Print

Introduction 9 you writing to establish yourself as an expert in the field? To learn about an area you want to become familiar with? Join a committee that shares your interests. Volunteer at your institution to work on a project that will teach you practical skills you need to acquire. RULE #3 TAKE ADVANTAGE OF WRITING CONVENTIONS The three basic documents used in professional writing are the letter, the memo, and the report. The letter is used for correspondence, the memo for administrative or legal matters, and the report for documentation. The last thing you should be doing when you start a writing project is to rein- vent one of these standard document types. This book is full of examples you can use to inform your own work. Take advantage of them. Writing conventions have been in place since the first professional writ- ers came into existence several thousand years ago. They were known as scribes. Whether they used ideograms, pictograms or an abstract writing system like Arabic, their role was to record information that couldn’t be entrusted to memory. They transcribed letters, conducted legal business, and documented transactions using a proscribed formula—similar to what we refer to as a “template” in this book. Did you know that George Washington considered Alexander Hamilton too valuable to fight the British because he was Washington’s scribe, so to speak? Like the scribe, you can use established conventions to help you write professionally. Focus on the content of your message. There is no need to reinvent structures that already exist. RULE #4 REPURPOSE YOUR RESEARCH Writing is not a one-shot deal. Research you’ve done, ideas that you may only have begun to explore, and questions that others have raised about your work can all be developed further. Take a look at anything you’ve written professionally, such as a newsletter, report, or library blog, and see whether it can be repurposed. The same holds true for conference presen- tations and poster sessions. I have a colleague, a literature professor, who is well-known for her productivity. Although she has written on a number of different topics, most of them have grown out of the research she has done for her earlier publications. If she finds information that does not fit into one project, she carefully files it away for future use. If you are a librarian,