21-2-2022 |

 

 

There is a little-known secret to seeing if your spine is broken.

 

Not your spine, , I would hope you could work that out by yourself.

 

The spine of anything that you've written.

 

This only applies to non-fiction, you understand. So it includes long-form anything: Reports, strategy documents, articles, theses, papers, whitepapers...

 

It's incredibly simple and it's incredibly secret. Nobody knows how to do it.

 

Except that, today, I'm going to give it to you.

 

It's this:

 

If you can't:

Then the spine of your work is broken and you have to restructure it.

 

It's exceedingly common in academia that very little attention is paid to the structure of an article, paper, or thesis in this way.

 

But when you do?

 

Phhooooeeeee the results are amazing.

 

For example:

 

I had one PhD candidate that nobody had any real hopes for. (Look, I'm just being honest.) He didn't know that. English was his second, third or fourth language; he hailed from Malaysia. He was considered a pretty good researcher but a hopeless writer.

 

My task was to improve his writing with a minimum number of contacts. This meant that he worked with me closely on Paper 1, less on Paper 2, and barely at all on Paper 3.

 

I taught him the above structural assessment technique, and a few others that were tailored towards his specific situation.

 

And you know what happened?

 

He got one of the best results that the school had ever seen. 

 

It helped, of course, that he was interested in solving the issue. He asked engaging questions, over and over again, so that he knew that he really understood it. And then he applied the method.

 

Bam! He smashed it. Smashed every single expectation you can imagine and blew the staff away in the process.

 

This process works in corporate life, and in the writing life, too.

 

So take it, use it, be excellent.

 

xx Leticia "the spine is where everything begins" Mooney.

 

PS. Until 28 February I'm offering editorial support for you and your team at just $80 per hour + GST, with a free assessment of your editorial and approval process thrown in. Reply if this appeals to you.

 

Please let me know what I can do for you.
 
Leticia Mooney is a consultant with decades of experience writing with and for people like you. Her company Brutal Pixie casts the the kind of spells your customers love. It consults to businesses in content strategy, content writing, ghostwriting, content operations, communication strategy, audits, investigations, training and coaching. Leticia is also the mother of an intelligent, engaging, and curious boy, who is named after a character created by J.R.R Tolkien. You can learn more about her at https://biodagar.com/about, and her business at https://brutalpixie.com.
 
Leticia Mooney
PO Box 1190
Pasadena SA 5042
Australia
Phone/Text (Signal/Telegram) +61 421 925 382
Follow on Telegram at https://t.me/leticiamooney
Follow on LinkedIn at https://linkedin.com/in/leticiamooney
Follow on Instagram at https://instagram.com/leticiamooneyghostwriter