Some people
think I am a
journalist.
My friends
ask how I can possibly
write as
much as I do
given all the
responsibilities that I have. I write for The
Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ASEE Prism
Magazine, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Forbes, and
now this LinkedIn blog. I've just co-authored a
book, Immigrant Exodus, which The Economist
named a book of the year. And I am working on
two more books: one about women in tech and
another about how the U.S. can reinvent itself.
Writing is just a hobby; my day job is as an
academic and researcher.
I get so much feedback from my writing that I
know it is making an impact and is well worth the
effort I put into it. It is the best way of sharing
ideas and educating. That is why I do it and why
I encourage others to write. And that is why I
thought I should share some secrets about how a
guy like me got into writing. It may motivate
others to find their own path.
If you look at my education and background,
you’ll see that I started my career as a nerdy
computer programmer who happened to build a
far-out technology that led to the creation of a
software company. This startup, Seer
Technologies, achieved extraordinary success and
transformed me into an entrepreneur. Much later,
I became an academic.
I exited my second startup, Relativity
Technologies, because of health problems. I
decided to do something completely different for
a while: help produce a Bollywood film. This
caught the attention of BusinessWeek tech editor
Alex Salkever, who had followed and written
about my tech career. Alex thought that
BusinessWeek readers would find my story
interesting, and asked me to tell it in my own
words.
I don't have any journalism degrees, and have
never taken writing classes. Frankly, I barely
passed English in grade school, because I hated
grammar. I could never figure out what an adverb
was, or the difference between a noun and a
pronoun. So I had to learn by doing, and all of my
writing experience was confined to high-school
essays and a few university research reports.
Needless to say, I had no clue how to write a
BusinessWeek article. But I didn't tell Alex that. I
readily accepted his offer. Then I frantically wrote
to journalist friends to ask for advice: how do you
write a business article or op-ed? What they said
was that I should just write down my thoughts as
though I were telling a story to a friend: forget all
I had learned about structuring high-school
essays; and be brief, hard-hitting, and to the
point.
It was really, really hard to do this. The school
essays that we are taught to write start with a
boring preface, ramble on forever, and save the
best part for last. In articles, if you don't capture
readers' attention in the first or second
paragraph, they lose interest and move on. And
you have to say all you can in the fewest words
possible. Schoolteachers reward you for verbosity
and essay length. They don't read every word;
they just skim to see whether you have
understood key concepts. Readers of business
articles, however, want to learn something, and
to gain the most knowledge by the least reading.
It took me more than 40 hours to write my first
BusinessWeek piece: Bollywood, Here I come.
Then it got progressively easier. It took 30 hours
for the next piece, 20 hours on average for the
next few, then five to ten hours; and now it takes
me two to four hours per piece, depending on
how much research it necessitates. When I know
my stuff, I can sometimes knock articles over in
less than an hour.
These really are the keys to writing blog posts,
op-ed pieces and columns, and even testimonies
to Congress: to speak fearlessly from the heart,
get to the point immediately, keep the message
simple and focused, and use the fewest words
you can. Note this submission I made to the
House Judiciary Committee on immigration
reform. I simply told the story as if speaking to a
friend.
I'll share another secret. I almost always have a
friend look over what I write, checking it for
spelling errors, grammar, and sensibility. I am
really lucky to have a childhood friend in
Australia, John Harvey, who is a perfectionist
editor. He drives me crazy with his demands that
I add commas and semicolons. Just as the editors
I work with at The Washington Post,
BusinessWeek, and Wall Street Journal do, he
questions everything that I write. Good editors
make you fact-check and validate every
statement. You can learn a lot from their
criticisms.
So writing is a skill that you can learn. It gets
easier as you go and will help you make an
impact. If you don’t have a Bollywood story that
you can get BusinessWeek to tell, just write a
blog on your own website, or comment on
discussion sites such as Quora, LinkedIn, or
countless others. Your voice is as important as
any other.

www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130225170136-8451-my-secrets-how-i-became-a-prolific-writer-and-learned-to-get-beyond-school-essays?ref-email

Hello , graitobby, am a writer ,I write movie scripts, am aspiring to be an author for both historical fictions and pure fiction. Am still building my skills though , can we hook up ? Wouldn't mind learning from you

Ok. So that we'll both be on the same page- I wasn't the author of the article (as much as I would have loved to lay claim to such fine lines). Despite that though, I write, I'm improving and I'm learning. So if you would like to rub minds, I'd love to also. I am of the believe that iron sharpens iron.