For The Write Reasons
It's been almost another lifetime since school days, and I really cannot imagine or remember what it is like to just show up in class, absorb, digest and regurgitate information. Well, with friends and acquaintances all seemingly pursuing upgrading and development with the likes of specialist Advanced Diplomas and Masters programmes, one suddenly felt left behind. And well, stoopid.
Let's put in down for the record. I was never much of study material. My grades were so-so, so (sorry, couldn't resist) while I didn't get retained, I also didn't get fast tracked. The only thing I breezed through was English, where you could not study for it and just make everything up on the spot. But even then, there's still that margin of distinction between an A1 and an A2. So there.
Having been handed some writing assignments of late, I just realized how not easy it was to write professionally for a living. And I realized I don't write well. Well, well well. See what I mean?! To sidetrack, this is the very reason I could not adopt and adapt to social media like Facebook and Twitter where my verbiage would not find an outlet as opposed to this platform on LifeJournal.
Which begs the question. Who measures the worth of their writing in quantity? In school essays, we were given gauges of how much to write, and I cannot recall now if I had really taken to count each line of words at the end. Or was it never my problem since it was not too little but too much that was my concern? Ah yes, it was "at least 1000 words" wasn't it?
I must drive the editor of the paper up the wall when I submit my assignments for they often exceed the word limit. By a lot. You see, I find it such a waste to censor myself and am unable to critically remove the waffle and padding and present just the facts. But when she does it for space constraints, I'm amazed by her Midas touch that the essence had not been tampered with and indeed the extraneous fluff had been cleaned up. And it works just fine!
After one too many times, I learnt my lesson and thank goodness for word processing word count, I returned now and again to check myself and trimmed the fat with a discerning eye. Apart from a paragraph which needed clarity for the inherent concepts, it was passed almost as written. Now I know the trick!
But from this episode of verbal diarrhoea, you'd think I haven't learnt anything...
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