Maeve Catherine

On an airplane, flight attendants instruct everyone to take care of themselves first if the airplane is going down.  “Put your oxygen mask on first, before assisting others”. I believe the concept can be adapted into strong writing.

My focus when I edit my writing is the audience. When I write it is easiest to write for myself first, my opinions and understandings, and when I review it I check for places that I would lose my reader.

In chapter 5 of “On Writing Well“ William Zinsser explained there are two important rules of writing, share creatively in your own voice while also having good writing technique and structure.

“Never say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation. If you’re not a person who says “indeed” or “moreover,” or who calls someone an individual (“he’s a fine individual”), please don’t write it.” (Zinsser, 2006).

Simple is better. Through uncommonly spoken words, bad grammar, and run on sentences readers will not read “below the fold”(Schade, 2015). Simple enables many readers to know the story’s purpose and the author.

In my blog “Writing with Worry” I touched on my fear of not sounding smart enough in my writing. Writing how I talk comes easiest but when I reread, I overthink my own intelligence. It is important to write the way you talk because it allows a sense of personality to shine through which then connects the reader to you and makes them keep reading.

Works Cited

Schade, Amy. “The Fold Manifesto: Why the Page Fold Still Matters.” Nielsen Norman Group, 2018, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold-manifesto/.