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Dear community members,

No one is born a great writer. We become better with deliberate practice, a special type of practice that is both purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance. In the Network Capital Writing Fellowship starting on Nov 26, you will engage in deliberate practice as a community.

There are 3 key elements to the fellowship.

1. Practice the pitch: We want all participants to become published authors. The first step is to learn to pitch to newspapers, magazines and journals. Even if you work in a company and have no immediate aspiration of getting published, practicing your pitch will help you get access to internal opportunities like never before..

2. Get the first draft out: You need to put your work out there for critique. The first few drafts are always crappy but without them you can’t expect to advance your writing skills.

3. Time-Bound, Deliberate Practice: We all have blind spots when it comes to writing. During the fellowship, we will help you figure out your own style and complement it with specific insights to overcome your blind spots.

We kick-off the Writing Fellowship with an orientation session with Dr. Shashi Tharoor.

Following him, in the coming weeks the Writing Fellowship participants will learn from the likes of

If you’re still unsure about the fellowship, read what Adam Scott has to say………

Scott Adams: The Day You Became A Better Writer

I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.

Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say “swill.”

Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my first sentence to this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That’s the key.

Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)

That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re welcome.

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💝 If you want to learn how to navigate the Network Capital ecosystem, please read this article. 

✍🏼 Read our founder Utkarsh Amitabh’s Harvard Business Review articles here Building Your Category of One, Should You Choose Passion Over Paycheck, How to Make Envy Work for You?, and The Right Way to Make a Big Career Transition

💞 Read our founder Utkarsh Amitabh’s book Seductive Illusion of Hard Work. The foreword written by Klaus Schwab, the founder of World Economic Forum.