Welcome to the fourth of a four part series (1, 2, 3, 4) on Technical Writing and Editing. During the Technical Writing program, all major projects had an editing component. This meant that we had to email draft projects to other students to eviscerate. As someone who holds onto work, this was terrifying. The benefit … Continue reading Part IV: Quick and Dirty Tips to Edit Documents
Welcome to the third of a four part series (1, 2, 3, 4) on Technical Writing and Editing. If you’re editing someone else’s work, your revisions must look professional. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a student project, a freelance job, or a favour for a friend. It needs to look professional. That appearance of professionalism … Continue reading Part III: Conduct Professional Edits
Welcome to the second of a four part series (1, 2, 3, 4) on Technical Writing and Editing. It’s always difficult to edit your own work. By the time you get to editing, you've memorized the intent of the document. Your eyes glaze over the text, skipping misspellings and grammar problems. Usually the best way … Continue reading Part II: Apply Your Learning Style to Editing
Welcome to the first of a four part series (1, 2, 3, 4) on Technical Writing and Editing. When I worked at a law firm, I would find ways to add writing into my job. It didn’t matter that I was adding weight to my workload; I wanted to write, edit, and research. Creating the … Continue reading Part I: Planning is the Most Important Part of Editing
So, long story short: there’ll be more personal blog posts this year. The key to good writing is to be emotionally engaged. That’s something I have a lot of trouble with and am actively trying to overcome. I stopped writing for my blog for almost a year - I never stopped writing posts, but I … Continue reading Impersonally Personal
The Ouroboros often symbolizes self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself…in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros I know the first draft is supposed to be word vomit. The one thing that’s pushed during writing competitions is to just write. No self-editing because self-editing breeds stagnation. … Continue reading Ouroboros Style First Drafts: Write. Edit. Repeat
Critique helps you see your work with new eyes and shape it into what you always wanted it to be, only you weren’t able to get it there on your own. People say that writing is an isolated activity, but good writing requires company. Company that you ultimately love and cherish and value, and this … Continue reading
I was trying to write the wrong book, for the wrong reasons. My goal was to write the best book ever, so that my mother would be proud. So that teachers who made me feel quite small and thick would see that I was smart. So that friends, colleagues, strangers would applaud. So that I … Continue reading
There are mistakes I can’t help but make. I have this bad habit of typing the same error over and over again, until it’s a Groundhog Day of poor spelling. Perhaps it’s a good thing that I know what specific words, or grammar rules, get me into trouble. But it’s a long slow process to … Continue reading Self-Editing: Know Your Mistakes
The act of balancing one’s work writing with one’s personal writing is insanely tough, because the former has to naturally come first, since people are paying you for it. And then when it’s time to come home and do the writing one has to do, just to get it out there, it’s so tough. There … Continue reading