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Saturday, August 23, 2003

So Much to Write about....

Blogging is tough. I have many new ideas but nothing crystalise to writing. I know this would make a nice subject, but when I sit down to write everything evaporates, nothing is left.

It's the nature of commercial writing that is so daunting. You are required to produce instant copy and that which will elevate and impress the big executive (who knows zilch about the writing process). Problem is most of the corporate types have read the wrong types of books and it's difficult to convince them what real writing, the process is all about.

Firstly, they think that writing is what is going through their minds. They don't realize what's going through their minds are just that: thoughts. Writing is the process by which thoughts travel down from the mind, down the tendons to the finger tips, and then to paper or the screen and there are many slip-ups and dangers that can happen in this process.

Secondly, they know the end product of this laborious process: the newspaper, the glossy magazines, the well-edited brochures, etc. but do not know what effort have gone into producing these. They think they all came about with one person, not as a process as a whole. So they think that an article, a brochure, a script can be written in a few minutes (after all, it's a few words, isn't it?) and can appear in the form they want in a day. Therefore they rush the process and end up with unsightly mistakes, wrong punctuation, and bad formatting that kills the quality of the final product.

Will they learn? I don't see them learning.

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