Part 1: Whack Wordiness gets you comfortable with getting rid of redundancies, wobbly words, and extraneous phrases. It discusses absolutes and gives you a chance to trim a one-page blog entry by one third. Participants come away with an acute awareness of how wordiness gets in the way of good writing—and what to do about it.

Part 2: Top Techniques for Improving Your Writing touches on planning a process, grammar points (agreements, dangling participles, etc.) and ways to add cadence and rhythm to your writing. It features how to:

• Write effective emails and subject lines for greater open rates
• Plan your writing so you don’t waste time
• Use active verbs, adjectives, and adverbs
• Match the word with the meaning
• Make your proofreading meaningful so you don’t make mistakes.

Guaranteed to add power to your pen and polish to your writing.

Ask about editing of pre- or post-workshop writing samples

Every technique learned comes alive when you see it in your writing! Each participant may submit one actual writing sample (up to 600 words in length) to be professionally edited prior to the workshop. They will be returned with suggestions and revisions at the workshop. Ask about this option.

Organizations that have benefited:

Businesses and Government

• Aetna Insurance – Coventry Workers’ Comp Services
• Alden Torch Financial (Avante Leadership Group)
• Ameriprise Financial Group Tucson
• Carondelet Medical Group Tucson
• City of Chandler
• Lawrence Livermore National Labs (Avante Leadership Group)
• Longview Systems (Avante Leadership Group)
• Pima County Waste Management
• Pinal County Courts
• Lof Lopez & Associates Tucson
• MindPlay Tucson
• Nova Home Loans Tucson
• The Heath Team Mortgage Lenders
• Women Entrepreneurs’ Small Business Boot Camp

Associations

• Tucson Festival of Books
• National Speakers Association (NSA)
• Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS)
• NSA-Arizona /NSA-Colorado / NSA Northern California
• Grant Professionals Association (GPA)
• Project Management Institute (PMI)
• Local First Arizona (LFA)
• National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO)
• Association of Talent Development (ATD)
• Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP)
• Arizona Authors Association (AAA)
• Scottsdale Women Writers
• Society of Southwestern Authors (SSA)

Webinar clients

• Direct Pay
• SpeakerNet News (SNN)
• On the Right Track Seminars
• Local First Arizona (LFA)
• Dudley Court Press
• All Things Admin
• Wheatmark Publishing
• Williamson Media Group
• Nonfiction Authors Association (NFAA)
• Office Dynamics International (ODI)
• International Assoc. of Administrative Professionals (IAAP)

Bring this WordShop into your organization or request a webinar. Call Barbara at 520-615-7910 for details.

Comments from attendees:

• Reminder of less is better.
• Hands-on exercises were fun.
• Accessible, helpful, and plenty of examples.
• Interactive and relevant to my work as a grant writer.
• Common words/phrases explained and improved.
• Learned to eliminate unnecessary words and write more clearly.
• Good tips pulling out what we know – consciousness-raising!
• More fun than a grammar lesson and full of tips I can use often.
• Use active versus passive verbs in my writing.
• How to find better words and use a parallel path in my writing.
• Some words don’t mean what we want them to mean.
• Allow time to walk away and look at emails again before sending them.
• Short emails are better than long ones, and subject lines are everything!
• How to get your message across with a minimum number of words, so you don’t bog down the message.
• It was great practice learning to use similar words with different meaning in a sentence together.
• I will be able to eliminate a lot of unnecessary words and make my messages more clear and concise.
• It was good to refresh the grammar rules I had forgotten as well as know the difference between colon and semicolon.
• All the ideas were directly applicable to my administrative assistant activities and the wealth of examples were absolutely outstanding.

After Barbara’s WordShop, I came back to my desk to edit an important email that I had intended to send out later that day. I immediately realized that it did not convey what I meant to say. When I rewrote it using what we’d learn, it had a lot more impact. I felt proud I could apply the writing techniques quickly, and now I use them every day. My team does, too. We do live group editing and coach each other on the tips such as using active voice, removing one-third of the words, and catching things that don’t make sense. The WordShop was totally worthwhile and wasn’t painful from a cost perspective! – Amy Buttery, Manager, Learning and Performance, Coventry Workers’ Comp Services, Aetna Insurance

This course has me looking at the flow, meaning, and understanding of what I write and how I bring my messages to others.– Christine Hazen Molina, coach

Great tool, even for seasoned writers. We all get tripped up on words.– Morleen Novitt, ad copywriter