Monthly Archives: June 2007

How to Be a Better Writer

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Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, is hilarious. He is also wise. Yesterday on his blog he divulged 80% of the rules for good business writing. Here are his tips:

  • The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

  • Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

  • Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say “swill.”

  • Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.

Here are 50 more tips for good writing.

One thing I’m thinking more about is humor writing. It’s hard to write humorously about serious topics.

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Book Review: Miracle in the Andes

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Miracle in the Andes is Nando Parrado‘s account of his rugby team’s survival in the Andes in 1972. It is the first person perspective of the story already told in the book and movie Alive. For more information on the plane crash and ensuing rescue, check out this Wikipedia page.

I haven’t seen Alive, but I’m going to, because Parrado’s book is stunning, inspiring, and beautifully written. I highly recommend it for anyone who’s looking for both a chronological telling of what happened during those 72 cold, cold days and a deeply emotional reflection only possible from the man who lived it.

What Parrado and his friends went through is unimaginable for those of us who have not experienced an ordeal of that magnitude. Reading Miracle in the Andes reminded me of reading stories from the Holocaust — there is simply no way you can get your head around the pain and suffering.

Yet, the questions I asked myself while reading were, "What would I have done? Would I have been so brave? Could I have survived?" There is no way to know. Maybe, someday, I will face a challenge that calls for true, physical courage. In the the meantime, I can be proud to know that I am human like Parrado is human, and that our shared humanity hopefully implies some sort of shared, primal, benign instincts.

The book’s universal message is that we are all mortal. I believe, as Parrado does, that we can never be too aware of the reality of death and its closeness. 

He closes the book with these words:

As we used to say in the mountains, "Breathe. Breathe again. With every breath, you are alive." After all these years, this is still the best advice I can give you: Savor your existence. Live every moment. Do not waste a breath.

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Welcome New Readers of This Blog

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Welcome to new readers of this blog.

This is a blog about entrepreneurship, books, current affairs, writing, and most of all, ideas.

If you’re looking for information about my book My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley, you can visit www.mystartuplife.com or buy the book today on Amazon.com. You will also find it in most Barnes & Noble and Borders in the U.S.

Subscribe to my RSS feed here. Enter your email address on the right hand column of this page to subscribe to my posts via email. Visit the welcome page to subscribe to my free, once-a-quarter email newsletter. I answer all my email ([email protected]).

Here’s a link to some of my best posts over the years. Here are posts by category:

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New York Times Book Review

Posted inMy Book21 Comments on New York Times Book Review

7,000 business books are published each year. The New York Times reviews about a dozen of those in their "Off the Shelf" column in the Sunday business section.

I would love to be able to explain why they chose to review my book today. I can’t. I had no inside track. All I can say is that I got really, really lucky. Again. It’s even more of an honor to be reviewed by Harry Hurt III, an amazing writer who I’ve read for years.

The review is eminently fair, pointing out both strengths and weaknesses in the book. Hurt would have liked to have seen more financial information about Comcate — as he notes, I’m reticent because unlike other books in this genre, Comcate is still around, still fighting competitors for deals, still forming partnerships, still hiring. In this sense, it can’t tell all. Hurt also says the book lacks socioeconomic / political context, a fair complaint. (On a side note, Hurt inaccurately says Inc. Magazine named me Entrepreneur of the Year; not true.)

All in all, though, I think it’s a positive review: "Very much worth reading" and "informative, precocious, and entertaining" are two phrases which jump out in this spirit. He calls some of the entrepreneurial how-tos "insightful and inspirational".

I’m sure in the coming days some people will take shots at me, some people will roll their eyes, some people will think I’ve self-promoted my way into the New York Times. I’m still learning to deal with these kind of sentiments which automatically come (truthful or not) with higher profile.

But hopefully, some people will read the review and the book and feel inspired to start their own entrepreneurial journey. They will feel more ready to be CEO of their own life. And they will pick up some practical advice — not from the world’s most successful entrepreneur, not from the world’s most successful young entrepreneur — just some musings from a guy who’s accumulated a bunch of unique experiences, loves to write, and tried to deliver his thoughts in a way that would provoke thinking, spark laughter, and inspire action.

Thanks again to Harry Hurt and the New York Times for choosing to review my book.

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