That’s the biggest challenge of any blogging project: keeping up with the blog’s posting schedule. Really, it’s just a regularly recurring version of what is the biggest challenge for every writer: writing to a deadline.
There are techniques for handling that last minute writing, skills you can learn to make it as good as possible, but in the end that’s all just damage control. You cannot write your best quality work unless you write it early.
One of the rules of good technical writing goes, “Always include a paragraph of normal body text after every heading.” We’re going to get that practice this week with a good old-fashioned To-Do List. Make a list of all the projects you’re working on right now, all the stuff you need to get done, but spend some time formatting it and packing in information to make it useful to a reader other than you.
Tweet I’ve mentioned this before, but my dad is (among many other things) a speech professor and an accomplished storyteller. I was talking with him last week about some difficulties he’s had in his creative writing, though, trying to achieve the sort of impact and effect he can get effortlessly with the spoken word. The […]
I’ve talked about which conclusions work best for essays, for arguments, or for short stories. Today you’re going to work on a document type that combines them all.
Your assignment this week is to write an editorial. Write an opinion piece concerning something of interest to you.
You should keep a blog. And, yes, I mean you personally.
Today’s post is for everybody. Today’s post is about the benefits of blogging to casual writers just trying to get simple ideas across. Today’s post could just as easily be named, “How Not to Look Like an Idiot.”
Write up a short autobiography of you as a writer (300-900 words). Make it three sections, with appropriate headings, and generally answer the questions above. Tell us where you’re coming from, so we can better help you get where you need to be.
I met my little sister for dinner recently and said, “It’s time for you to start taking your writing seriously. It’s time for you to start proofreading!”
She just frowned and said, “But I do! That’s the thing. I don’t know how to make it better!”
The assignment this week is to critique one of your own documents. Pick something you’ve written recently and write a short analysis of the document’s quality and craftsmanship.
How’s that for a happy ending? After fifteen weeks of teaching these kids — guiding them from total obliviousness through all the major topics, techniques, and types of technical writing — I got to their most important class (grade-wise), and my final, lasting impression, and let them fall flat on their faces.
How often have you made the same mistake, in your writing? You figured you’d explained the issue well enough in your introduction, you’d provided all of the relevant information in your body paragraphs. Your readers could figure it out, right? They’re all smart people. So what’s the point of laboring over a conclusion that’s probably not even necessary?
Tweet This week we finish our series on document structure, so I’d like us to take a moment to remember what that structure looks like. For your writing exercise this week, I want you to outline an argument. This argument can be the thesis of an essay or a defense of your position vis a […]
