Presence. Truth. Craft. And Soul. 

Most writing problems aren’t really writing problems. The issue usually goes deeper.

The sentence won’t come because the writer doesn’t yet know what has to be said. The brand voice sounds generic because the organization hasn’t figured out what it actually stands for. The memoir stalls because the author doesn’t clearly see the one true thing at its center.

Craft matters enormously, of course. But craft is often the second question.

The first is: What’s actually true here — and are you willing to say it?

That question stands at the center of how I work.

Awareness before technique

My approach starts with awareness before technique. No, it’s not instead of technique. It’s before it.

In practice, that means asking questions that are easy to skip:

• What are you really trying to say?
• What’s underneath the block, cliché, or generic phrase?
• What matters most in this work?
• Where is the emotional or human truth, and where have you routed around it or avoided it?

These aren’t abstract questions. They have practical consequences.

Once a writer, leader, or organization gets clearer about what is actually true and important, the technical work of structure, language, tone, pacing, and persuasion gets much easier.

Why it matters

Anyone can generate competent prose in thirty seconds.

That used to be the hard part. With today’s technology, it isn’t anymore.

What’s most valuable is writing that carries the unmistakable signal of a human being who has actually thought deeply about something, felt something, noticed something, or taken a point of view.

We are surrounded by fluent, polished, forgettable writing.

The writing that lands has a pulse.

My job, whether I’m working with a novelist, an executive, or an organization, is to produce writing that has that pulse, while still doing the hard work of structure, clarity, and craft.

What I believe about the work

Stories are survival technology.
I learned this at the Shoah Foundation and I’ve never unlearned it. One of storytelling’s oldest functions is to make meaning out of experience — particularly experience that might otherwise overwhelm or divide us.

Craft serves truth, not the other way around.
Technical skill without depth or honesty produces polished but empty work. Honesty without craft produces work that people may never finish reading. Both are necessary.

Humor belongs.
The sacred and the absurd coexist in all our lives. The best writing makes room for both.

Presence is a prerequisite.
You can’t write what you aren’t paying attention to. Much of good writing begins with learning to notice more clearly: what is happening, what matters, and what you actually think.

Voice can’t be manufactured.
A strong voice emerges when the language, the subject, and the person or organization behind the words begin to line up.

What this isn’t

This work is not therapy, and it isn’t a substitute for rigorous craft, research, or strategy.

It’s simply a way of working that treats inner clarity and close attention as practical assets.

I’ve seen the same principle at work time and again with novelists, business leaders, technical experts, and organizations: when people become clearer about what they mean, the writing becomes more powerful, readable, and alive.

If that sounds like the way you want to work, we’ll probably do well together.

Warren has a gift for finding the deeper truth in a piece of writing, the thing you’re really trying to say but haven’t yet found the words for. He brings rare insight and a real respect for the writer’s voice.

 

Faith Connolly, Ph.D., Executive Director, Johns Hopkins Education Research Consortium