The Tripod of Communication

The tripod of any kind of communication is writing, speaking, and reading. I call them the three musketeers of communication. You should read this piece to the end.

READING

Reading is the cool guy among the musketeers. All he does is soak in other people’s knowledge. It’s not that he’s completely lazy but he doesn’t do much work compared to the other guys.

Perhaps the only major work he involves himself in is in trying to make sense of other people’s ideas and interpret it to his benefit. But reading is a cool guy.

Everyone should befriend him. I wrote in-depth about how you can properly befriend him HERE.

SPEAKING

Speaking is the lousy guy in the group. Obviously. If you meet people who have mastered being friends with him, give them kudos. It’s not an easy feat especially if you have to spontaneously speak.

Why I consider speaking a serious task is because it begins from the brain. You have to first coordinate what you want to say on your head before it gets to your mouth.

If you transcribe what you vocalise on paper, it’ll likely not make sense as much as you want it to be. It will never be like what you thoughtfully sat down to write. And this brings us to the strongest [in my opinion] of the Musketeers…..

…….WRITING

Writing is the strongest of the three guys. If you invite him to the writing party, he will not easily honour your invitation. You might even spend hours pacing back and within your room because you’re looking for the right sentence to commence your article. Yes, he’s as difficult as that. He’s not an easy guy to find unless you’ve mastered the art of summoning him.

Unfortunately, everyone must find a way to befriend him. If you won’t with all your heart, make him your side guy/chic. But never let go of him completely.

There is nothing as “I’m not good at writing” or “I can’t write” in today’s world. To simply put, there is no excuse for not able to write well. At least be able to write for yourself if you can’t write for others. Is this too much to ask? NO, my dear.

While there are professional writers, skillful at the art, however, everyone and anyone literate enough must be able to put their thoughts to paper clearly and understandably, void of blunder and grammatical ‘knockouts’.

No employer will employ anyone that cannot write well. The ‘roles and responsibilities’ section of many vacancies now has “candidate must have excellent writing ability” or “good editing and writing skills”. Some employers even conduct a writing test for their prospective employees to ascertain their ability. Don’t sleep on it.

The truth is that these things are not so difficult as you think it is. English is like mathematics. It has formulas too. Once you know your formulas, you can never be guilty of blunders.

Guess what? The best English editors and English teachers I know didn't study English in their first, or even second degree.

In lieu of this, I have received multiple responses from my mailing list and friends here as to when we are going to have the next WRITING MASTERCLASS.

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be making time this month to answer this call.

If you want to be a part of this class, you should register NOW without delay. The link to register is below.

REGISTER HERE: https://paystack.com/pay/EffectiveWritingClass

There are a lot of benefits you'll get from the class. You can read them here: https://olamidefrancis.medium.com/why-you-should-join-the-effective-writing-masterclass-613ead77ef64

Peruse the flyer for more details.

Talk to you soon.

Olamide Francis
Writer, Journalist, Social Change Agent in the Public Interest