The advice commonly given to public speakers to overcome stage fright is “imagine your audience naked.” Supposedly that makes them less intimidating.

I know it has helped me. I have terrible stage fright. Before going on stage I usually picture my audience dressed like Michael Palin in the Monty Python “Spanish Inquisition” sketches, or like the villagers with pitchforks in the Frankenstein movie. I don’t mean to picture them that way, you understand: it’s just that those are the kinds of images that naturally come to my fevered mind. Imagining the audience in their natural peasant skins does make them easier to—well, not easier to face, exactly, but less threatening.

But I’m not sure that’s the whole story. I think the advice is more about leveling the playing field. Because you’re up there naked. If you imagine them naked as well, you’re no longer at a disadvantage. Being naked in public is only scary if you’re the only one. Anyway that’s what the AANR says.

It’s sort of the same for writing. When you put your words out there for the world to see, you’re also performing naked in public. Unfortunately, the “imagine your audience naked” advice doesn’t help a bit here. You can’t see your audience. But they can see you—or anyway your words. It’s not ever going to be a level playing field. Almost anything your imagination offers up can be useful to you as a writer, but imagining your readers in the buff will never make you less intimidated by the prospect of putting yourself out there naked on the writing stage.

Some of us deliberately put ourselves in that situation, but for a second I want to address the poor soul who, though no fault of his own, finds himself compelled to tread that terrifying stage unclad. The tech lead who learns that blogging is a job requirement. The senior executive just learning that he is expected to write and post his own emails.

Is there some trick like the naked audience trick that makes writing in public less terrifying? Sorry, but if there is, I don’t know it. I’m afraid that all I have to suggest is that you clothe yourself in the basics of good writing. And, yeah, that takes work. Do that, though, and you can boldly put your words out there for the world to see, confident that—but I’m not going to complete that sentence, because the gods of irony would ee to it that there was an embarrassing typo in it.

[An aside on the intricacies of sexism in language: if you think it was sexist of me to use the masculine pronouns in this post, try it with feminine pronouns. We state here a special case: when a male writer is using nakedness as a metaphor, it may be less sexist to go with the boy pronouns.]

This is the first in a series of observations on writing.

Nobody can teach you to write. I know I can’t teach you to write.

Only you can make you sit down in the chair and write.
Only you can decide how to turn ideas into words.
Only you can see through your eyes.
Only you know what you know.

But a teacher or workshop leader or editor can help you improve your writing. When you show up for a writing workshop, you bring your writing with you. Workshop leaders have nothing to give you until you give them your writing. They can only show you how to improve something already written.

Oh, they can tell you how important it is to set aside a regular time and place to write, they can give you tips on how to avoid distractions and get on with it. They can read you inspiring quotes and suggest tricks for opening yourself up to inspiration and new experiences. They can show you examples of good writing and explain what’s good about them.

But when it comes to helping you with your writing, all a teacher can do is to give you editing tips. That’s not because writing teachers are ineffective, it’s because most of the work in writing is really editing. To riff off Thomas Edison’s line on genius, writing is five percent inspiration, five percent determination, and ninety percent editing.

More or less. Your mileage may vary.

The good news is that the ninety percent part is easy—compared to the inspiration and determination parts, which are really hard (sorry). But editing and improving your writing is just a matter of a set of skills that anyone can acquire. They can be taught, and you can become a master of them if you choose to.

I think maybe I can help. That’s what this series is about.

-Michael Swaine

Yeah, nothing new here lately. I hope to kick off a writing series in a few days, but I have to get the next issue of PragPub out the door first.

Oh, and I may have something of a writing nature to announce tomorrow.