Writing Tip #9: Write It As It Is

I’m often amazed how easy it is to tell a story to someone else, but the minute we switch into writing mode, the same story dies on the page. Writing too often equals overthinking. This morning I was coaching my client Katie and we were both caught in this trap. She had an interesting story to use for her blog. As we worked on it together we kept getting lost in “crafting” sentences. When we returned to the simple, original way she had told the story to me, voila! It came alive again.

My favorite writing teach Brenda Ueland says in her book If You Want to Write, “Describe something just as it is. Do not worry if it is angular and clumsy or how it comes out. Just look at something and put down what you see.”