In this final module, you’ll bring everything you’ve covered in the course together, so that you have all the tools you need to make your business writing exceptional. You’ll also have the opportunity to review the course and plan future action.
Check Your Success
If you’ve been following the action steps in this course, you’ll have a new piece of writing ready to publish. But before you do, take a moment for one last check. Use the Business Writing Checklist to ensure you haven’t forgotten anything.
This checklist will be useful to you in the future and you should use it for all your writing. Don’t forget that your professional reputation depends on your writing being faultless.
Avoid Writer's Block
Everyone gets stuck for topics from time to time, and you don’t always have time to wait for inspiration to strike. You need to find ways to kickstart your writing that work for you on those days when you have a blog post due or a report to write and nothing is coming to mind.
Be prepared for writer’s block by keeping a list of ideas. Jot down any ideas that come into your head in a notebook or in a file on your computer. When you’re feeling stuck, look back at your notes for inspiration.
Some other ways to get inspired are:
- Sit down and brainstorm all the topics you could write about and whittle them down to the blog post for today.
- Survey your community and ask them what they’d like to see you write about.
- Research what others are writing about and get ideas from them.
Here’s one final writing tip: don’t start with the introduction.
You can waste a lot of time trying to think of something to say to start your blog post or report. Start somewhere in the middle instead. You have your outline, so pick something you feel like writing about and get on with it. You can come back to the introduction and other sections later.
What You Learned
This is a course you can refer back to time and time again to remind you of ways you can improve your business writing. It’s important to reflect on what you’ve learned, so answer these questions, and complete the action plan table in your Action Guide:
- What have you learned about effective business writing practices?
- What difficulties have you encountered?
- How do you plan to address these?
- What further steps can you take to become totally comfortable with the process?
