You know you have to write something. Maybe a newsletter or a new blog for your website. But somehow, week after week, it doesn’t get done. It just hangs around on your to-do list, taunting you and generally being unpleasant.

To kick your new year off, here are our top three techniques for taming the little beast and getting your writing jobs sorted.

Tip one: tackle it in smaller bits.

Feel like you just don’t have the time? Your writing job will be easier to disarm if you break it into smaller tasks to tackle between phone calls or meetings. Once you’ve completed a task, let yourself stop. You’ll still have made progress and the next step will feel much easier.

Tip two: however you do it, just get it down.

Stop trying to write it with style and just write it – “this newsletter is about writing and how to make it easier to get started…”.

Remember, say it straight, then say it great.

Tip three: Craft it into submission

Leave your first draft on ice for a few hours (or days), then go through it again. Aim to reduce the word count by 30% – it’ll force you into being clearer and more concise.

Snigger

If you got through all that, here’s a badly written sign for you to snigger about.

New Zealanders – we like to be affirmed, aye? We always finish our sentence with a request for feedback, eh. Like this, ay.

So yeah. How do you spell that anyway?

‘Aye’ is my preferred option. It spells out the way we all say it, like the Fonz. I am painfully aware, however, that really, that particular spelling means ‘yes’ in Scotland (and in the olden days).

Then there’s ‘eh’, which is what all the newspapers use. Eh. Eh. Eh. It looks wrong to me. Staccato, and the wrong vowel sound altogether.

Maybe ‘ay’ is an option? Dunno. How do you write it?

Does anyone wink in real life anymore? When teamed with a closing bracket, a semicolon makes for great text flirting (or general creepiness, depending on age and gender). But, believe it or not, this is not the semicolon’s native function.

Semicolons connect two separate clauses in place of a conjunction or a full stop to join two sentences carrying the same theme.

For example:

There was a lady singing on the bus this morning. She was a really terrible singer.

This statement is separated by a full stop and if it was said out loud, the full stop would be emphasised with a short pause. However, if in place of the full stop, a semicolon is used, the connection between the two clauses is strengthened.

There was a lady singing on the bus this morning; she was a really terrible singer.

When read aloud, with a semicolon, you eliminate the pause without using a conjunction like, ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘nor’ or ‘yet’. You’re still being just as critical, but your grammar is spot on.

Semicolons shouldn’t be used if there’s already a conjunction connecting two ideas together.

For example:

There was a lot of brownie and cake at the office today, but I decided it was okay to indulge.

The comma is already doing the job of connecting the two clauses here, therefore, a semicolon serves no purpose. However, by dropping the ‘but’ and replacing it with a semicolon, the sentence becomes a little punchier.

There was a lot of brownie and cake at the office today; I decided it was okay to indulge.

Once again, you’ve still probably overdone it on the sugar for the day, but at least you’ve clocked semicolons.

Get it? ; )

For more semicolon hilarity, check out the Oatmeal’s rant.

The consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly.

It’s a good title for an excellent study conducted a wee while ago at Princeton uni, on the effects of using more complicated words in your writing. The general gist of the outcome is the simpler your writing, the brainer your reader will think you are.

The study backs up what I’ve suspected for a long time: that overly complicated wording is the nouveau riche of the literary world. Flashing around all that glitzy language makes you look like you’ve got something to prove.

Truth be told, I love a fancy word here and there. I delight in the irony of obfuscate, and thrill when I’m called an erstwhile actor, or affectionately labelled a poltroon. But the sad truth remains that if you’re writing for communication, the simpler the word, the better (unless, of course, you’re writing exclusively for an audience of lexicographers).

Worth noting that the only readers studied were well-educated uni students, but the point, I believe, still holds.