My Favourite Tip: Ann Handley - Train your writing muscles every day

You’ve heard it a million times - improving your writing will make you better at just about any job you can think of. But how do you actually improve? How do you hone the craft?  

Marketing expert and bestselling author Ann Handley dedicates much of her own writing to teaching the craft, and she says the most important component of effective writing is the unique voice of the author. 

Especially today, when everyone with a social media account is a defacto marketer, and AI writing tools are improving at rapid speed, the ability to communicate with your own unique, unaffected voice is the key skill that makes great writers stand out. 

So how do you write in your own voice? Well, like anything else, it’s about a whole lot of practice!

Ann teaches you how to make time for writing everyday, and how to ensure you have fun doing it.

Connect with Ann on Twitter or Instagram or sign up to her newsletter

You can find the full interview here: Marketing pioneer Ann Handley shares tools, tactics and attitudes that will make you a better writer

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CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You've heard it a million times.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Improving your writing will make you better at just about
any job you can think of.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
But how do you actually improve? How do you hone
the craft?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Marketing expert and best selling author and Handley dedicates much
of her own writing to teaching the craft, and she
says the most important component of effective writing is the
unique voice of the author, Especially today when everyone with
a social media account is a de facto marketer and

(00:35):
AI writing tools are improving at rapid speed. The ability
to communicate with your own, unique, unaffected voice is the
key skill that makes great writers stand out. So how
do you write in your own voice? And more importantly,
how do you get better at it? My name is

(01:00):
doctor amanthe Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder
of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how I
work a show about how to help you do your
best work. On today's My Favorite Tip episode, we go
back to an interview from the past and I pick
out my favorite tip from the interview. In today's show,
I speak with Anne Handling and this conversation starts with

(01:24):
Anne talking about how she approached creating the second edition
of her best selling book on writing called Everybody Writes,
And I might just add, if your job involves anything
to do with writing, even if it's just writing emails,
you need to read this book right now.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
So my intention was to do the equivalent of you know,
you know, running the vacuum over the place, maybe doing
a little lake dusting, you know, maybe spray some like
you know, like spray some for breathe around and like
freshen it up in that way. Then I said down
to read it again, just to start making some notes,

(02:04):
and I thought, you know, I'll probably end up with
like maybe ten pages of notes of things that I
need to change. But as I started reading, I kept
writing things down and writing things down. The next thing
I know, I had thirty pages of notes and then
forty pages of notes, and I was like, uh oh,
I think what we're going to do here is not
a dusting and not a vacuuming, not for breezing depression. Instead,
what we're going to do is take it right down

(02:25):
to the studs and we're going to build it from
the ground up. So to your point, it's like, yeah,
a lot of the bones are there, like a lot
is similar, but there's also a whole lot of news
stuff in it, and a lot of that reflects my thinking. So,
for example, in the first edition, I talked about thirteen
things that we as creators, as entrepreneurs, as businesses, right,

(02:50):
as business owners right. In the second edition there's twenty things.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Now, why is that.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
It's not because I discovered there's, like, you know, things
that have been around forever. It's because they've happened in
the past eight years.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
You know.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
It's because now we are writing a whole lot more,
We're communicating a whole lot more. There's new channels and
new new areas of communication that we need to explore.
And in some cases my thinking has expanded too. Like
in the first edition I had a very very thin
chapter about email. The second edition I have three chapters
all about email, email, newsletters, direct response email, and why

(03:23):
I believe so strongly and in email as a communication tool.
So all of that had changed. But you know, what's
more than that, And I think this kind of answers
your question, like I've changed, you know, because one of
the things that I really realized what I went through
and started reading the first edition of the book in
anticipation of writing the next edition, was that how different

(03:44):
my voice sounded. And as I read the first edition,
I almost didn't recognize the writer, even though the writer
was me, Even though I wrote that, you know, eight
or nine years ago, at this point, I didn't recognize
how I phrased things. And I sensed, this feels a
little bit uptight, and this writer feels like, you know,
she has some anxiety. And that was me. So one

(04:06):
of the things I did was kind of got rid
of all that. I kind of addressed it head on
and just rewrote it with my own voice now. And
what I've done over the past, you know, eight years
since the first edition, in particularly i'd say in the
last four or five years, is that I've been a
much more consistent creator in a public way, so that

(04:27):
even though I wrote a book like I just I
wasn't necessarily practicing writing on a regular basis. And what
I've done is I've launched an email newsletter, for example,
And the significance of that is that I publish every
other Sunday, and that means that I have a deadline
that I set for myself every other Sunday I have
to whether I want to or not. I'm communicating with

(04:48):
an audience offering them value, and it's taught me a
lot about how to engage others through my writing, just
through that the kind of practice of that email newsletter.
So it's not just an e mail newsletter. Really what
it is is it's really it's been it's been a
way that I've grown like as a writer. I mean,
certainly like marketing has changed, channels have changed, all the

(05:10):
things that you know that that are new in marketing,
but also our world has changed. You know, we are
here in you know, at the very end of twenty
twenty two, you and I were talking heading into twenty
twenty three, and we're still in a post COVID world,
and we were always being a post COVID world, but
we're still you know, the effects of it are still

(05:31):
with us, and so that, yeah, there's a lot of
things that have changed. We've changed, the world has changed,
marketing has changed, and I've changed.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
You mentioned how the voice of Anne had changed in
the last eight years, and I guess, you know, you
could call that your your brand voice.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
I'm curious as to how have you gone about developing
or finding your brand voice, because I feel like it's
something that a lot of people struggle with and they
feel like they just have to fit into the corporate
brand for example, that they work within.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
A big misconception about brand voice is that it's something
you find. You know that it doesn't exist and you
like are are walking in the forest one day and
you trip over it. No, it's like, oh, look there's
my brand voice. Like it doesn't work that way. Instead,
it's actually something that's already inside you. I mean, it's
already there, and I think it's about tapping into it

(06:26):
and allowing it to come out, having the confidence to
let it out, all of those things instead of finding
your voice because we all, you know, we all have it.
It's not like an artificial thing that's like thrust upon
us externally. Instead, it's within us what we're working with
brands though, Like say, for example, if I'm a content
creator who is writing I don't know, maybe writing blog

(06:50):
posts for like a big corporate brand, Well, like how
do I figure out like using my voice within that construct?
I mean, think about the parameters of your brand? Who
are you? What do you stand for? Or not you personally?
But the brandy work for, like what are they all about?
Like they should have some parameters around their own around
their own voice, like in some kind of voice guide
or something like that. I talk about that in the

(07:11):
second edition. But that doesn't mean that you have to
write like them, Like you're not shoving your voice into
those into that construct. Instead, it's about how do I
use my voice within that construct. So I think of
it as kind of like like guardrails. You know, it
makes sure you don't like fly off into like no
man's land and like crash and burn. But at the

(07:32):
same time, you know it's not meant to be restrictive either.
So when I think about brand voice, that's how I
think about it.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
If you enjoyed this extract of my chat with Ann,
you might want to go and listen to the whole interview,
which you can find a link to in the show notes.
If you're looking for more tips to improve the way
that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that
contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me
work better, ranging from software and that I'm loving three

(08:01):
to interesting research findings. You can sign up for that
at Howiwork dot co. That's how I Work dot co.
Thank you for sharing part of your day with me.
By listening to How I Work. If you're keen for
more tips on how to work better, connect with me
via LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm very easy to find. Just
search for Amantha Imba. How I Work was recorded on

(08:25):
the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the
cool And Nation. I am so grateful for being able
to work and live on this beautiful land and I
want to pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.
How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support
from Dead Set Studios, and thank you to Martin Nimba
who did the audio mix and makes everything sound better

(08:47):
than it

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Would have otherwise.