This is hard!
21/Jun 2015
Wow! It is not easy to get this started. I am still very attached to the long “explain the world” style of blog post that I am naturally attracted too. I wrote a post in that style this week before realizing this is not how I should approach my goal of improving my writing! You can’t repeat what you have always done and expect to improve and learn from it. Obvious, I know but sometimes it takes a few knocks before I get stuff into my skull.
With this in mind I knew I had to step back and take stock. If I want to see improvements in my writing I need to know what the areas requiring attention are. So instead of spending another hour or so editing my other post into a human friendly/readable form, I will rather share what have learnt or rediscovery this week.
Write a bit every day
Firstly writing a bit every day is a good idea if you don’t want to sit here on a Sunday evening, trying to scribble down your harried thoughts before starting a week in which you know you won’t have enough time to write two blog posts. Secondly it also keeps the ideas and work flowing, allowing you to see which style works best for each post and which tack you should use to layout a certain point of view. The third affordance is to allow or even encourage you to explore different paths and throw away that which does not work and keep editing and improving that which does.Think of and write down ideas all the time
Writing diligently and not just when the muse strikes as described in my previous post requires ideas to build on. If you write down and document ideas all the time you have a bank of ideas and thoughts on which to draw when you need to write. Which if you followed along should be every day :) . These ideas and thoughts don’t have to be well documented just a few words indicating the direction of your thinking and maybe what pricked your interested. It is only the seed that you can grow into a full fledged idea and narrative later.Good writing is a lot of editing.
This might just be because I am such a novice writer but I find that I never express as clearly as I can, my thoughts the first time I write it down. Ernest Hemingway said: “The first draft of anything is s#*t.” so I think that I am might not have it totally wrong. There is even a tool named in honour of Hemingway that embraces this idea by only allowing you to type and not edit until the first draft is complete.At the moment editing means to me to take into account more of what my audience knows and not what I know. I also attempt to remove all of the words that are not necessary. Unfortunately this is not in the Michelangelo “I just remove everything that doesn’t look like David.” sort of way, but in stripping away the embellishments that I often add to the detriment of the piece. Oh and most importantly; to check that what I write actually makes sense.
So there you have it, my summary and rescue of what I did this week. Lets see if I can apply this learning in the next week with more success.