Be invisible
If readers can spot your talent, you’ve lost the game. The best kind of writing is where your reader is pulled into the writing completely. It’s much much later that they realize how great the writing was and then associate it with your talent. Great design, great writing, great art is invisible. Be invisible. Kill the ego. Kill the narcissist.
Communicator > Artist
Flowery words, beautiful metaphors — they are all good but if they don’t help in communication, don’t bother with them. Being a great communicator is the primary goal. Writing, artistic flair — everything else basically — comes later.
Details. The tiny ones.
Two spaces all of a sudden? Unexpected (and unwanted) capitalization? No space after a comma? “Its/it’s”? No period after the last sentence in a para? These things matter. A lot. Like a hell lot.
Skimmers first
Your first draft should be for people who skim. Not for people who sit back with a cup of coffee to read your words. We live in an attention-deficit economy. Once your draft is ready, you can then add all sorts of explanations to it. Ref: this.
Show and tell. Don’t write
Treat writing as speaking. Don’t write things you won’t say. Don’t write words we don’t use in everyday speech.
Keep everything simple
Everything needs to be simple, minimal. Number of lines in a para, words in a line, ideas in a draft. Words used, visual imagery, examples and analogies — keep them simple. Also, simple doesn’t mean dumb.