Write or Wrong? Is the Pen Dead?

Writing skills used to be super-important

I received some resumes yesterday and the cover “letters” read more like bad tweets than pitch notes. I’ve noticed recently that, although I’ve always written,  I struggle now to come up with more than 250 words of prose (unless I’m analyzing new products, writing a website, or talking about my long life). And my penmanship (remember that?) is not quite as tidy as it once once (although I’m a beast when it comes to swiping on my Android or tapping the keyboard keys).

Education media goes so far as to say we have a “writing crisis” in America. Yet, I don’t see mass protests in the streets. Sadly, the illiteracy rate in American hasn’t changed in ten years.

The average writer’s salary is $51K. Compensation and benefits managers (the people who decide how much other people get paid) earn an average of $119K. And the people who put other people to sleep (anesthesiologists) bring in a whopping $246K.

So, although we may all agree that knowing how to communicate through the written word is a valuable skill, we live in a world where it isn’t taught well or rewarded.

And now I’m at roughly 200 words, so I’m going to sign-off and go back to tweeting and making memes (and searching for a marketing associate who still knows how to write!)

About writing…How to write (mostly about fiction, but many of these rules apply to proposals and marketing copy!)

Hack your next writing project.

The worst first sentences of novels.

Texting isn’t writing at all, according to this TED talk.

 

Nancy A. Shenker has been described as “one wise and witty wired woman.”

Throughout history, people who challenge the norm, break rules, and do unconventional and risky things blaze a path for others. Nancy is one of those folks. theONswitch is her “day job” and her passion. She leads a company that consults to a wide range of businesses on how to do better marketing.

Nancy has held senior marketing positions at major brand companies – Citibank, MasterCard International, and Reed Exhibitions. In both her corporate career and at theONswitch®, she has helped businesses, both small and large, launch, re-brand, and flourish.

Her experience and expertise spans a wide range of industries, including retail, food, fashion, kids and education, health and wellness, packaged goods, real estate and shelter, marketing services, technology, service businesses, and the event industry.

Nancy is a Huffington Post blogger and has been published and quoted in the New York Times, Crain’s New York, Businessweek, Enterpreneur.com, the Associated Press, Inc., AOL Small Business, Smart Money TV, Inc., Forbes, WeWork magazine, and other media.