they're paid. how to solve this problem? this is the lecture - 20:10. what do you do when someone say I don't understand? you explain. DON'T. - 20:58. revealing to the world the inside of your head. no one cares about the inside of your head. not unless you pay us - 21:30. you think writing is about conveying / communicating your ideas to your readers. it's not. it's changing their ideas. - 23:26. nothing will be accepted as knowledge or understanding until it has been challenged by someone competent to challenge it - 23:50. different readers and their motivation - 24:20. your readers have the professional function of challenging what you said. so, explaining should happen AFTER the value has been generated and persuasion having begun. you don't explain FIRST. - // we are primed this way because we're trained to explain what we know - (school. where we need to prove what we know, that we really know it, and be graded by it) - 25:30. how to make it important? new, original? no. aim for valuable. new knowledge is not valuable in itself. number of hours I slept yday is not valuable. nor interesting in itself - 35:00. how to create value and be persuasive? know. your. reader. persuasion depends on what. they. doubt. it's not enough to know your subject matter. you gotta know your readers // ALL of my writing is FOR ME ONLY right now. see me read me understand me. look at what I think, know, and feel. flexing and massaging my ego. - 41:25. the problem with "your work is brilliant, and I have something to add". XXXXX - // again: empathy. switching perspective - also mentioned here. find the leaders of the community and give them what they want. if you need to challenge the existing community, do it inside the terms of the community. find the code. there are many ways to do it. polite ways, insulting ways. find the code. - speak your individual voice, there's moral and ethical pressure to teach that yes, but the most important thing is still to make it valuable to your readers - 45:04. anything you write has the function of helping your readers understand better something they want to understand well - 46:00. writing to think is OK. but don't then complaint about your readers not appreciating you. they don't owe you their appreciation. they're not gonna appreciate it just because you wrote it (well if you have a following, fan base, this is pretty much falsified.. I've seen meh posts get raving reviews because naval posted it) - 47:40. the function of this writing is to move the conversation / something forward. not to preserve something indefinitely - (optimise for flow / movement / cashflow. keep things evolving and remember everything has evolved). - let your ideas die when it needs to. when it has served its function. - // IMPERMANENCE is the law of the world - 48:50. your writing is your way of participating in the world, but not by sharing your feelings or thoughts. but by changing their feelings or thoughts. that's how you participate. - what's the function? understand what it's for. sometimes you do need to communicate your inner beliefs / knowledge e.g. testifying - // this links to the idea of "know what you want to accomplish / get / find out". in #learning, #communicating, #everything. - // self awareness is the foundation from which you.... make progress? - 51:44. knowledge is not about what is inside individual's head - // (it still is lah, but not in this context of "conveying knowledge"). - what a great professor is: is less about what he/she has in his/her head. but what he/she has done in this exterior space between heads. not how smart they are how much they know. what they exteriorised, what they've done out there. - your job is not to reveal the interior of your head, it's to change what's going on in the spaces between heads (construction of knowledge) - 53:00. create gaps. show readers the inadequacy in their understanding. open with a problem. whose problem? the reader's. "I have this problem that really interests me (without ever connecting to why this is relevant to them)" - // this. failure mode. we are so self centered, bad at modelling other people's mind - 59:00. the conflict: you're wired to use the language of consistecy and continuity (the linear facts, foundation, etc) but your readers are looking for language of instability, inconsistency, and tension - // storytelling kan. the twist. the arc. the deltas. the hero before and after the journey. the transformation is the most interesting thing if not the only thing there is to a (good) story - so if you're not giving that to them, you are interferring with their reading process, they slow down, they get aggravated. - 1h:00. language of cost and benefit. show them what it costs them by having this inconsistency (the gap) - 1h:03. on lit reviews. the function is to show that you understood it. so what's the function of lit review on professional text? ego massaging, credibility yes, but more oomph is: what are you challenging? to enrich the problem. what are you arguing for? so what? what's your ask? build that layer of complexity, complication, and tension. you're now moving forward from instability. the hook is in (persuasion) - 1h 9m. gap and instability != instant problem. gap or error? on the the assumption that knowledge is bounded. no, it's infinite (point: gap is dangerous. sometimes it works but it's.... "weak"?) - // a problem is a contextualised gap? - 1h 13m. different audience, different definition of problem, different interpretations of arguments - 1h:20m. first write to think, then alter the writing for your readers. an then the minute or so before that, about the hidalgo thing, where this researcher only gotten the feedback from the final reader 3 years in. - // reminds me of the classic flopped startup idea, never seen the light of day, nggak ketemu user dll sampe kelar. - // why do we do this? and how can we stop? we're so self centered, or the pain of being vulnerable? to ship. to be judged. or just bad at modelling how other people think. got no feedback loop. just grinding away with our assumptions (and "hope"). ----- ## Handouts * [https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/7046/files/2014/10/UnivChic_WritingProg-1grt232.pdf](https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/7046/files/2014/10/UnivChic_WritingProg-1grt232.pdf) * mirror here: [http://www.writingcenter.emory.edu/documents/mcenerney-problem-of-the-problem.pdf](http://www.writingcenter.emory.edu/documents/mcenerney-problem-of-the-problem.pdf) write what your readers care about not what you care about ------- # LEADERSHIP LAB: Writing Beyond the Academy 1.23.15 {%youtube aFwVf5a3pZM %} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFwVf5a3pZM Creating VALUE for the reading process. People are looking for Entertainment, by drowning themselves into CONFLICT, TENSION, TROUBLE. Picking up NY Times, waiting to be DISTRACTED 6500 Language is the RELATIONSHIP between people 6610 When starting any piece of writing, the first question you should ask yourself: who is gonna read it? 6645 It's nonsense to say that 6820 Concision is not the Length of the sentence, how long it takes the readers to process 7530 Figure out what your readers care about, what they want to focus on. Then put those in the subjects