• The One Minute Manager What is the lesson for you here? Telling simple and compelling stories to convey your point WORKS. Writing for a smart, interested 12-year-old forces you to be clear and direct—which in turn makes your book MORE appealing to older audiences. If you do that—without being condescending in tone—the book will probably be as clear and direct as you need it to be. I’m not saying to be simplistic. I’m not saying to leave out any important information. I’m not even telling you to dumb anything down—far from it. I am telling you to write your ideas in a digestible, direct way such that a smart and interested 12-year-old could understand them. To be clear, that doesn’t mean your ideas themselves have to be simple; it just means your presentation of them is simple and direct. The problem is that so many people think good writing is compli- cated and difficult to read. That is not true. There are some fields, like academia, where writing in a needlessly complex way is given high status. But outside of those fields, the more direct and simple the writing is, the more accessible your actual ideas will be, and the better the book will do with readers—which is how you get everything you want as well. THE THREE-STEP EDITING METHOD We recommend a three-step editing process: 164 · ThE SCriBE METhOD