Assumptions about Your Goals

Remember that you really have two distinctly different goals for any writing project:
to create a desirable effect on your readers
to produce and manage your project

Break down a project into manageable pieces using the Swiss chess strategy so you can nibble away at the project in chunks.

Start a project by narrating the facts as you understand them or by framing variations of possible arguments.

Keep moving ahead on the text until you're done with a project.

Assumptions about Your Readers

Visualize your readers if it will help you generate text that meets their needs, answers their questions, or addresses their concerns.

Find out more about your readers from others in your organization or from the readers themselves.

Imagine other, more receptive, readers or ignore your readers altogether temporarily if doing so helps you move forward.

Begin by firing away, generating text as quickly as you can while concentrating on your issues, arguments, and evidence; then reread and revise your text for readers.

Assumptions about Your Arguments

You don't need to begin with the perfect argument; instead, use your writing to explore your evidence and to identify arguments explicit in it.

Look for arguments that are laid out for you
by the conventions
by the context of the situation
by arguments offered by your readers
by your own goals

Assumptions about the Conventions of Your Document and Situation

Use dummies of final documents to help you generate large, complex writing projects.

Use a similar document the organization has developed for a comparable situation to create a dummy.

Use a dummy to make assignments to members of a project team and to measure progress on different parts of the project.

Assumptions about Expression

If your assumptions about what is the appropriate voice for a document are inhibiting your expression, look more closely at your writing situation and perhaps consult with people you trust about conventions of expression.

If you don't feel comfortable composing in the voice that's conventional
Write the text in a voice that's more comfortable for you and then ask colleagues to revise the expression
Ask someone else who's comfortable with the conventional voice to write the text
Try to write quickly, mimicking the voice you feel is conventional even though it feels uncomfortable

For questions and suggestions, please e-mail us at kilbornj@stcloudstate.edu or rinkster@stcloudstate.edu.

The print version of the Instructor's Manual for The Writing of Business
was written by Robert P. Inkster and Judith M. Kilborn for Allyn and Bacon.
This web version of the manual was coded by Judith M. Kilborn.