[Your Voice - XI]
My editor told me this: “When you write a first draft of a story, include everything. It’ll be terrible. When you re-write it, take out everything that’s not the story.”
If this is applied to company emails . . . they’d be 75% shorter.
If this advice is followed for meetings . . . we’d have fewer of them and the meetings we did have would be much more efficient.
If this insight guides our public speeches and sermons and lectures . . . we’d all pull out phones less.
Our voice is not all that we say; it’s not all the thoughts we formulate and the words we can find to put to those thoughts. First drafts are the kernel, chaff, soil, and weeds too. But our voice is in there. It requires threshing, sifting, and meticulously combing through.
Our voice is never the first draft. Our voice is often many drafts down the road of re-writing.
The most effective emails, important meetings, and impactful speeches all share this: the communicator labored over their communication and the chaff has been removed.
Voiceless communication is mostly first draft chatter.
