New York VC and long time blogger, Fred Wilson is a big believer that blogging prepares you to speak well.

…If you have to speak publicly a lot, particularly in unscripted situations, I would suggest you write publicly regularly as well.

Why?

…Writing regularly makes it so much easier to speak publicly in unscripted situations.

Writing forces you to work out your views and articulate them clearly and concisely.

Then when you are asked a question related to those views, you have already worked out the answer.

It is in the brain, waiting there to come out crisply and concisely.

I couldn’t agree more.

Unlike many other speakers, I don’t script or overly prepare my talks.

I gather my thoughts on what I think would help and inspire the audience, outline my thoughts and reduce my outline to a deck, something I find a necessary evil for conference organizers.

After I hear others speak and get a feel of the conference, I’m prepared to share my thoughts in my talk.

The stories, ideas and what I’m thinking as I talk are all basically pulled from my blogging.

I don’t mean that I have gone back and read my blog in preparation, but that blogging represents my thinking over time. What’s between my ears is my blogging.

Like Fred, I’ve been writing (blogging or posting on Facebook) on near a daily basis for going on fourteen years. It’s a huge body of work and thinking. Not all of my writing is still relevant, but much is.

My views have evolved as well, but that’s okay. That helps me with context as a I talk to an audience.

As Fred says, blogging and speaking “work incredibly well together.”