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.

Ask for advice rather than feedback

When I teach online or in-person the institution that hired me usually wants feedback from students/learners.

I’ve learned that many students or learners are uncomfortable about being asked to give feedback. It feels like they are criticising. I ask them for advice instead.

The end result might be much the same but I think students/learners feel their views are more valuable if they are framed as advice.

If you happen to teach or deliver training sessions or similar then why not give this a try.

Stop writing finance reports like they are crime novels.

Whether writing an email or a 20-page report we tend to think of it needing a beginning, middle and end. This encourages to adopt a (chrono)logical structure along the lines of:

Here’s a problem ==> This is the cause ==> Analysis of possible solutions ==> recommended solution

The problem with this kind of structure, for busy people at work, is that the important bit is at the end. They have to work through all your analysis to get to the answer. Report-writing is not (or should not be) a way for you to show off about all the analysis you have done.

A better way, one focused on the needs of the reader rather than the vanity of the writer, is to bring the end to the front of the report. Tell the reader the recommendation first and then explain why. This means a structure along the lines of:

Here’s the recommended solution to a problem ==> Why is that the recommendation? ==> analysis of possible solutions

One advantage of this structure is the potential for it to be framed more positively. It starts with suggestions for solutions (improvements over the status quo) rather than the negative experience of describing a problem or challenge.

Next time you are planning a report see if you can structure it so that the reader gets the conclusion/recommendation without having to read a long story.

From working with figures to words

Things work out alright in the end.

If things aren’t right then it’s not the end.

Here’s a story about how things worked out for me as a writer.

I see my career in two, roughly equal, parts. The first 19 years was a conventional career in local government finance. I was a trainee accountant for three years and after getting my professional qualification I worked my way up to be the chief finance officer of a large council.

I got that job aged 37 and by the time I was 40 I wanted to do something different. One of the reasons for that was the fact that, as the boss, I did not create (write) anything anymore. Instead, I reviewed and tweaked the reports and letters and so on that other people wrote, and I signed them off. I realised that the aspect of being an accountant that I liked the most was writing. I joked with people that I should have been a lawyer instead of an accountant. I was not prepared to re-train as a lawyer in my 40s. Instead, looking for variety, I became a freelance consultant.

One of the first things I did after leaving my job was write a novel, Power, Corruption and Lies. It was a story set in local government—write what you know, as they say—that was an enjoyable, and cathartic, creative challenge for me. I did eight drafts and friends read them. I sent it to publishers and agents. Even though it costs very little to send a proposal to a publisher or agent after a while, in my case about 30 rejections, it becomes harder and harder to do.

In December 2008 I went to South Sudan for a week to deliver some capacity-building training to the nascent Ministry of Commerce. Three things came out of that week for me. It led to a lot of other teaching engagements and my involvement with a project to build and run a girls school in Ibba, a South Sudanese village (see https://www.friendsofibba.org). The third thing was encouragement from my friend, and former teacher, that I write a public finance textbook to fill what he saw as a gap in the market.

I worked on a book proposal and sent it to three publishers. One said no, one said it was a good idea but they were not sure how to sell it, and the third said yes.

Financial Management and Accounting in the Public Sector was published in July 2011.

I’m proud of the book. It has been successful enough to yield a second and (next year) a third edition. And I have, since 2011, been commissioned more and more often to do projects that require both an understanding of financial management and the ability to write.

The moral of this story is that sometimes we do not achieve our goals in the way that we imagined them. Yes, I would like to have become a novelist and to earn a living as a full-time writer. Even so, I am a published author and there are people who pay me to put abstract concepts into words. All in all, things have worked out very well in the second half of my career.

PS

If there is a publisher or agent out there who wants to take a look at my municipal fiction then please get in touch. I am more than happy to brush the digital dust of the manuscript of Power, Corruption and Lies and send it to you.

Use headlines instead of tables

If a picture paints a thousand words, how many words does a table of data save?

However, a table is a wasted opportunity if the reader skips over it. I have a tip to make the tables in your documents have more impact?

As accountants we often want to include tables in our documents, to summarise the data we are writing about. There are lots of things we can do to help the reader to get the right message (i.e. the one we want them to get) from a table of data.

My first tip for doing this is to give every table a title. Put some thought into the title. It is natural perhaps to use a factual title. Something like: revenue analysis YTD (YTD is year-to-date, for any non-accountant readers). A factual title is, I suppose, better than no title, but not much better.

Instead, give your table a title that tells the reader what they should be looking for in it. Think of it more like a headline than a heading. So, instead of revenue analysis YTD you might use: revenue is up 10% over last year. By doing this you make it easier for the reader to interpret the table and you also reinforce the message you are (presumably) making in the text.

TL;DR

Don’t give titles to your tables; give them headlines.