Posted on March 8, 2022
Everything You Think You Know About Writing Is Wrong — Here’s Why
Good writing — valuable writing — isn’t about craft and talent and technique. It’s not about your unique voice, your special insights, or your original thoughts. It’s not about you at all. You aren’t interesting. Your thoughts don’t matter. Mine don’t, either. Nobody cares.
That may sound harsh, but it’s the hardest truth writers need to acknowledge and understand before they’ll ever be able to write anything of value. Because writing isn’t about the writer — it’s about the reader.
It doesn’t matter what you’re writing. Write a novel all about how your life got flipped, turned upside down and people might take a minute to just sit right there but they’re not going to listen while you ramble on for days about how you became the Prince of Bel-Air if every word you write is only about yourself. Your experiences, your reflections — how things in your life have affected you only matter to you. For your writing to have any value to a reader, it has to be about how your experiences may affect them.
If you’re writing an essay, a business article, a tech primer — it doesn’t matter. The only value your writing has lies in whether or not your readers are willing to give it the time and consideration every writer so desperately wants. The problem is too many writers don’t write for readers. They write in their own self-interests, to prove themselves to the world — then they’re surprised when no one reads their work.
It’s not their fault, though. This is how we’re taught to write. Writing is as fundamental as ABCs and 123s in school, and it’s taught that way — as a means to convey mastery of a subject rather than affect readers, which is why everything you think you know about writing is wrong.
Think about it. How were you taught to write? What was the purpose behind every paper you wrote in school? Was it to add value to a concept your teacher wanted to improve her understanding of or was it to prove that you’d mastered the material? Were your research papers designed to challenge the status quo, to solve a reader’s problem, or change their minds? Or were they to show that yes, you’d read the assignments, you’d passed the tests, and here’s the proof.
Readers don’t care if you understand a subject. If you’re writing about something, they will assume you already do. No one is reading your work to be convinced of your brilliance, your wit, or your expertise — so stop trying to prove it to them.
Consider any recent article you’ve likely read. How was it structured? How did it start? What was the body like? What’d you think of its conclusion? Chances are, it was the standard five-paragraph essay you’ve been writing (and reading) since high school, even if it had a lot more paragraphs, a bunch of subheadings, and looked a little different. It was still structured in the shape of an hourglass.
It probably started with a broad generalization, maybe including some explanation with a definition or two thrown in. After that, its focus likely narrowed a bit onto a few key points where the writer put a lot of effort into proving just how much they understood the assignment before wrapping everything up with another broad generalization summarizing everything you just read, assuming you even made it to the end.
Did the article provide any real value? Can you even really remember it at all?
The probability is high that you either never finished it or forgot all about the thing as soon as you’d clicked away and moved on to whatever you read next…which was likely another five-paragraph essay in disguise.
This is because people write how they were taught to write — to prove understanding — rather than how to write anything of value to readers. It’s why your writing is bad, why a whole lot of my past writing is just gawd awful, and why most of what you read on the internet is as forgettable as whatever the last thing you read was that you can’t remember right now unless you really think about it. And even then…
So how do you fix it? As with most things, the solution is very simple. Execution, on the other hand, gets a little tricky.
Write something of value to readers. That’s it. That’s the secret.
To know what your readers will find value in, you first need to understand who you’re trying to reach. Identify your audience and write for those specific people in a way that creates something they want to read. If you’re appealing to other subject matter experts or influential professionals in a specific field, you don’t need to explain generalities or define terms. They already know what the words mean. They already know what the problems are. They’re looking to you to provide solutions or at least enhance their understanding of a problem. They don’t care about your credentials, they’re not interested in your personal observations, and they certainly have no desire to listen to you try and prove yourself in a thousand words or less.
Writing is about the reader, not the writer — and your work has to offer something of value to readers that they can’t get anywhere else but your article, your essay, your novel. Whatever it is you’re writing, if you’re just trying to communicate your ideas, you’ve already failed. Instead, identify your readers’ ideas, then write something that will either add to their understanding or change how they think altogether. Don’t be timid and don’t waste time trying to prove you understand the material — punch hard, punch up, and punch fast. Nobody has time to read oceans of text about what matters to someone else. Readers want to read about what matters to them. Not you.
State the problem, show the reader why it’s costing them something (time, money, resources — everything has a price), and provide a solution that will either minimize that cost or provide a benefit that outweighs the expense. That’s it. That’s all your writing has to do to be valuable to a reader.
Of course, getting there is harder than it looks. For a reader to even consider your writing, it must be crafted well, with proper technique backed by a talented pen. The mechanics of writing are the things worth learning in school, even if we get them mixed up with purpose by the time we graduate. But when you get it right — when you’re writing at the highest level with the understanding that your work isn’t about you, and you’re instead hyperfocused on providing something of tangible value to the reader, they’ll remember your name. They’ll look you up, search for other things you’ve written, and come to rely on your voice as a leading expert in your field.
A valuable essay challenges readers with conflict and tension, for which it also supplies relief. Make your reader feel uneasy, force them to worry about a problem they might not have considered before, and show them the cost of not solving it. Give them a reason to be concerned, then calm them down by providing a solution. Write an article that saves your readers time, money, whatever the resource is — and you’ll have written something of value.
(Yes, I know. The mechanics of fiction work a little bit differently so don’t come for me. Still, the goal is the same no matter what you’re writing — write for your readers, not yourself. Stick to that basic idea, and the rest will come naturally.)
Don’t pull your punches, don’t self-aggrandize, and take yourself out of the equation. Nobody cares about you. Nobody cares about me. The only things readers care about are the words on the page and whether or not they add any value to their lives. The sooner you understand this one simple concept, the faster your writing will improve. Your articles will get more clicks, more shares, and more of that sweet, sweet recognition every writer craves — but you won’t get there by following the rules you learned in school. Those rules taught you how to write for teachers. You need to start writing for readers.
Write hard.
Write fast.
No mercy.
Posted on December 22, 2021
How I Almost Died
It was a dark and stormy Friday night. Except not really, but whatever. Just go with it.
I decided to put on my sweatpants when I got home after work, which were in my laundry room, sitting on top of a mountain of dirty clothes that was only getting bigger and bigger because I hadn’t washed anything in several days. Why? I’ll get to that in a minute. For now, let’s focus on the sweatpants. I just wanted to do a quick change into my fat clothes so I could relax for a while, so I went into the laundry room, closed the door, and put them on. Or tried to, anyway. What I actually did was lose my footing somewhere around mid-thigh on the first leg.
I started to fall but caught myself on the edge of the dryer. Or thought I did, anyway. Turns out, it was actually the dustpan that was resting on the edge of the dryer, and it was full of screws and dirt that went flying into the air as the dustpan itself flipped over and sent me plummeting to the floor. Face first, butt in the air, half-dressed from the left thigh down.
Lying there in total darkness because I hadn’t bothered to turn on the light, I slowly pushed myself up and brought my knees under my chest. Or thought I did, anyway. What I actually did was place the soft flesh of my naked right knee directly over one of the screws from the dustpan that I couldn’t see because of the total darkness, which had naturally fallen pointy-end up. I jolted from the instant pain, but my foot caught on the waistband of my sweatpants, and I somehow managed to propel myself forward. Headfirst. Into the back porch door.
I turned over, my tender bits scraping against unseen dust boulders and the occasional vindictive bit of metal, pushed my back up against the door, and slowly got to my feet. I switched on the light, then grabbed on to what I was confident, this time, was the actual edge of the actual dryer, steadied myself, and pulled my sweatpants back up my left leg. And then my right. Until I was fully clothed again.
I COULD HAVE DIED.
Now, you might be wondering why a dustpan full of screws and dirt was left resting precariously upon the edge of my dryer amidst a growing mountain of dirty clothes, and it’s a fair question.
Let me explain.
I have a very old dryer, which I love precisely because it is a very old dryer, and is, therefore, possible to repair whenever something goes wrong with it. New appliances are designed to fail and then be too expensive to fix, forcing you toward the cheaper route of just buying a brand new appliance before it, too, breaks down, and you’re forced to repeat the same horrible process all over again.
An old appliance, on the other hand, is fairly easy to repair if you know what you’re doing. The downside is that, because it’s an old appliance, it’s prone to breaking down, so you get to fix it a lot. This isn’t really a problem if, as I said, you know what you’re doing. Unfortunately, I rarely know what I’m doing.
The dustpan that almost killed me earlier was holding the screws I had to remove from the back cover of the dryer after it broke down (again) several days ago. Fortunately, I realized that I didn’t know what I was doing as soon as I opened it, so I did what any good husband would do and just pushed everything back to where it was and told my wife it wasn’t really a problem because we still had plenty of clean clothes to go through before we’d need to wash anything again. (This was only partially true.)
Yes, we had plenty of clean clothes to wear, but most of them involved garments that were only clean because we never really wear them in the first place. If I didn’t fix the dryer soon, I knew I’d have to wear my old suit from 1997 to work, and nobody wants that. (Do people even still wear novelty ties anymore? Did they ever?)
After my unexpected education in gravity by way of complete sweatpants failure, I decided I should probably try to fix the dread machine. But remember, I had no idea what I was doing.
Nevertheless, I persisted…
The failure was actually pretty simple to diagnose. A little doohickey that holds a wire that slips into a thingamajig was to blame. Or, more specifically, the wire itself was to blame because it broke for some reason and was just hanging there. At any rate, I reasoned that a loose, dangling wire was a pretty good indicator of where the problem was.
I picked up the little doohickey, then got medieval on it with some pliers until I had freed the bit of amputated wire it still held tight in its little metal jaws. I then went back to the dryer, sat down on the floor, and began affixing the doohickey back to the rest of the wire that was still dangling inside the machine.
It was at this point that I realized I hadn’t unplugged the dryer. It was also at this point that I realized this one particular wire carried rather a lot of electrical current.
As I began to smash the pliers over the doohickey’s jaws to clamp them down upon the wire, the whole machine sprang to life like something out of a horror movie. I remember a very loud pop, followed by a slight metallic ping before a shower of really impressive yellow sparks flew off the wire in a kind of terrifying grand finale to my life. (Spoilers: I did not die at this time.)
I managed to stand up and, to my credit, very calmly remove the plug from the wall. I stood there for a minute, sniffing the rusty scent of ozone in the air while I surveyed the damage, which is when I heard The Child come running down the stairs, shouting and asking me if I was okay. I shouted back that everything was fine and not to worry. (Yes, I lied to my own child.)
Once reassured, the kid went back upstairs, and I went back to slaying my white whale. I found the doohickey that had been blown off the wire (the little metallic ping I heard was it hitting the side of the dryer), then I cut the wire back and twisted it tightly before crimping the doohickey back on, which I then tried to slip back into the thingamajig, only to discover that I’d cut back too much of the wire, and now it wasn’t long enough to plug in.
Undaunted, I traced the wire back through the bundled nest of other wires, removed it, and ran it straight to the thingamajig it’s supposed to plug into. There was plenty of wire now that it had a direct path, and I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. I plugged the doohickey back into the thingamajig, then plugged the power cord back into the wall, stood back a safe distance, and pushed the start button.
Nothing happened.
At first, I thought I’d finally killed the machine, but then I realized that I might have only blown a breaker during the whole explosion incident. I checked the fuse box and realized I had, so I reset it and tried again. The dryer sprang to life. The heating element came on. Clothes began to tumble.
It worked!
I took the screws from the dustpan and used them to secure the back cover onto the dryer, then shoved everything back into place and began celebrating my victory by way of washing and drying every piece of clothing from the Great Mountain of Unclean Things.
Which was going great until the dryer broke again because hope is a fragile tinderbox, and the flame of joy is quickly extinguished in this cruel, uncaring world. (I was beginning to get depressed.)
After some time had passed and I was done feeling sorry for myself for being a failure both as a husband and a man, I realized that I had pushed the poor old dryer too hard. I’d just performed open-heart surgery on the thing, but hadn’t given it any time to recover before I put it back into active duty. I had only myself to blame. I took the back cover off and noticed that the same thing had happened again, which is when I noticed how brittle and discolored the far end of the wire was.
I unplugged the power cord. (This was, I had recently learned, an important first step in any repair job involving electricity.)
The wire looked and felt much healthier farther down the line, so I cut it back some more, then crimped the doohickey back around it before plugging it back into the thingamajig once again. I jammed the power cord back into the wall, then pushed the start button, and everything started working. I finished up the last two loads of laundry, and nothing at all exploded.
I considered this a great success.
Satisfied and feeling pretty good about myself, I thought it’d be a good idea to clean up before my wife got home, so I sanitized the crime scene to remove all evidence of how I almost died. Multiple times. In my own laundry room.
The moral of the story? Always remember to unplug whatever it is you’re about to work on before you start working on it, and always – always – put your sweatpants on very carefully.
Preferably under adult supervision.
UPDATE: We eventually bought a new dryer.
(If you enjoyed this excerpt from A Lifetime of Questionable Decisions, why not buy the book and impress all your friends with how fun you are at parties? All the cool kids are buying it. Don’t you want to be cool, too?)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Posted on November 17, 2021
The Best Chocolate Pie Ever. In Like, the Entire History of the World. For Real.
My grandmother was a great cook. Or maybe she was a great baker. I’ve never really been clear on the difference. The point is, she made a mean pie and even baked cakes for a former First Lady.
True story.
She was also deeply devoted to following any recipe she found to the letter, with no deviation whatsoever. I get a little more experimental in the kitchen myself, which is how my mom’s secret Macaroni and Cheese recipe transformed from something reasonable yet tasty into the monster it is now. I won’t divulge my secrets here, but I will say that it involves a blonde roux just this side of brown, 16 ounces of butter, nearly a gallon of milk, and four pounds of cheese. Eating it might kill you, but at least you’ll die happy. (If you want that recipe, it might or might not be included in a cookbook I may or may not be working on. In the meantime, let me show you how to make gumbo. You’re welcome.)
As for the best pie you’ll ever eat – don’t worry, I’ll give you the recipe in a minute (or click here to jump straight to it if you hate words) – it started out as a simple, normal chocolate pie. There was nothing offensive or spectacular about it. It was just your standard, ordinary old chocolate pie. Serviceable, but the dial tone of the dessert world. My grandmother would make it, I’d eat it, and there was never anything particularly memorable about it.
But that was before…The Incident.
You see, the recipe came from my aunt, whose name was Turla for some reason, but who everyone just called Aunt Sissy. She was a sweet lady who never had much in the way of money or worldly possessions, so she’d always give out handmade gifts for the holidays. She’d carve and paint Christmas tree ornaments one year and hand out boxes of recipe cards she hunted-and-pecked together on a manual typewriter from 1920-something the next. She was a neat lady.
My grandmother first made the pie the year she got the box of recipes, and continued making it every year after that until she passed away. She always made it the same way, too: according to the exact measurements and directions of the recipe.
Until she messed up.
Like many of the world’s greatest scientific achievements, she created the best chocolate pie in the known universe entirely by accident. While attempting to follow the recipe the same way she always had, she neglected to properly read the amount of one key ingredient: the milk.
The recipe calls for one and three-fourths cups of milk, but my aunt’s old manual typewriter from the time dinosaurs roamed the earth squeezed the 1 part of the 1 3/4 cups all the way to the edge of the card. And my grandmother missed it.
Which is how the pie was born.
By only adding 3/4 of a cup of milk, the pie took on a whole new dimension of chocolatey goodness. It was rich and thick, and more decadent than that slice of cake in the second Matrix movie that made a nice lady have to leave the table over accidental indecency in the workplace. Anyway, it was, in short, the best chocolate pie I’d ever tasted. My grandmother, however, was horrified. She thought she’d ruined Christmas with a defective pie and was convinced that I was just being nice when I stopped her from throwing it out and starting over. I wasn’t. It was delicious.
My dad and I ended up modifying the recipe a bit more over the years, from the standard rules of baking that involve always adding more vanilla than a recipe calls for and a little more salt to any dish that has chocolate in it, to more extreme measures like changing the pie crust from a boring old regular crust to an Oreo cookie crust that can inexplicably only be found at Walmart these days.*
*Yes, this pie actually makes me want to go to Walmart, which is saying a lot.
Now, as promised, I’ll share the recipe with you. Make this pie for your next family gathering or work party, or just any time you want to impress everyone around you. One word of caution, though. If you do make this pie, you should probably double the recipe and make two of them. They go quickly.
I’m only modifying the amount of milk here, and I changed the margarine to butter, because live a little. It won’t kill you. Probably.†
† I hereby absolve myself of all legal responsibility if eating this pie makes your heart explode.
I also suggest adding a little more vanilla‡ and an extra pinch of salt, but I’m not here to tell you how to live your
life. Oh, and if you want to be extra, make your own whipped cream. It’ll impress your in-laws.
‡ Just double it. If the butter doesn’t kill you, you’ve already made it through the scary part.
The Recipe
3/4 CUP SUGAR
1/2 TEASPOON SALT
1/3 CUP FLOUR
3 TABLESPOONS COCOA
3/4 CUP MILK
2 EGGS, SEPARATED
1 TABLESPOON BUTTER
1 TEASPOON VANILLA
Mix sugar, salt, flour and cocoa together, then add milk, beaten egg yolks, and butter.
Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. (The pie has a tendency to go goopy if you don’t cook it long enough. So watch for that.)
Remove from heat and add vanilla.
Beat egg whites until stiff, but not too dry, then fold into the custard mixture.
Pour into an Oreo pie crust and chill in the refrigerator until firm.
Top with whipped cream and grated chocolate. (Or chocolate sprinkles. Whichever you prefer. You do you.)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(If you enjoyed this excerpt from A Lifetime of Questionable Decisions, why not buy the book and impress all your friends with how fun you are at parties? All the cool kids are buying it. Don’t you want to be cool, too?)
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