12 Shameless Reasons to Shop the Indie Book Blowout

 Book of Mercy, Books, Christmas, Holidays, Kindle, On Writing  22 Responses »
Dec 122011
 

This time of year you are inundated with promotions—every single one of them shameless. I’d like to keep Christmas pristine just as much as the next guy, but what’s an indie author to do? I’ve got birds to feed, kids who need more electronics, and an 81-year-old father expecting something for Christmas.

We’re all—both indie and traditional publishers—fighting for your attention. Hey, you out there in cyberland, yes you, look at me, look at my book (major waving and jumping around). Put down that L.L. Bean catalog and come to the Twelve Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout.

The Blowout is like that annual book sale you wouldn’t miss for the world, the one held at your church or your local library. Every year you go, slowly making your way down aisles between tables crammed with books. Your neck gets a crick in it from turning at just the right angle to read book titles on old moldy spines. The room smells of books—and excitement. What treasure will you find this year?

The Twelve Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout is full of treasures. Here are twelve shameless reasons why you should explore it:

  1. The most shameless of the shameless: my new novel, Book of Mercy, is there. Where else will you get a serious topic—censorship—all wrapped up in a funny novel? (There’s pie throwing, a wife who binge drives, a navigationally challenged husband, a villain who wears Prada, hubcap art, and a bad guy who likes Richard Nixon masks.) FOR JUST 99 CENTS. The first three chapters alone are worth that. And once it’s on your Kindle, it’s easy to get to, unlike some partridges in pear trees.
  2. Turtles (not to be confused with turtle doves) are fearful things. They duck back into their shells at the slightest provocation. At the Blowout, you can work on facing your own fears. You WILL find the perfect book for Uncle Harvey or Aunt Rose. There are more than 200 from which to choose—and every book is only 99 cents.
  3. Looking for something foreign? I don’t think there are any books in French or about hens. But you should examine every one, just to make sure.
  4. If you hadn’t read this far, you wouldn’t know that the famous holiday tune actually sings of “colly birds” on the fourth day, not “calling birds.” What’s a colly? It’s a blackbird. In England, a coal mine is called a colliery, and colly refers to something being black like coal. Isn’t it great to learn new stuff? No doubt you will access all kinds of new information in your Blowout books.
  5. I cannot promise you that you will receive five gold rings this Christmas. However, if you shop at the Blowout, you could win a new Kindle. Buy a book and get entered into the giveaway. What will you do with another Kindle? Keep it for yourself and give your old one to your kid.
  6. Don’t lay a goose egg this Christmas. You can give Blowout eBooks to friends and family who don’t even own Kindles. They can download a free Kindle app and read into the wee hours of the morning on their computer, iPad, or smartphone.
  7. Duckling or swan? Shopping at the Blowout will bring out your inner beauty. Because that’s what reading and books do. They grow our spirit, make us laugh, and feed our dreams.
  8. If you’re a maid who has a lot more milking to do before the sun sets and can’t face the mall, simply turn on your computer and head to the Blowout. You can satisfy any reading appetite without leaving your desk: scary horror stuff, fun romances, intriguing mysteries, smart contemporary fiction, mind-blowing paranormal tales, and in-your-face nonfiction (it’s all true, baby). Every book is 99 cents, which fits perfectly into a milkmaid’s budget.
  9. Remember the Black Friday riots: people grabbing toys out of other people’s carts; shoppers shoving, pushing, and pepper spraying? At the Blowout, we are all about decorum. You can act like a lady or a gentleman—and still stuff your stocking to overflowing with Kindle books. Go ahead, do your happy dance now.
  10. Every day of this special sales event, the Blowout will be giving away Amazon gift cards to winners randomly selected from the Indie Book Blowout subscriber database. That ought to set your lords to leaping. Enter the giveaway with each purchase. That’s extra smackeroos to supplement your Christmas budget (or to pack your Kindle with more Blowout deals).
  11. Sorry, there is no music being sold in this holiday promotion. You will have to get your pipers piping elsewhere.
  12. Drum roll, please. This wouldn’t be a shameless list if I didn’t mention my book again. Book of Mercy: a funny novel about a serious issue—censorship. Don’t fall for a book of similar title by some guy named Cohen; that’s poetry. I don’t write poetry, and I don’t sing. But I have always wanted someone to dance me to the end of love.

So let’s get in the shopping, er, holiday spirit. Go to the Twelve Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout NOW and begin wandering our virtual aisles. The Blowout only lasts from December 12-24, 2011. It is sponsored by the Indie Book Collective, a group of authors who believe readers rock.

Happy holidays and enjoy your books.

_____________________________________

MORE! Check out these blogs by other Indie Book Blowout authors:

Rachel Thompson: Indie Book Blowout Begins!

J. Sterling: Being an Indie Author

Shannon Muir: The 12 Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout

Abbey MacInnis: Twelve Days of Christmas Event

Ron Vitale: The 12 Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout

JC Andrijeski: 12 Days of Christmas Indie Book Blowout (with free Kindle and Kindle Fire!)

C.K. Bryant: 12 Days of Christams: Indie Book Blowout!

 Posted by at 7:14 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

5 Ways Plain Writing Helps You, Your Book and Your Business

 Business Writing, Editing, On Writing, Writing  2 Responses »
Nov 132011
 

Plain language is the law. And it’s not a moment too soon. For years, I have been preaching clarity in writing to author clients and in business writing classes. Now, someone finally gets it, and that’s President Barack Obama.

In 2010, President Obama signed the Plain Writing Act requiring that federal agencies use “clear government communication that the public can understand and use.” In January 2011, he issued an executive order, Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review, which states that “[our regulatory system] must ensure that regulations are accessible, consistent, written in plain language, and easy to understand.”

Minnesota, where I live, has had a state Plain Language Contract Act since 1981 to mandate that consumer contracts are written in a clear and coherent manner. Hennepin County, where Minneapolis is located, is one of the first counties in the country to develop a comprehensive program to tackle government jargon (others include Los Angeles County in California and Miami-Dade County in Florida). For a year now, Hennepin County has been simplifying syntax and deflating bloated verbiage on county websites and documents to make it easier for residents to understand what their county is doing.

Plain Is Beautiful

Training people to write clearly, as Hennepin County does, impacts us all, every day and in many ways. It is not dumbing down our language. It is illuminating, instead of obfuscating. Here are just five ways plain language could help you:

  1. Maybe you won’t sign away the farm—accidentally. The plain language movement will help simplify all the documents you routinely sign at the doctor’s office, the bank, credit card companies, and other entities requiring your John or Jane Hancock. If you don’t understand what you are signing, how do you know you are not signing away your rights?
  2. Maybe plain language will keep you out of jail. The courts are filled with people who simply didn’t understand the state or federal regulations they were violating. Plain language helps us know what is expected of us and keeps us on the right side of the law. Here’s an example of a confusing federal regulation translated into plain language.
    Before: When the process of freeing a vehicle that has been stuck results in ruts or holes, the operator will fill the rut or hole created by such activity before removing the vehicle from the immediate area.
    After: If you make a hole while freeing a stuck vehicle, you must fill the hole before you drive away.
  3. You’ll be able to find the information you need faster. Plain language saves time for you and everyone else. How many times have you had to reread instructions over and over (and don’t even get me started on the sorry, no-language, step-by-step illustrated guides to assembling an Ikea desk)? If all the instructions in your life were written more clearly, you might have time to buy more stuff and do more things. That should be a no-brainer for all marketers.
  4. If you’re a writer, learning to write simply and with clarity will enhance all areas of your writing—from that love scene you spread over three chapters to the tense moment when the heroine explores a noise in the dark and scary basement (don’t do it!). Whether you’re writing the great American novel or a newsletter for your kid’s school, your job is still to communicate. I’m not trying to stifle creativity here, but be aware that the more flowery the prose, the less understandable it can be and the harder the reader has to work. You are taking a chance; many readers will just give up. Personally, I don’t like losing readers.
  5. Plain language will improve your business. No one buys what they do not understand—except maybe insurance and technology. Anyway, you get the idea. If you want to be persuasive, write clearly and succinctly; use plain, jargon-free language and influence customers, co-workers, even your boss. Everyone in the office knows who the “good writers” are—they’re the folks who draft clean, easy-to-understand, and to-the-point documents.

It is still early so we can’t gauge the impact of plain writing laws on either the federal, state, or local level. However, several Hennepin County departments report they’ve been getting fewer questions about information and processes since websites and documents have been rewritten, according to the Star Tribune.

 More on Using Plain Language
Biz Speak Not Spoken Here
11 Ways to Improve Your Writing and Your Business
Technical Terms in Plain English
Center for Plain Language
EPA’s Plain Writing Tips: “Clear air . . . clear water . . . . it all depends on clear writing.”

Comments: Tell me about your encounters with crazy, indecipherable language. How would you rewrite?

 Posted by at 11:46 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Themes Are for Disneyland, Not Writers

 Books, Writing  2 Responses »
Nov 062011
 

Themes are for parks like Disneyland, not for books. When it comes to writing,  I prefer to sculpt my stories around an armature.

I came upon this concept in an extraordinary little writing book called Invisible Ink by Brian McDonald. I admit my eyes glaze over when someone even says the word “theme” to me. McDonald noticed the same thing happening with his writing students. So he began looking at story through the eyes of a sculptor. A sculptor builds an armature to act as a skeleton for the artwork. No one ever sees the skeleton or armature, but, without it, the piece would fall apart.

In story crafting, the armature is the idea upon which you hang your story. “It is what you want to say with your piece,” McDonald explained. He uses the old joke about marriage to illustrate: “Marriage is not a word; it’s a sentence.” Although talking about theme can seem like a life sentence with no parole, talking about armature is freeing. Your story is not about a single word—love, friendship, competition, war, revenge. It is a whole sentence, and that sentence or armature gives it shape.

“One way to look at your armature is what is called, in children’s fables, ‘the moral’,” McDonald says. “The armature is your point. Your story is sculpted around this point.” Here are some examples of armatures:

  • Wizard of Oz: There’s no place like home.
  • E.T.: When are you going to grow up and learn how other people feel for a change?
  • Of Mice and Men: People need companionship.

As I was writing my novel, Book of Mercy, I thought all along the theme was censorship. After all, the dylsexic hero Antigone Brown does fight book banning in her town. But upon revision, I discovered again and again that the point of the story was about the lengths parents, or anyone, will go to protect the ones they love. So my armature was “There are more things worth fighting for than you can ever imagine.” 

Revision is when you are really shaping your story around its armature. The beauty of thinking in the simplistic terms of an armature instead of the complicated mess of theme is that, when you are revising your work, you see immediately which scenes stick to the skeleton of your story and make it stronger and which scenes could fall away without any loss to your artistic vision. This is when things get thrilling, even better than riding the world’s craziest roller coaster at an amusement park.

Do you get all tangled up in theme?  What is the one sentence armature of your book?

 

 Posted by at 9:52 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

Winner of the Book of Mercy Giveaway

 Book of Mercy  No Responses »
Oct 032011
 

Congratulations to, Wren Andre, the winner of the Book of Mercy Giveaway! I am so excited for her. She won the following:

    • An I Read Banned Books tote bag
    • $25 Amazon.com gift card
    • Plus a surprise item: A signed copy of my new novel, Book of Mercy

I also want to thank all of you who participated in the Book of Mercy Giveaway. It is my dearest wish to communicate with as many readers as I can. Isn’t that half the fun of doing this crazy writing stuff—to make contact, to find out what we have in common, to laugh together?

So, happy reading, everyone!

 Posted by at 8:55 am  Tagged with: , ,

Be Vigilant; Your Books Could Be Next

 Book of Mercy, Books, Censorship, Reading  2 Responses »
Sep 262011
 

I am not a conspiracy nut. I don’t believe I am being watched ALL the time, and I try not to think about what they put in our food. But I am pretty sure that books disappear from the shelves, unless we say something. People never believe you when you maintain that censorship could and does happen. “Book banning here? This is America,” they scoff.

Maybe actual bans are rare in the United States, but it is not for lack of trying. On average, there are about 500 book challenges a year in American libraries, according to the American Library Association. This number goes up or down depending on the political climate and what side of the bed the censors get up on.

That’s why we need Banned Books Week, an annual event sponsored by a number of book-loving organizations including the ALA to a) celebrate the freedom to read, and b) draw attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Banned Books Week is always held during the last week in September, when kids are just starting to hit the books again and parents have more time to read. Here are a few examples of books challenged in 2010-2011 and why:

  • The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: A parent claimed that it gave her 11-year-old daughter nightmares and could numb other children to the effects of violence.
  • What’s Happening to My Body? Book for Boys: A Guide for Parents and Sons: Banned in 21 schools in Texas after a parent complained. It contains definitions of rape, incest, sexual assault, and intercourse.
  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut: Challenged in Republic, MO, schools because it is “soft pornography” and “glorifies drinking, cursing, and premarital sex.”

I have followed the topic of censorship for years as I researched my own novel Book of Mercy. Most censors object to books because of sex, violence, swearing, and “to protect children.” But other times, their reasons are just silly. I used actual challenged books and the actual reasons for their challenges as part of the story in Book of Mercy. (Yes, sometimes you can’t make up this stuff.) Here’s an excerpt in which Study Club President Irene Crump identifies books that should be banned in Mercy.

“The Stupids Step Out,” Irene said. “Describes families in a derogatory manner and might encourage children to disobey their parents.”

Arabella huffed in disgust. “That’s an absurd name for a family, fictional or otherwise. What if Tolstoy had called her Anna Idiot instead of Anna Karenina?”

Arabella got no argument from Irene, who constantly fought the battle for eloquent language with her own children. She thought “suck” should be something you did with a straw, not a description of your homework. . . . 

Irene went on to another book. “A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein. Encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them . . .”

Julie cleared her throat and attempted a half-hearted smile. “Irene, surely when you were a child, you too hated doing the dishes.”

Irene peered over her glasses at Julie. “We had a maid for that. Even so, there is never an excuse to take a hammer to the Wedgewood.”

America is a free society. Those of us who abhor censorship have to tolerate those who enjoy it, and vice versa. That’s how we know we are free. We have this system of checks and balances. But it is never safe to fall asleep at the wheel.

So be vigilant. Rock Banned Books Week, wear an “I Read Banned Books” button, read something someone else considers salacious. Check out the Banned Books Week Giveaway Hop—you could win books, swag, or gift card moolah. Go to the ALA’s website and find out more about the Banned Books Week Virtual Read-out.

Whatever you do, just don’t sit there. Give books a chance.

 Posted by at 9:35 am  Tagged with: , , ,

“Mom, They’re Banning Books!”

 Book of Mercy, Books, Censorship, Parenting, Reading  2 Responses »
Sep 222011
 

I had been stumbling around in the plot of a book I was writing for some time. I knew the protagonist couldn’t read and that books were disappearing. I was going for some kind of Alice Hoffman magical realism thing. Perhaps with a little humor since my book’s working title was “Too Dark to Read,” after the Groucho Marx quote: “Outside a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.” But then in 1996, my daughter came through the door, crying, “Mom, they’re banning books!”

My daughter was a junior and an IB student in a North Carolina high school. She had a mean forehand and a voracious love for books, including the book in question, The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes. Fuentes is recognized as one of the most influential writers in Latin America. In fact, in 2006, he received the Four Freedoms Award for Freedom of Speech and Expression. Ironic, I know.

My first response was to sit down, read the book, and discuss it with my daughter. It is the story of celebrated American writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce, who mysteriously disapeared in Mexico during its civil war. Fuentes imagines the fate of Bierce among Pancho Villa’s troops in a tale that examines “the borders between men and women, dreams and reality, Mexico and the U.S,” as Publishers Weekly put it.

What the censors in our town (parents of one of the students) objected to were explicit scenes between a young Mexican revolutionary and the American teacher, who falls in love with him. I had no problem with my 17-year-old daughter reading those scenes. But then I’ve never denied my daughter a book she wanted to read.

After an intense public meeting and a review by committee, The Old Gringo eventually was returned to the shelf and the IB curriculum. But in the process, my daughter’s English teacher, a favorite of many of the kids, decided to move on, perhaps to a place where teachers didn’t receive hate mail.

This incident had a huge impact on the direction of my book. Book banning in fictitious Mercy, North Carolina, became the conflict, and Antigone Brown, the woman who fights the censors, ponders the same questions I had as I wrote letters in protest of the removal of The Old Gringo.

All too often, censorship is a parental issue. As Antigone says in Book of Mercy, “I want to protect my child from the world. But I also want to protect the world for my child.”

What I learned in writing this book and in raising my daughter is that books can never be allowed to disappear from the shelves without a squeak. We must say something; explode the discussion in letters, e-mails, tweets, and public meetings. We must never let censorship dissolve into the dark.

According to the American Library Association, on average about five hundred books are challenged every year in the United States—and those are just the ones we know about. Some would say this is horrible. But I think if we didn’t have a way to challenge the actions of others, we wouldn’t be truly free.

So I accept that book challenges are necessary, but I also am happy when they fail.

Book of Mercy, a story about a woman who faces her greatest fear to save a town’s books, is available in paperback and on Kindle. Read more about Book of Mercy or check out an excerpt.

 Posted by at 7:25 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Don’t You Love Underdogs?

 Book of Mercy, Books, Censorship  1 Response »
Sep 112011
 

I love underdogs.

I like to read about them, and I like to write about them. I rooted for David and not Goliath (please no hate mail from giant lovers), cheered on Buffy the Vampire Slayer when she took on each week’s Big Bad, and now there is a Catholic school kid who identifies herself by the avatar name “Nekocha” who has started an unofficial library of banned books that she runs out of her school locker.

When her school put several classics such as Catcher in the Rye, Animal Farm, and Paradise Lost on the banned list, she decided to bring her personal copy of Catcher to school. She was surprised when another student asked to borrow it. And thus, Nekocha’s secret library was born. Soon her locker was overflowing with banned books, so she appropriated the empty locker next to hers in which to house her collection.

Even though she is violating school policy, Nekocha believes it is worth it. She says, “Before I started [the library], almost no kid at school but myself took an active interest in reading! Now not only are all the kids reading the banned books, but they go out of their way to read anything they can get their hands on. So I’m doing a good thing, right?”

This story first appeared back in 2006 on the Web in a question posed at Yahoo! Answers. No one really knows if it is true. Some claim it is a hoax, doubting that anyone can get 62 books in a school locker.

But I really don’t care if it’s true or not. Nekocha’s story is close to my heart because Antigone Brown, the star of my novel Book of Mercy, also starts a secret library and stands up to the powers that be for the sake of banned books.

People like Nekocha and Antigone Brown are ordinary folks, who push aside their fears and do something extraordinary. Perhaps I am attracted to them because I have a lot of fears of my own, like shooting rapids and meeting up with mosquitoes. Perhaps I hope that I have the courage to stand up when the time comes. And maybe I am not alone, maybe that is the reason the concept of Nekocha was created or, if she is real, she stepped forward.

Whether you’re imagined or not, for now, all my support goes out to you, Nekocha. You’re my hero, kid.

Book of Mercy, a story about a woman who faces her greatest fear to save a town’s books, is available in paperback and on Kindle. Read more about Book of Mercy or check out an excerpt.

 Posted by at 9:39 am

Book of Mercy Giveaway

 Book of Mercy  No Responses »
Sep 012011
 

Do You Read Banned Books?

This giveaway has ended, but please do complete the form below to be added to Sherry’s notification list. She’ll keep you updated on other giveaways, events, and publishing milestones.

I told Antigone Brown of Book of Mercy that I was doing a giveaway to launch my book and to promote awareness of banned books. “Don’t give away a book,” she said. “Books are such trouble.” But then the dyslexic Antigone would say that since words are like circus performers—jumping around on the page for her all the time. Still, she is the hero of my book and I like her a lot, so I gave in.

Instead, to give a send off to Book of Mercy, a novel full of funny characters trying to get a handle on a serious subject (book banning), I am giving away an “I read banned books” tote bag. Perfect for lugging around your Kindle, Nook, or books plus a sandwich, hairbrush, sunblock, your phone, and a small animal. BUT that’s not all. I also will be giving away a $25.00 Amazon.com gift card.

Banned Books Week is organized by the American Library Association. The ALA is NOT endorsing this giveaway. I just admire this organization’s great work. It collects and compiles information on challenges to books in the United States. Check it out here.

Banned Books Week 2011 runs from September 24 to October 1. So this promotion will end at 11 p.m. CST on October 1, 2011. There will be one winner. On October 2, I’ll announce the winner, contact you for your snail mail address, and send your tote bag and gift card.

Want to win? Of course you do! Here’s how to enter: Simply complete the form below to be on Sherry’s notification list.


Enter the Book of Mercy Giveaway
Email:  
First Name:  
Last Name:  
Submitting this form places you on Sherry’s rarely used notification list. We do not share email addresses, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

 

Voila! You’ve entered!

The winner will be selected at random from among the active members of Sherry’s notification list who joined the list between September 1, 2011 and October 1, 2011.

Want an extra chance to win? Like the Sherry Roberts Facebook page in addition to signing up for the notification list, and we’ll put your name in the hopper twice.

On Facebook and Twitter, I talk about books, writing, editing, publishing, parenting, the world in general. And I plan more giveaways in the future. So keep in touch.

Follow @sherryroberts7 on Twitter

Good luck and support reading in any way you can. Book of Mercy will be available in paperback and ebook by mid-September. We’ll keep you posted on release dates.

 Posted by at 7:38 am  Tagged with:

Censorship WSJ Style

 Books, Censorship, Parenting  No Responses »
Jun 102011
 

It is a dark day when a national newspaper like the Wall Street Journal advocates censorship for the good of the kids. In a June 4, 2011 article, WSJ complained about the “darkness” in young adult (YA) fiction these days. It noted that far too often young readers find themselves ”surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.”

It notes parents should be allowed to guide what young people read—no argument there as long as said parents keep their hands off MY children’s reading list. But WSJ goes on: ”In the book trade, this is known as ‘banning’. In the parenting trade, however, we call this ‘judgment’ or ‘taste’.”

Linda Holmes, a blogger for NPR, brings up an excellent point when she wonders who parents are trying to protect by imposing their “guidance” on someone else. She writes:

“Banning is banning, not guidance, and if the suggestion is that that’s the parenting role, it has to be done … regretfully, I think. Even for parents acting with regard to their own kids, the act of one human being actually preventing another human being from reading a book is a grave decision. Obviously, not everything is appropriate for every audience — nobody is suggesting you give Twilight to your seven-year-old. (Or, really, to anyone, although that’s more because of the quality of the writing than because the themes are too dark.) But stopping — actually stopping — a YA reader from picking up a particular book because it describes behavior you don’t want him to emulate potentially cuts him off from something that might reach him in exchange for … nothing, really, except your own comfort level.”

Will children emulate the behaviors they read about—suicide, cursing, having sex, self-mutilation, bullying, being abusive, rape? Who knows? I have to believe that one scene of a girl cutting herself or a boy beating up another one for his lunch money will not undo the years of parenting I have invested in raising loving and caring individuals with healthy self-esteems.

No one reads books in a vacuum. We bring to each book our own values and beliefs, and we slide the book’s values into our own to see how they fit. We reject what doesn’t fit and enjoy what does.

I read YA fiction. I love its energy, creativity, and moral system. I read the Harry Potter books and don’t see the evils of magic. I see children learning about courage and unbreakable friendships, about being different and surviving. I read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games series and see brutality unmasked and manipulation thwarted. These are the values I want my children to think about and, perhaps, adopt.

U.S. General William Westmoreland said, “Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.”  I would argue just the opposite. With censorship, things can get terribly muddled in the mind of a child.

Kids already know that ugliness exists in the world. Through books, they discover it’s how you handle the ugliness that counts.

 Posted by at 10:01 am  Tagged with: , , ,

Biz Speak Not Spoken Here

 Business Writing, Writing  No Responses »
Apr 242011
 

If you want to do business, say what you mean. That sounds so simple. But often reading a business report, memo, e-mail, or newsletter is like swimming in concrete. You have to STUDY the sentences and words to understand the message. Who has time for that?

Part of developing a clear and successful writing style is to eliminate jargon, define your acronyms, and don’t fall into the lazy habit of using what I call: biz speak, businessese, or corp talk. It’s those words that everyone uses but no one knows what they mean. Some of the ones on my hit list: value-added, functionality, shovel-ready, 360-degree thinking.

Biz speak loves industry buzzwords. They’re trendy and make the user feel cool, with it, important. When in reality, they are the crutch of a bad communicator. First of all, not all buzzwords mean the same thing to everyone. In “The Truth about the New Rules of Business Writing,” authors Natalie Canavor and Claire Meirowitz give the example of “turnkey training,” which educators use to denote “train the trainer” while in business it can mean ready-to-use training programs or training that produces ready-to-go workers.

A recent discussion on the Professional Editors Network (PEN) listserv bemoaned the use of “learnings,” which is cropping up like dandelions (even in the New York Times).

The irony of all this is that there is a website called www.learnings.org, “where corporate buzzwords go to die.” Thousands of peeved people have entered buzzwords into this online corporate buzzword dictionary. The site managers say it all started with the desire to kill “learnings.” Here’s their definition of the word: “A term created by marketers/researchers/morons to describe the collective insights gained from a particular campaign or experiment. It’s not recognized as a real word but seems to be making some serious rounds throughout the business world.”

So what to do with learnings? PEN editors are suggesting just make it “learning” or replace it with “lessons.”

Biz speak is used to impress–not express. No matter what business you’re in, words are one of your products. So if you want more fans on your Facebook page, more visitors to your website, and more customers, kill the buzzwords in your writing. Give them clarity, and they will give you loyalty.

P.S. What buzzwords torture you? I just found “onboarding” in the corporate buzzword dictionary. A bastardization of the phrase “to get someone on board,” it means “to get up to speed.” Sounds too much like waterboarding to me.

 Posted by at 12:04 pm  Tagged with: , , ,
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