Airplanes and Compliments

There are two new posts over at Rands, and you should probably check them out because I’m not going to write about them here. I am going to write about writing.

Here, I’ll make it super easy.

Alrighty. At this moment in time, I am working on two books. A brand new one called A Day in the Life of a Senior Leader. This is due in November. Two months from now. The other is a fifth edition of Managing Humans, where I will succeed in returning the PEN to the cover of the book because “branding matters.”

The writing challenge is this. How do you keep your voice active and interesting when it feels like you are saying pretty much the same thing in the same way for… years? I am not saying the writing is boring; I am saying that when you do the same type of writing for years, you don’t get bored with the words, but the tone.

Here is my trick: I start messing with stuff. To entertain myself.

The past two posts each have an example. One Compliment has this weird meta thing going on where you think I’m writing about one thing, but then I swap-a-roo to another topic. That was fun. The Plane on the Crane piece has deliberately jarring segues between sections. That was me — trying to make the writing a little more bumpy and interesting.

My point: play more. I’ve been doing this writing thing for coming on 30 years, and while I’ve improved my spelling and grammar, have successfully published multiple books, and I’d say I have a style… the only thing that keeps me going is goofing around. Finding different odd ways to say what I want to say.

And then trying something new.