Week 8: Power Writing (and writing short and sweet from Week 7)

Can I write succinctly and let the power of my words and sentences transport the reader to where I want them to be and think what I want them to think?

I don’t think so. I find it very hard to turn a long piece of writing into something short, I am always wanting to explain further, to show yet one more example, to …well, you get the idea.

Perhaps I need to take a side course in editing my writing…

I like to flatter myself and think I write well, but I probably write in an old-fashioned style. For example, I still prefer ‘whilst’ to ‘while’, ‘write/post a blogpost’ to ‘write/post a blog’.

I did the majority of my writing between my undergraduate degree (1994-1998), my work with one of the Murdoch web plays (1997-1999), my business communication writing (1997-2014), my writing of counselling material for my practice (2018-2020). And now this degree. That’s a lot of writing, but how much of it is/was any good? Apart from three business books that were edited by a professional, I’ve never received any editing and instead taught myself how to write. Perhaps I’ve written at the same amateur level for 25 years? I know that Kelly Noble at Glam Adelaide contracted me in to write articles and teach her team of writers how to write with passion (something I claimed on my website I could do). I lasted a month and thankfully I came down with Covid, followed by Long Covid, giving me an excuse not to return—my articles read like they were written by a communication student and my teaching the other writers to write passionately failed miserably.

Yes, I see an editing course on the horizon…