Write for Your Life: A Guide to Clear and Purposeful Writing (and Presentations) - Hardcover

by Charles Wheelan (Author)

How would you create a winning pitch for your latest investment idea? Or persuasively argue for a major policy change? Or successfully ask your boss for a raise? The answer: clear and effective communication, whether in writing or through a presentation.

Best-selling author Charles Wheelan has spent decades mastering effective communication skills in his work as a writer, college professor, journalist, speechwriter, political candidate, and public speaker. In Write for Your Life, he shares his best tips. Taking readers through all the steps required to arrive at a coherent first draft, he then explains the best ways to improve and fine-tune your writing. He covers how to organize and present information, why it's necessary to adapt your tone to different audiences, and when to use summaries, sidebars, bullet points, and other tools for making information more digestible. He explores the truth behind popular clichés like "Show, don't tell" and "Kill your darlings," and discusses the proper use and attribution of quotations from secondary sources. And he goes on to cover how to speak effectively, providing helpful advice for preparing a winning presentation or delivering a speech.

Writing with his signature wit and humor, Wheelan illustrates his points with entertaining examples from his own life, as well as memorable anecdotes from leading magazine and newspaper writers, political figures from Winston Churchill to Barack Obama and Elena Kagan, and a diverse array of the best communicators from the worlds of culture, sports, and politics. Write for Your Life is an essential guide for anyone needing to get their ideas across whether in an email, memo, report, presentation, fund-raising letter, or speech.

Back Jacket

Praise for Previous Books by Charles Wheelan:

Praise for Naked Economics
"Clear, concise, informative, witty and, believe it or not, entertaining....Wheelan provides in full measure three of the rarest and most highly desired qualities of good writing: illumination, pleasure and clarity."
-- E. William Smethurst Jr., Chicago Tribune

"Bravo, Charles Wheelan, for doing the impossible: making the study of economics fascinating, comprehensible, and laugh-out-loud funny."
-- Deborah Copaken Kogan, author of Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War

Praise for Naked Statistics
"Sparkling and intensely readable.... A great measure of the book's appeal comes from Mr. Wheelan's fluent style--a natural comedian, he is truly the Dave Barry of the coin toss set."
-- Abigail Zuger New York Times Book Review

"[Wheelan] does something unique here: he makes statistics interesting and fun. His book strips the subject of its complexity to expose the sexy stuff underneath."
-- The Economist