The Resourceful Reporter, Part 1: The Territory

This post begins a 25-part series on business and technical report writing. Whether for government or nongovernment organizations, nonprofit or for-profit businesses—in fact, for any work-related activity—reports fall into three general types: descriptive, analytical, and persuasive.

Descriptive Reports –  Answers questions like:

• What does it look/sound/smell/taste/feel like?
• How does it work?
• How is it done?
• What happened?
• What did you do about it?
• What is the current condition?

Analytical Reports – Besides answering questions of descriptive reports, it also answers questions like:

• How did you determine the cause and solution?
• Why did it happen?
• How can it be changed/perpetuated/terminated?
• What can we do to prevent/induce its recurrence?
• What resources will be necessary?

Persuasive Reports – Besides answering questions of descriptive and analytical reports, it also answers questions like:

• What are the available options?
• Which is the best option?
• Why is it the best option?
• What are the benefits of pursuing the recommendation?
• What can go wrong in pursuing the recommendation?
• How will we mitigate/prevent problems during implementation?

Some of these questions may overlap, and most reports demand answers to more than these questions, but they are a good start. Throughout the series, I'll be looking at several reports of each type to examine their unique issues. 

BOOK BRIEF: On Self-educating

The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer. W. W. Norton, 2003. 432 pages. 

Of course, there are many ways to self-educate. And I am well aware of the widespread academic and political aversion to all things classical. Yet I cannot pick up the writing of Maya Angelou without seeing influences of Walt Whitman, or of James Baldwin without Henry James, or of Toni Morrison without William Faulkner, or of Cornel West without Plato, or of August Wilson without William Shakespeare. Incidentally, I believe that Angelou, Baldwin, Morrison, West, and Wilson too deserve a prominent and secure place in classic literature. Yet I hold this conviction about the value literary ancestry in the same way I remain convinced that rock and roll has its roots in jazz. Reading almost any book is a good thing, but the act itself evolves into a great thing when understanding the relevant works preceding it and the authors who inspired the writer. 

You would agree with this mindset if you read to your benefit Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren's classic How to Read a Book, which I reviewed on this blog nine years ago. As a refresher to this, well, classic, you might also want to read Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Educated Mind. Bauer affirms Adler's premises about active reading as an indispensable means of self-education, and she extends his assertions by encouraging journaling about your reading experience to uncover authors' ideas and intentions and to document your own emotional and intellectual reactions to them. Her systematic approach to this practice is useful for other activities, such as studying for exams, researching for a book you wish to write, or mastering any intellectual discipline. 

Like Adler, she reserves chapters for studying different genres, including novels, memoir, history, drama, and poetry. After suggesting a practical and challenging reading technique—all worthwhile accomplishments come from diligence—Bauer uses the final three-fourths of the book covering classics through her own journaling experience. Scores of authors from Herodotus to Langston Hughes, and great works from the King James Bible to Seamus Heaney's Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966 - 1996, find their way into the discussion. 

In laying down a reading list for a lifetime, Bauer also offers a practical way to tackle the material: Don't worry about not understanding everything you're reading the first time; serious reading takes multiple passes through the narrative. Ask specific questions while reading, from a basic What does this writer want me to know or believe? to a deeper Have I experienced what the writer wants me to experience? Still more rewarding, share your observations and assessments with a reading partner. 

You'll get the tips you need to start on this worthwhile endeavor of self-education through the classics, which will make you a more critical reader of all topics that fit your fancy. And you'll thank Susan Wise Bauer for the roadmap.

BOOK BRIEF: The Psychology (and Philosophy) of Time Management

The New Science of Time Management: Why Emotional Awareness Matters Most for Control of Your Schedule by Robby Slaughter. Method Press 2019. 225 pages.

You have to be intrigued by a book on time management whose first sentence is "Let's face it: You can't really manage your time." In starting with such an assertion, Robby Slaughter sets a high bar for us to continue reading, as well as for himself to justify his approach to the topic, as he immediately makes clear this book is not the usual rose-colored how-to treatment of our most precious resource: time.   

Like me, you might have read a lot of books on time management, applied their principles, and when eventually reverting to your own habits and rituals, held fast to one, at most two, recommended techniques before they too fade in the turmoil of a pressure-packed period when your time management depended on others who have their own conflicting priorities. How can you manage your own time when running from one emergency to another fraught with unavoidable project-derailing delays, seemingly endless damage control, and distracting political consequences?  

Slaughter unflinchingly and candidly explains it all in The New Science of Time Management. He describes case studies to illustrate universal theories from philosophy, psychology, and business, which he blends into his practical structured suggestions for time mastery. While reading under his spell, you will find yourself saying, "Now I know why I can't tell how long that job will take" (Kappa Effect/Tau Effect), "What's true for here is not necessarily true for there" (Learned Helplessness), "Oh, how I love getting things done" (Mindfulness), "I knew it!" (Social Loafing), "No wonder that happens to me" (Zeigarnik Effect), "That's what happens to my team" (Bystander Effect), and much more. For the deep thinkers, the author provides source material to back up his claims and encourage independent research on the studies and precepts he cites.

If you want a theoretical basis to justify or to discover your time management practices, successes, failures, and lessons learned, read The New Science of Time Management. At once. In spurts. Repeat.

The Art of Writing, Part 6: Logging

You should keep a daily production log, listing the date, time devoted to writing, words produced, daily and hourly averages, and whatever else you think would help in documenting your work. My log looks like this:

Some people might think this log borders on obsession, but it could be worse. I could have included precise to and from times, summaries of the writing done, and reactions to my productivity levels. But you don't have to resort to spreadsheets or soul searching. You can go low tech by simply jotting daily results in your journal.

Keeping such a log brings to writers at least six benefits:

1. Historical perspective. Remembering exactly when you wrote what and how long it took you can offers insights into project duration when discussing future manuscripts with publishers and editors. 

2. Business accounting. You can always refer to the log to see how much time you put into your craft.

3. Business value. If you get paid for your writing, you can estimate what you earn per hour and whether you need to adjust your rates.

4. Developmental progress. You can now start comparing how quickly you wrote Novel A with Novel B, or your 2018 workload with your 2021 workload. This review provides an excellent way to assess your output.

5. Keeping honest. Once you start logging, you can no longer fool others, especially yourself, when you say, "I write every day" if you see a four-day gap in your production log.

6. Feeling accomplished. I've saved the best benefit for last. Logging helps you to get over saying, "I haven't done enough" or asking, "Where has the time gone?" You now have proof that you've done enough, and you know precisely where the time has gone.

No excuses. Start logging.

The Art of Writing, Part 5: Fact-Checking

Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, a play or a poem, you need to check your facts to prove you're reliable source. If you're writing about post-World War II Paris in 1946, you'll want to make sure you capture the Louvre as it looked then, without the I. M. Pei-designed glass pyramid built in 1988. Even if you lived in New York City on September 11, 2001 and are writing a memoir about your experience on that day, you would want to be careful about describing area landmarks, like the Oculus and the Vessel, which did not exist on the day of the terrorist attacks. Your article about Mickey Mantle would lose credibility if it confused his rookie year (1951) with his breakout year (1952). Likewise, a short story set in 1961 Republic of the Congo would irritate informed readers if you mixed up Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba's murderer, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, and Lumumba's successor, Joseph Iléo. Get your facts right!

One effective fact-checking method is using multiple sources, which is easy enough in these days of pervasive information availability. (If only everyone would employ this technique when reading ridiculous conspiracy theories, such as former US President Barack Obama's citizenship!) While I am a fan of Wikipedia, I would not end my research there. Say you wanted to write a piece about the birther phenomenon surrounding Obama's citizenship. You might want to read the nearly 12,000-word Wikipedia entry on the topic, but you could also refer to several of the sources listed in its 281 footnotes. It would help to read facts and opinions from both liberal and conservative sources, and even extremist ones, to understand the range of ideas on the issue. Then you need to be skilled in separating fact from fantasy.

The Art of Writing, Part 4: Getting Ideas

As a writer, you can find ideas everywhere, from the sound of garbage trucks that wake you up, the little girl talking to her father in a line at the bank, the sighting of an unusual bird that landed on your window ledge, the little leaguers warming the bench by talking about their Pokémon cards, the pickup basketball game across the street you catch between passing cars and trucks, the tattoo "Regina Only Yesterday" on the arm of the woman who serves you your coffee in a favorite café, a colorful drawing of the solar system by a first grader, the warning labels on a cigarette package, the contrasting backgrounds of Zoom meeting attendees, the sudden wistfulness of a song you're hearing for the first time in years, the tired looks on the faces of train commuters, the dents and scratches on a brand new parked car, the changing color of sand as the day turns to dusk, the lone leaf dancing down the gutter, the homeless woman who refuses your offer of a dollar, the juxtaposition of you eating delicious dinner while watching state-sponsored atrocities on television, a billboard advertising an exotic vacation during a global virus lockdown, the interaction between two dogs meeting each other for the first time, the abundance of ripe lemons falling from their tree in a neighbor's backyard, the radiant colors of profanities spray-painted on a tenement alleyway, a skillful salsa dance between an elderly woman and a teenaged boy, a reckoning about your mother you never had until today, a deaf woman typing her menu choices on a smartphone for a waiter in a restaurant, a furious battle between a mockingbird and squirrel over a nest in a tree hollow, a couple sitting on a park bench in a light September afternoon rain sharing an ice cream cone, the clothing in a children's store window, the connection between a biblical passage and a movie scene, the taste of a favorite food with one intentionally added or missing ingredient, the old man who always occupies the same chair at the public library, a typo on a sign in a restroom, an email from a scammer promising you $137,000, a robocall threatening to shut off your electricity, the letter you receive from a friend you haven't heard from in 30 years telling you she has stage 5 cancer, the worn condition of the only book you've ever read three times, a friend's ostentatious signature, another friend's uncharacteristically shabby appearance, a wedding photograph of your parents, dandelions growing in cracks on the concrete pavement, the hairs sticking out of your boss's nose and ears, the muffled argument you can't make out from the neighbors, the lost sock you found months after you disposed of the other one. 

I'll stop at 40 examples for now (I could have gone until 40,000) in the hope that you get my point about finding ideas anywhere.

The Art of Writing, Part 3: Getting It Done

The last post covered making the time to write. Getting into a writing routine is so important because time is all you have. You might wonder how much time Ayn Rand had on her hands to write her 311,596-word novel The Fountainhead (1943) and her even longer 561,996-word novel Atlas Shrugged (1957). Well, here's the answer: not as much as you think. 

Let's say you write a mere 300 words per day, roughly one double-spaced page of 12-point Times New Roman type. In 17 days (a bit more than half a month), you'd have a 5,000 word short story; in 133 days (not quite four-and-a-half months), a 40,000-word novella; and in 267 days (nearly nine months), an 80,000-word novel. This is not to say that Ayn Rand wrote The Fountainhead in 2 years and 10 months and Atlas Shrugged in 5 years and 2 months; perhaps she needed more time, or maybe she needed less. All I'm saying is that word production accumulates. 

My word counts are terribly low at the beginning of a writing project, maybe no more than 50 words a day, but then I gain momentum, often to well over 1,000 words a day, sometimes 5,000. I compare this buildup to a footrace. Usain Bolt's 100-meter world record of 9.58 seconds averages 0.958 seconds per 10 meters. But he ran about double that time for the first 10 meters, about 1.85 seconds, and progressively faster until he peaked from the 50- to 80-meter marks, averaging about 0.80 seconds per 10 meters. 

Momentum is priceless for writers as well. Once you get into what Mihaly Csikszentmihaly calls flow (I strongly recommend his book on the topic), or others call "being in the zone," you're too busy  creating to realize, or even to care about, how many words you're producing. You're just concentrating on whatever you're writing about and having fun.