10 Words to Cut From Your Writing*

In my constant efforts at self improvement I was drawn to an article on 'lean writing'. The thrust of the article suggested that you could easily cut out 10 unnecessary words from your sentences. The words in question were:

Just
Really
Very
Perhaps/maybe
Quite
Amazing
Literally
Stuff
Things
Got

I'm sure you have written a sentence with all of them in before. I have.

'Just a short note to really thank you very much for all the quite literally amazing stuff you've donated to the museum which we've already got, so perhaps you maybe want to retrieve your things from the skip out the back''

Now try that sentence without the unnecessary words.

''A short note to thank you for all you've donated to the museum which we have already, so you can retrieve it all from the skip out the back'''

It works! So not everything you read on the internet is bad advice.

But the larger point is that we can be prisoners of our language, free up some words and free up your mind. Can this liberating effect be applied to museums? What words can a museum do without? What would be the effect? Here are some suggestions in no particular order:

Backlog
Accreditation
Trustee
Friends
Curator
Concession
School
Conservation
Object
Volunteer

Abolish those words and instantly your museum is a happier place. You don't have a backlog! Yippee. No objects and no conservation issues means we don't have to have a curator, instantly creating savings. With no concessions you can charge full price all the time. You'll have no friends (nothing new there), but no trustees telling you what to do either. They just turn into greying busybodies and therefore indistinguishable from the paying public. With no volunteers they'll just become unpaid staff, and therefore you can now sack the staff who have the temerity to ask for pay - yet more savings! No school groups means no graffiti in the toilets and no headaches at the end of the day from all the noise. Finally, no accreditation and heritage nirvana is surely reached while the dustbin will be full of unloved and unused paperwork.

Just reflect on that for a moment and don't pretend that I'm not offering you a seductive vision of the future for your museum.

I might apply this to my personal life, and after the week I've had I'm going to abolish the following:

Rain
Queue
Tax
Breathalyser
Fine
Mortgage
Arrears
Cholesterol
Erectile dysfunction
Hangover

Happy Friday 13th to one and all!

*http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229369