Make these your New Year’s writing resolutions decisions
Friends!
I started the New Year with a vision board workshop. (There’s something so soothing about cutting and pasting IRL.) There, our delightful leader recommended that we call our masterpieces decision boards, not vision boards.
In the spirit of manifesting a delightful and successful 2025, here are three decisions to make for your writing practice this year:
1. Favor HI (human intelligence) over AI.
At this point in its evolution, AI has proven itself to be a great assistant, but a lousy writer. So use AI to you get your writing job done. Send it to fetch stats for a lead. Ask it to write a dozen draft captions. Invite it to help you brainstorm story angles.
But for messages that stand out, don’t use AI to craft your message. Bring your own humanity to your writing. Let your own, personal, human voice shine through. Tell human-interest stories. Lead with a personal anecdote.
2. Pass the Palm Test. ️
People will read more of your message if it looks easier to read. So pass the Palm Test: Make it look easier to read by breaking your message into chunks no longer than or wider than the palm of your hand. (Not your whole hand! Your palm!
When you’re finished, I should be able to put the palm of my hand down anywhere on your message. There should be something — a subhead, a list, a link, bold-faced lead-ins, highlight key words — other than just plain paragraphs under my hand.
3. Start strong.
Stop writing who-what-when-where-why-and-how leads. Quit boring your readers with XYZ Company yesterday announced that …
Instead, write leads that are:
- Concrete: Show instead of tell.
- Creative: Steal a technique from fiction writers, like storytelling or metaphor.
- Provocative: Provoke a question in the readers’ minds that they can only answer by reading the rest of the piece.
You only have one chance to draw readers into your message. If you don’t grab them in the lead, you’ll lose them forever.
Does your team need help accomplishing its New Year’s writing resolutions decisions? If so, reach out. I’ll help you and your team members write messages that Catch Your Readers.