This is my Blog. Instigated for me to let off steam. Therapeutic. I don’t really mind if no one else reads it. Sometimes I refer to my Blog on LinkedIn, and my email signature includes the Blog address, but only because I’m curious to see if anyone does read something they violently dislike, will they fire back? That would be fun. I might actually get trolled today …..
Because this is my Blog, written by me, for me and in one way or another about me, I’m not too careful about making it perfect. That would be incongruous. So there might be the odd misplaced apostrophe, or a , when there should be a ; maybe some vocab is a bit pretentious, and I will admit to indulging in too many clichés. My biggest writing sin is not structuring the posts as carefully as a professional should. Sometimes I start writing and I haven’t a clue about how I’m going to conclude it, or I do to begin with but then change my mind when what I think is a quirky punch line suddenly punches me. Forget about the pyramid strategy, (most important stuff first so cuts can be easily made from the bottom without losing the key messages), or the circular approach (where the concluding paragraph refers back to the opening one). Instead, I start, I write and I conclude however I blooming well feel like at the time.
There is one writing sin, however, I do try and steer clear of (of which I try and steer clear?) and that is writing too much in each post. If I do edit my Blog, it’s for word-length. Some first drafts contain over 1,000 words, and even I yawn after word 700, so I cut and I cross and I delete and I hone until I’ve stopped yawning.
It’s not easy shortening a piece of prose, especially someone else’s. It takes time and experience for the revised draft to convey the same message as the original but more clearly, more palatably, and with a greater chance of the intended audience sticking with it to the end.
So when I receive submissions for the village newsletter – as I did this morning – that are too long, too detailed, too repetitive and too yawn-inducing, out comes the red pen (or the delete button) and I get to work. Except too often these days, a writer takes the umph and doesn’t want their work of art (art? Think Tracey Emin or Damien Hirst!) tinkered with.
This morning’s submission that kicked off this Blog was very well written in terms of focus, grammar, sentence structure, and vocab, but every t was crossed and i dotted while the writer tried to make everything crystal clear. As one of my favourite clichés goes, too many crosses and dots cloud the consommé. It was about 750 words long – I reckon I could cut it down to fewer than 300.
Unfortunately, ‘some writers’ throw a strop when I shorten their work. They think that their topic/message/writing is worthy of a full column not a half and that everyone will read it because it is soooooooooooo important.
As well as lacking editorial skills, these “some writers” don’t understand about tailoring their writing to different publications or audiences. For example, if you’re writing about train-spotting for three different publications, for 1) just train-spotters, 2) just sous-chefs or 3) a mixture of train-spotters and sous-chefs then you need to submit three different articles. Even the one for train-spotters would have to be reasonably concise, because they might love trains but have no time for reading flowery stuff, preferring instead more of a bullet-point style. Whereas those who like flowers are more likely to tolerate bullets, if the content is interesting, relevant and has a unique selling point.
Jeez. I can’t remember what my punchline was going to be. Oh yes…
It’s my Blo-og and I’ll cry if I want to.
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