This post inspired today’s topic.

So let’s get to it … What kind of writer are you?

Procrastinator: You do everything BUT write. Delay tactics are your specialty and writing is a chore and a bore. Solution? Chunk your writing time into smaller, more manageable segments; use a voice recorder to capture your thoughts instead of facing a blank document; and hire it out.

Perfectionist: You spend ridiculous amounts of time trying to find “just the right word.” You’ve never met a deadline (at least not without tearing your hair out) and you’re highly critical of yours and everyone else’s writing. Solution? Keep your high standards but temper them with realism; limit your rewrites to three; and ask an objective party to review your copy.

Free spirit: You love the written word and enjoy crafting amazing sentences. Trouble is you sometimes don’t get to the core message quick enough. Solution? Write a synopsis of the main message and keep it in front of you; read your copy through the lens of “How does this relate to the main message”; and start a personal blog as an outlet for all that creativity.

Rule follower: You pride yourself on knowing the correct placement of every dot and tiddle. End a sentence with a preposition? Never! Problem is your writing is difficult to read and perhaps too formal for your audience. Solution? Make a list of which rules you’ll never break and which rules you’ll agree to bend; videotape yourself in conversation and note how often the rules don’t apply; and become the go-to grammar guy or gal in the office (people will love you for worrying about such things on their behalf).

Bottom line? Your writing style is a lot like your natural hair texture: Stop fighting against it and start working with it. You don’t have to force a drastic change but you can learn how to mold and shape your writing style so that it’s less angst-ridden for you and more pleasing to your reader.

Other writing types? Share them here.

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Ever been to a party and been trapped by a non-stop talker? Those standing monologues (especially the ones by complete and total strangers) are annoying at best and a buzzkill at worst.

Droning on and on without engaging in any kind give-and-take dialogue is absolutely awful for the person on the receiving end.

That’s what I like so much about Twitter. The microblogging site lets you “talk” but forces you to do so in short snippets of 140 characters or less.

I recently conducted an informal survey of people who follow me and found that most think using Twitter has helping them communicate more concisely (and hence effectively).

Now, mind you, long prose certainly has it’s place. But in business writing I see so much extraneous copy that it drowns the core message. Get to the core message quickly. Put it first. Your reader will thank you and be more likely to take the appropriate action.

If you’re not on Twitter, sign up for a free account. Follow a few people (me included) and start paring down your dialogue. I promise you’ll be the life of the next party you go to.

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