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Introduction 7 sports scholarship or score fabulously well on your SAT or ACT test, your essay for the college application is probably the most important factor in determining whether and where you go to college. If you are in graduate school, your grades will come principally from written assignments. This continues throughout your professional career as you apply for a job or teaching position, fill out grant applications, write reports, or do research when you are an academic. Because of this, people have developed a fear of being judged through their writing that lasts throughout their entire lives. It can be deeply crippling. Frustration and a sense of inadequacy are probably the two emotions that cause beginning writers the most problems. The good news is it doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s take a look at five rules I believe are essential to becoming a confident and successful writer. THE FIVE RULES OF PROFESSIONAL WRITING RULE #1 THE GOOD ENOUGH PRINCIPLE The first rule of professional writing is that your work only needs to be good enough. Good enough doesn’t mean that you don’t set high standards for yourself or try your hardest. It means that you acknowledge that you can only work up to the best of your ability. Writing is not a contest. There will always be people who write better or worse than you do. Your goal is to write clear, logical prose and produce it in a timely fashion. That’s it. Of course, if you are a gifted writer, it can only be to your advantage. But, as I said earlier, writing is like a muscle—the more you use it, the stronger it will get. If you adopt the “good enough” principle, you will be able to undertake projects—and succeed at them—you otherwise might only have dreamed of. When I was starting out in my first job as an academic librarian, our director sent around an e-mail announcing a Fulbright opportunity in Morocco. It was a three-week assignment that would require the applicant to lecture daily in French or Arabic on interlibrary loan, cataloging and acquisitions. Although I knew nothing about interlibrary loan and just the basics of cataloging, and acquisitions, I applied for the position knowing that my research skills were strong enough to do the preparation necessary for this assignment and to do an acceptable job. I had studied French in college, but I thought that with some review I would remember enough of the language to get by. And if it wasn’t good enough, I always could ask for