Why can I talk about my business but not write it?
Write like you’re in conversation over a cuppa
When we talk face-to-face, we use the full range of our communication… body language, inflexion, emotions, expression. When we write, our words are exposed. Breath can help it flow again.
A musing by Michelle May-Jones
When you sit down to chat over a cuppa with a friend you can wax lyrical about your business. But you can’t seem to capture that same flow when you’re writing about your business, even later the same day. What was it you said that she responded so excitedly to? What was that phrase you used again? Why when I write, does it feel hard?
I know you know this feeling. I felt it too.
Why is it easier to talk than write?
Speaking is easier than writing because of all the other mechanics and feedback that come with speaking. When we speak to someone it gives them a talking head - something to look at, as well as listen to. And it does the same for you. Your listener gives you all kinds of feedback on what you’ve said. That’s what makes conversation so rewarding.
From your tone of voice, they know you’ve just told a joke. And your facial expression backs it up. If they get it and laugh along, perhaps your whole body will shake with laughter and you’ll share a moment. If they don’t understand or don’t like that humour, they give you different feedback and you have an opportunity to redress the mistake. It’s a give and take experience.
This safety net is removed as soon as we commit our words to paper (screen) alone. The words we use have only themselves to rely on. And we don’t know how they’ll be received or what context the receiver will put them in without us in the room, negotiating the language.
A 2005 study (Kruger, Epley and colleagues) divided its participants into two groups. One group sent written emails that included sarcastic or serious statements. The other did the same but sent them as recorded messages. The senders all expected their messages to be understood 78% of the time. But the results were informative and didn’t support that expectation. Those who listened to the recordings understood them correctly 73% of the time. But the stark statistic is that only 56% of the time was the written message received in the way the sender intended.
The researchers’ explanation was that without cues like gesture (body and facial expressions), emphasis and voice intonation, the writing struggles to carry the tone. The other piece I find interesting is that people feel they communicate better in writing than they actually do by a margin of 22 percentage points.
They don’t realise how hard it is to make yourself understood in writing. But you know. And it’s my job to make it natural again.
Where does the fear of writing come from?
It’s a learned behaviour.
Almost everyone I speak to has a tale about when they worked out they couldn’t write.
A woman I worked with a few months ago had a damaging experience with an English teacher at school. That teacher got over-zealous with her red pen on a 12 year old’s essay. And that criticism, coming at a formative time in her life, created a writing barrier for her, well into her 50s.
Some of us have strong memories of being told to be quiet, that we were being “too much”. Children should be seen and not heard. For many women this programming was conditioned early on in life, and continued into their adulthood. We had to fit ourselves into someone else’s comfort level.
My story is similar to many others. I learned it at the corporate table. I learned that every time I wrote something down I was being judged. I learned not to “put it in writing”. I learned not to stick my head above the parapet for fear of being torn down.
And perhaps worst of all? I learned to squeeze myself into an appropriately corporate communication style that was so far from my own personal style that it felt like I had become a Communication Contortionist. It felt like I was wearing an extremely ill-fitting, polyester, brown suit - icky yucky!
Why does my writing still sound like I’m wearing a corporate suit?
We all changed what we wore to the office when we entered our founder years but we didn’t change our corporate voice. We assumed it meant we sounded professional. It doesn’t. It sounds fake.
You don’t still wear corporate clothes for most of your working day, do you? If you’re anything like me, it’s smart up top, slippers down the bottom, ready for online meetings 😉.
If you’re no longer wearing the suit why do you still sound like the watered down, corporate version of yourself that no longer fits?
So how do you recondition your voice?
The easy answer is with breath, and without needing to investigate the trigger.
The reason that I work with breath first isn’t because I used to be a singer. It’s because breath is the universal cleanser. It’s a direct route into your body. And it’s a direct route out again.
We don’t have to understand the trigger to our locked voice. Breath is strong enough to breeze through it and create a flow around it. Breath creates a body - brain connection that helps you to make progress, even when you feel stuck.
Understanding where the barrier to your writing came from is, of course, useful but it needn’t get in the way of unlocking your writing voice.
If you want to do the work to understand why and how you came to find it so difficult, you should absolutely do that. But it’s not the work we do here.
Try the freeing breathwork on my homepage before you write your next post.
Read my blog on Energetics, Authenticity and Breath to learn more about how it works.
How do I get my spoken voice onto the page?
My top tip (and the research agrees with me) is to write it and then read it back to yourself out loud.
Remember that email study I outlined above? One of the very interesting findings was that when senders read their written words back to themselves out loud, they made a better judgement about how their message would be received.
If it sounds like you would say it in a conversation, then you’ve got it right. If it doesn’t yet, then take a deep breath, role play a quick conversation with yourself (quick is the trick because you won’t get bogged down), and have another go. Then read what you’ve written out aloud again.
Rinse and repeat until you feel you’ve got it right.
This works because it puts your body back in the writing seat. It helps you not to get stuck in your head. Breathing and speaking aloud align our body and mind.
When is it worth having help?
When you’re doing all the things and it’s still not shifting. Or when you’re making progress but you know it could still be better, more quickly. Or when you’ve worked out how you want to sound, but just don’t have the time to make it happen.
Help doesn’t have to be something big. It could be something as simple as one of my breathwork exercises. And sometimes it’s more. But you get to decide.
One of my clients, Settle Stories, came to me just to get help with copywriting for their new website - a pretty traditional copywriting offering. And today, we’re still working together. Not every day, but little touchpoints whenever they feel it’s getting sticky, or they need some help with keeping their messaging on brand.
It’s become the loveliest, easiest working relationship for both of us. If you want to read more about our journey together, there’s a case study for you to read.
If, like Settle Stories, you want to start unlocking your voice, you might be interested in Words First. We look at what you’re already writing, establish where it’s aligned (and where it isn’t) and give you the writing tools to make it so. We can work online anywhere or in-person in the East of England.
What can I expect if I unlock my voice?
When you get your written words to sound like your spoken ones, you will feel like you’re in conversation with a friend. In this world of AI-generated everything and the sheer volume of what’s being digitally pushed at us, human to human connection is the key to standing out and feeling good about it. And what better human connection is there than just sitting down and chatting with another human being?
I dare you to read back some of your business words and put them through the conversation test. Are they working? Are they really? Say it out loud and see if you can make it better.
I know you can.If you have any questions or just want to chat over a cuppa, set up a call with me.
References:
If you’re as intrigued as I was about the email study you might like to explore Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J. and Ng, Z.W. (2005). Egocentrism over e-mail: Can we communicate as well as we think? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(6), 925–936
DOI link to original study
British Psychological Society’s Research Digest article “Oops! How sarcastic emails fall flat”