Technologist and Essayist Paul Graham had an excellent essay on ‘Writing vs Speaking’ up on his blog. His thesis is a very good one – to be a great speaker, you need to have mastered the art of making the audience laugh/flattered.
Great content matters less when you’re a great speaker. And perhaps that’s why great speakers are called ‘motivational’ speakers. His first paragraph sums up his emotion.
‘I’m not a very good speaker. I say “um” a lot. Sometimes I have to pause when I lose my train of thought. I wish I were a better speaker. But I don’t wish I were a better speaker like I wish I were a better writer. What I really want is to have good ideas, and that’s a much bigger part of being a good writer than being a good speaker.’
I paused for a few moments when I read this. I am easily a better speaker than writer. The biggest reason for this is ‘deliberate practice’. I present a lot more than I write and I have spoken a lot more in public than I have written. And I tend to agree with him on all counts – it’s much easier to give a rousing speech than it is to write. It also reminded me of one of my favourite ever Seth Godin posts where he encourage us to ‘Write like you talk, often’.
When I say this, I am well aware of the fact that more people fear public speaking than death. That said, in my experiences, it takes lesser practice to master the art of presenting and speaking than it does writing.
Writing is a puzzle. It’s a puzzle I set out to solve nearly every day. The questions are always the same.
What is the central idea that I am going to develop?
What is the best way to communicate it?
Are there stories/analogies?
As I write, more questions pop up as more ideas surface –
Is this too long? How can it be more concise?
How can I structure it better?
Are there too many ideas?
It’s not gotten easier yet. I struggle with length every day, for instance. And you can clearly observe differences in class. Seth Godin, for example, conveys more in two lines than I convey in 2 paragraphs.
The good thing, though, is that deliberate practice is changing this. Slowly. And I am enjoying the process of learning to be a better writer. It’s hard work as there are many days when I long for that extra half an hour of sleep early in the morning.. but I guess it wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t.
A Learning a Day 