"Writing is easy."

Mark Twain said “Writing is easy. You just cross out the wrong words.”

Ernest Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is shit.”

Whilst we may not be the equal of these great storytellers we can learn from them and every other author.

Once you have written your first draft you should not click Save and send it off to the audience. Revise and edit your work. Make it as good as you reasonably can before you declare it finished.

I know sometimes we can be up against a deadline. The report is due at 5pm and you finish it at 4.55. Well, yes that does happen, but if something is important you need to manage your time to get it right. That means leaving enough time to edit your first draft.

And let me be clear — I mean you should edit the draft of the content BEFORE it is formatted for despatch.

I have several tips for you about revising and editing.

• If you can, leave the draft for a day or two so you come back to it with a fresh mind.

• Fewer words is usually better than more words so try to reduce the document by at least 10 per cent. Sometimes a lot more than 10 per cent can be cut.

• Reading your words aloud can really help you with making sure it flows properly.

• Grammar checking software, like Grammarly and even an app called Hemingway, can help.

• Work hard on getting the opening right. Often I find the first draft includes lots of unnecessary information in the introduction, words written as a sort of warm up, to get the thing going. These can be quickly deleted and the document will be the better for it

• Don’t be afraid to “kill your darlings”. Do not keep something in the document just because you spent a long time writing it. If it does not add value to the reader it needs to be cut out.

Less is more (influential)

Last week I wrote that perfection comes from including only the essential. Let me explain one way to apply that thinking to an audit report or similar (as taught to me when I worked at a Big Four firm).

Let’s say that the work being reported has identified 10 issues. Naturally some of those will be more significant or important than others.

One approach may be to list all 10 issues as findings with reasons/evidence, implications and recommendations. To be more convincing convincing you might list them in descending order of significance.

This seems a persuasive way of reporting the findings. The trouble is, the items at the bottom of the list (or several pages into it) are weak, either because the implications of the findings are *relatively* trivial and/or the evidence behind the findings is not as strong.

This relative weakness gives the recipient of the report an opportunity to be critical. They could resist the inclusion of those findings, either explicitly or implicitly. This can then result in their view of the overall report being diminished, potentially to the point where they can justify to themselves that the report can be ignored.

What my audit partner taught me was to include only the strongest handful of findings and recommendations. That way, the one at the bottom of the list is still significant and well-evidenced, making the whole report more impactful.

If you feel that the minor items must be included in the report consider putting them in an appendix. That way they are reported but you are signalling to the reader that they are not essential to understanding the report’s main message(s).

To be good at writing you must read a lot

A common piece of advice for aspiring creative writers is to read as much as you can.

I think we can apply that to accountants who want to improve their writing skills.

They should read finance reports and documents written by others, inside and outside their organisation, but I would add a qualification ...

When reading finance reports do it with a sense of curiosity. If you read something that seems to be very effective, ask yourself how it differs from your work. Is the use of language or structure different? Or is the layout of the words and figures done in a way that is especially clear? Or perhaps there has been good use made of graphical features like colours and fonts?

By the same token, I suggest you do the same when you read something that is not very effective. Indeed, perhaps you should be just as keen to learn from what does not work as from what works.

I am always on the lookout for examples of good finance reporting writing so if you have any please post a link in the comments below.

What are the signs that you could improve your writing?

Allow me to make some suggestions.

First, your boss or mentor or a client tells you so.

I suspect that is quite rare. More subtle is the case where your boss or mentor or client does not tell you outright but asks questions that you thought your document had answered.

Or maybe you receive documents by other finance people and you’re impressed by how well technical material is explained. Or you wonder how they managed to make the text, charts and tables look so good.

If (when?) you identify that there is room for improvement what should you do? Here are some ideas:

• Learn some more about grammar, typography and data visualisation

• Practice your skills as much as you can

• Get a coach to work with you

• Hire an editor to refine the documents you write

• Hire a ghost writer to write documents for you

I can help you with the last three of these. Contact me by email or go to my page on Calendly and arrange an introductory call with me.

Write first drafts in a text editor

A minister caused a stir on Wednesday with a hand-written resignation letter.

Writing by hand can help with creativity but realistically I suggest you write the first drafts in a text-editor app rather than with a pen.

Here’s why.

A text editor app is just you and your words. There’s no formatting to play with or other distractions.

The files are very small and can easily be uploaded to a cloud storage service (Google Drive, One Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, wherever you use) and be accessible from other devices including your smartphone. It becomes possible to work on the text in at different times, in different places with different devices.

The text file you create is universal. Once done the text can be copied and pasted into any word processing app, but also could be pasted into the body of an email or a text message or the content management system for a website and so on. As there was no formatting in the text there is no formatting to be screwed up by the transfer.

If you use different devices you can use different apps to edit the text because the text is not in a proprietary format. I happen to use an app called Ulysses because it is available on all my devices. It manages the 140,000 words of my book manuscript just as well as these shorts posts of fewer than 500 words. You may need to do some research to find the best apps to suit you but you can start with the built-in apps: TextEdit app on MacOS and Notepad on Windows.

Perfection is not…

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint Exupéry

This is one of my favourite quotations.

I’m applying it to writing finance reports but it can be applied to anything. One of the things I like about the design of Apple hardware is the adherence to this principle.

I keep a notebook of quotations and if you have any good ones relevant to writing and/or finance please add them, with attribution, to the comments.