Tag: workaholics

You Won’t Be Read, and It’s Ok

Writing for a living is tough. Not everything you write will see the real world, and you have to be ok with it.

Becuase when it comes to writing for someone other than yourself, you have to say what they want to read or need to know.

There’s no darlings in professional writing. You don’t have to like what you write. If it works, it works.

And it’s hard. For someone who wants to write drunk and publish as is. For someone who wants to write just because she wants to write. It’s hard when a personal blogger starts writing for her company’s “business-class audience.” You’ll have to make sacrifices you don’t want to. Talk to people you’d rather avoid. You have to smile as you accept their pin pointing as sense — though, most of the time, it is.

Rework becomes your watch word. Deliberate word choices, phrases, and jargon become your world while a clever pun takes the backseat. Because, remember, remember, your audience isn’t pun(n)y.

An official “content writer,” has no balance. You don’t know where the “need for content” ends and where the love for words begins. It’s constant juggling between contrasting worlds, and it puts you off, it blocks the writer within, and scoffs at the crouching figure at work staring deep into her laptop screen.

But somewhere along the way, you realise it’s ok. Sometimes, someone who knows better will cut off most your content. It takes time to see the big picture, or think for the greater good, but you’ll see it. You’ll see that nothing matters more than seeing your audience satisfied. And, somehow, those sleepless nights of tapping away at the keyboard fades into thin air.

Then it’s yet another day at work.

Writers Need to Write

Warning: Contains no (intentional) philosophy.

writers need to write

I’ve been writing for a bunch of different audiences for a while now. And I realise why a writer needs to write for herself.

We know: Writers write.

But to whom?

Most often than not, writers write for someone they don’t know. In case of a blogger, the audience is their readers.

But for a writer working for a corporate, the audience is much wider, ranging from tech experts, to teachers, and even doctors. And oftentimes, the writer is so focussed on conveying a point to so many people, that she forgets that there’s reader within starving for attention.

When we write, we talk. We convey out thoughts to another person in such a way that we hope they understand. But do we even understand ourselves? Do we ever feed our own soul?

When we’ve been writing for so long for others — to meet criteria that fit external causes, to write in a way that others would agree or appreciate — that we lose our sense of personality.

We become writers who write what needs to be written. In other words, we write whatever we need to, to get the point across. Or, being honest, to pay the bills.

What’s then, the difference between someone who chose a professional career because that pays more and a writer who chose to write because she wanted to write?

If a writer is to survive (soul-wise), she needs to write something other that what others tell her to write. A writer needs to write imperfect prose. Because no one who writes for themself cares how it reads, it’s all about communicating your deepest desire; not just getting the right tone, the right call to action, and the perfect sentence length to match the design.

And sometimes, a personal journal is the way to go. Think about the days when you could just go, “Dear Diary, Jane was mean to me today…”

There’s something reassuring about writing to yourself. Because when you write to yourself, you write for yourself.

When you just let go of all the restrictions of a writing job, you understand there’s a whole world of ways to say the same thing. It gives you a shift of perspective your narrow-minded job would never approve of.

And that’s the beauty of it. When you’re just writing to make yourself smile a little wider each day, you see that it doesn’t matter what others think of your writing. It doesn’t matter that the word choice is a little awkward or the pun is too abusive, or, that your sentence has no emphasis at all.

Because when you write for yourself, you’re free to write.

Five people in a meeting

chandler

What do you do in a meeting? I have a pretty short attention span for crappy yada yada and I zone out after a while. But if I do manage to stay awake, I look around at people of varying designations, gulping in tension while sweat runs down their faces.

There are the five common types of people in a meeting.

The bald guy: He’s the “bold” guy. The one who speaks in cliches like “bald is the new beautiful.” The one who thinks wordplay is his forte and everyone adores his clever wit. Alas, he may never know how mistaken he is.

The new recruit: She’s the fresh face in the company who’s running around introducing herself, asking questions, and making observations out of the obvious. She’s all eager to prove her worth, looking everywhere for the bubbling reputation — “even in the cannon’s mouth.”

The invisible: Ever seen a guy who looks like he’s not supopsed to be there? This invisible guy is the perfect combination of introversion and shyness. He’s still figuring out why he’s in this meeting at all, and wondering if he could go get a step out for a coffee.

The couple: The new weds, the new lovers, or just new team mates — they’re always together. Looking at them, you can’t help but wonder if one of them will fall off if they ever unlock their hands.

The speaker: *Clears throat* “Alright, everyone! If you can all write down your names in this sheet, we can go ahead and discuss why our WENUS (Weekly Estimated Net Usage Systems) has dropped this quarter.” Oh, and he never does anything to improve figures in the next quarter.

Any of them ring a bell? Or have you encountered other interesting types?