Writing and Speaking

March 2012

I'm not a very good speaker. I say "um" a lot. Sometimes I have
to pause when I lose my train of thought. I wish I were a better
speaker. But I don't wish I were a better speaker like I wish I
were a better writer. What I really want is to have good ideas,
and that's a much bigger part of being a good writer than being a
good speaker.

Having good ideas is most of writing well. If you know what you're
talking about, you can say it in the plainest words and you'll be
perceived as having a good style. With speaking it's the opposite:
having good ideas is an alarmingly small component of being a good
speaker.

I first noticed this at a conference several years ago.
There was another speaker who was much better than me.
He had all of us roaring with laughter. I seemed awkward and
halting by comparison. Afterward I put my talk online like I usually
do. As I was doing it I tried to imagine what a transcript of the
other guy's talk would be like, and it was only then I realized he
hadn't said very much.

Maybe this would have been obvious to someone who knew more about
speaking, but it was a revelation to me how much less ideas mattered
in speaking than writing.
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