Read, then write

I’m trying a new trick to kickstart the writing. Read, then write. There’s something about taking in words, your own or someone else’s, to remind you about how they’re meant to sit on the page.

I realise it’s not so new, for the paid daytime writing. A little run round the Facebook block often does the trick. But it worked this morning for some web writing where I’d already written bits and pieces, and didn’t know what to do next. I went back to reading – a new set of sites and pages on the same topic – and then found my own words.

In the world of website copy, read then write is becoming more and more necessary. The website worlds I need to inhabit can vary wildly. Getting my head round the benefits of solar power one day, and the delights of alpaca wool another. Neither places I had visited before in writing, and ones where I needed to jog alongside the natives who could already talk the talk, before I could have a go myself.

How do you warm up for your own writing? Part of the rule around the 31 days, for me anyway, is limited planning, and going with what seems right on that occasion. But it’s hard to write when you don’t quite know what you’re writing about…until you start writing about it. See what I mean?

Perhaps some of it is reminding yourself of what your own voice sounds like. The cadences, the sentence lengths, the patter of words the way YOU do them. Just as in other professions I’ve been involved in – teaching, counselling – part of the point, I think, is that you convey yourself in the way you work.

What does that mean when your writing takes many forms? Part of me enjoys the linguistic stretching that comes from trying a different vocabulary area, a different way of conveying information. But when I come back to write for myself, which ones are my words? My subject areas?

Perhaps one way of answering is to look at the family cookbook project. I spent two nights this week writing and writing, and clearly didn’t seem to be asking myself too much what words to use. Some of that is a subject area I’m comfortable with – food – and elements that are easy to include, because I just have to run through what I cook already, and how I do it.

To return to some of yesterday’s sporting metaphors: in real terms, I’m a sprinter. It’s my build. It was my brief moment of sporting glory, aged c. 9, when I could actually run fairly fast for my age. Middle distance had no interest, because I got puffed out far too fast.

What I want to write – those short pieces – are probably the equivalent of a sprint to read. But in training, I’m discovering I can write ‘middle distance’ just fine, when it’s MY race to run. My thing to write. Who knows, maybe I’ll find I have a sprint finish in there somewhere – then maybe I can convince the man and his dog that it’s the whole race.

And one worth watching.

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