I rewrote a lot of it. 456 new words.
Author Archives: carl
upgoer5 site and writing clearly
xkcd did a great comic explaining the Saturn 5 rocket using only the 1,000 words people use most often. Splasho.com created a tool to help you write your own material with only the ten hundred most used words. I spent time today translating the first paragraph of my Entrepreneurs page into upgoer5 text. My result looked like this:
Is there a way to explain what a person who starts a business is like? Are there things those people are like that is always the same? When I started this class I thought it would be easy to explain what a “person who starts a business” is like on the first day of class. As I started writing notes it became clear it was not going to be so easy. I read what other people wrote, talked to people who start businesses and people who give money to people who start businesses, and looked it up on computers. I could not find an answer that people agreed on. Can people learn how to start businesses, or do some people just know to to do it from when they are a baby? Does a person who starts a business have to make up things and imagine how different the world could be all by themselves, or can that person just be good at using ideas made up by others? Does a person who starts a business have to “make another person’s pain go away,” or can he “make other people want what he makes?” And how does helping people have fun fit into that?
Some of it is a bit silly funny, but it is helpful to helps make you think about the simplest clearest way to say things.
EET Value Proposition and Class 2
Spent more time editing today and tried to rewrite the Value Proposition page from scratch. Also wrote an intro for Class 2 on the EET site. A total of only 454 words, but I spent two or three hours working on EET content.
EET Value Proposition Page
Spent a lot of time editing and organizing the work I’ve already written for Week 2 of the class. I ended up resequencing a lot of it. The class will flow much better now. Worked on writing about the Value Proposition, something which came up missing. Spent most of my time doing research and looking up facts for the example of PDI’s pre-DW value proposition. 447 words only.
Week in Review – Writing Exercise
Tired again tonight, 10pm before I started writing. Wrote about the first week back for the new semester. I thought it would be more reflective, but it ended up being more of a log of the week with a few emotions poured in. 648 words in about 20 minutes.
Describe My Moleskine Notebooks – Writing Exercise
I’ve been using them for notes for two years now. The first one was as an exercise to get over my fear of writing in empty books. I wish my 9th notebook was as interesting as the first one which was meant to be tossed away. 899 words and then wham – a wall and I was done.
EET – Competition
474 words added onto the draft post about Market Opportunities. None of this is very good, but it’s a great place to start with a pen full of red ink.
EET – More for the Website
Took a first pass at writing about Value Propositions and Market Opportunities. It’s been hard to get momentum on these pages. I decided to just write poorly and get ideas down that I can go and edit into something coherent later. This seemed to work. Stopped at 1,232 words after an hour(!).
Shifting my Schedule – Writing Exercise
Tired tonight and it’s only 9:00pm. Wrote about my plans for shifting my schedule for writing when I’m more alert – so far it’s only made me more tired. 880 words of garbage about that.
Early Memories – Writing Exercise
Didn’t feel inspired to work on the EET blog, though that was my intent. Instead grabbed an idea from Writing Down The Bones and wrote about my earliest memories – in this case all I could remember of things that happened in our first house.