Posts Tagged 'Writing'

Ugly Business

Published December 20, 2011 Uncategorized , Writing 2 Comments
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[Mercifully not what it may sound like, though the temptation is there].

There’s a real internal challenge in play. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the art of quality writing. Some lucky souls can churn out thousands of quality words every day, but most of us mere mortals will always struggle with that.

I want my own page to represent a benchmark for thoughtful writing. If it takes a week or a month to make the right statement, then so be it. After all, if you’re hoping to make £150+ per day as a copywriter, the very least you can aim for is to showcase ‘quality’.

In 2011, I’ve finally embraced the rule that less is more. As a doctoral student, it’s natural for verbosity to take over while the 80,000 word target still seems distant. Pages – thousands of words – achieve nothing. Now that this pressure has relaxed, I’ve realised the pleasure in shedding words.

Continue reading ‘Ugly Business’

A Vote of No: Social Media and Sacrifices

Published May 7, 2011 Culture , Politics , Writing 7 Comments
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Regular users of social media networks will no doubt have noticed – if their friends lists are anything like mine – that politics is again becoming a very public sport. I raised some concerns last year about the extent to which social networking sites were turning into moral and ideological crusades when elections came along. Yesterday, a referendum was held on whether to adopt the ‘Alternative Vote’ system, and the same tactics were out in force again.

Continue reading ‘A Vote of No: Social Media and Sacrifices’

The Second Anniversary: A Song For No-One

Published March 6, 2011 Music , Writing 4 Comments
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A happy second anniversary to RoyalArbor, or Writing Privacy as it became. There is plenty that could commemorate this, but there was only one winner. First, it’s time to take stock for a moment.

A Space for No-One?

I think a lot about what goes here. Writing privacy demands it. It’s an oxymoron of sorts: to write privacy is to publicize it. Andrew Marvell not only withheld his works from publication, but he also privately considered the role of the writer in the new public sphere of the seventeenth century. That someone capable of such lyric majesty was so determined not to share it gives a permanent awareness to what should be allowed to escape into public space.

As such, this place never needed to be about me. It has needed to be about pieces of research that tell a good story; about events or developments that have some form of interest extending beyond me; and about privacy as a wider interest. The reason I left my old space behind was because it had become for no-one but myself.

We all live intricate and complicated lives. Continue reading ‘The Second Anniversary: A Song For No-One’

What’s in a Title? Can More Be Made Out of the Same?

Published February 10, 2011 research , Writing Leave a Comment
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Last autumn, in a fit of generosity, I wrote an article on blogging for everywoman that has been well received. It is always easier to preach than to practice. So often easier said than done. Perhaps I can write convincingly on what makes a good blog. But can I practice it?

Any self-respecting professional in any field is interested in bettering themselves and their work. Sometimes it is a necessity for survival in competitive arenas. Recently, I witnessed copywriter and peer Al Allday make some changes to his site, influenced by his competitors but still strongly fashioned to himself. My space is very different – it is in no way fashioned as any sort of business portal – but this silent observation has certainly made me think about what it takes to improve even a quiet cornerstone like this page.

Continue reading ‘What’s in a Title? Can More Be Made Out of the Same?’

A Green Thought: Private Minds

Published January 10, 2011 Literature , research , Writing 4 Comments
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It is a great shame that it is so difficult to make personal experience count in professional or academic writing.

The first time I attempted genuine research was looking at Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray through the lens of dysmorphophobia, or body dysmorphic disorder. Of course, it wasn’t random reading of somatoform disorder textbooks that brought this match to my attention, but personal experience. And, to be honest, personal experience does not always match what textbooks or research papers have to say.

There’s a scene where Dorian’s portrait is revealed, and Dorian is momentarily ecstatic with it, then inexplicably miserable. It’s one of many emotional episodes that seem so tangibly familiar to me, yet so difficult to map credibly and analytically into academic writing. This is probably why, despite being my most unique piece of work, it has never become anything more than a reference in a personal newspaper article on the subject of BDD.

The same scenario surfaces for Andrew Marvell. Continue reading ‘A Green Thought: Private Minds’

Measuring Privacy: An Ode

Published December 19, 2010 Politics , research , Writing Leave a Comment
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New Horizons (Alphaville)

Winter's enigmatic whiteness (Alphaville: New Horizons)

The weather gripping Britain this weekend is perfectly representative of how the PhD has gone since an Apprentice-style interview in the summer: too much white, and nothing moving very far very fast. Leicester-based Joanna Riley described the process in Wednesday’s penultimate pain-fest as ‘mental torture’. Ironic, then, that December has proved a strangely productive month.

A paper was presented at the Leicester Postgraduate Forum earlier in the month. I returned last week for a bibliographical assessment, and met my supervisor in the British Library on Friday to submit 6,250 words. That’s 8% of the thesis this term, and over 30% in this calendar year.

An iron grip has come from nowhere, thanks to a self-imposed deadline which should have been imposed much earlier. The right ‘formula’ continues to elude, but the weeks of slow reading and constant editing do appear to make something click eventually.

I have looked forward to, and feared, this section the most. Continue reading ‘Measuring Privacy: An Ode’

Marvell in Manuscript and Print

Published December 2, 2010 Culture , Geneva , Politics , research , Writing 4 Comments
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Today I am presenting ‘Marvell in Manuscript and Print, 1649-1665’ at the English Postgraduate Forum in Leicester. Having braved the weather for the second time this week, I am inconveniently left with just enough time for procrastination before the event begins at 5pm. This will be a curious one.

Today marks my fourth ‘trial’ presentation (following two seminars in Geneva and the summer’s PhD upgrade procedure), and the eighth overall, following conference presentations in Fribourg (2008), Cambridge (2009), Geneva (2010) and Hull (2010). A nice balance is reached.

My experience to date is that presentation material can rarely be the same twice. Occasionally, at the highest level, there will be merit in repeating or recycling a paper across expert audiences with different personnel. Otherwise, there is a process to develop and tailor work for the specific requirements of the event.

Continue reading ‘Marvell in Manuscript and Print’

Private Pursuits: The Difficulty of Writing

Published November 15, 2010 Knightmare , Music , research , Writing 4 Comments
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Autograph from Dr. Adam Fox

Writing is hard. It is harder still when fighting battles with yourself.

Yet this is trampled on completely when November’s fad of eleven years, NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month, comes around. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel by November 30th.

Like many other things around me at the moment, it is an alien existence. It has taken me three years to come close to 50,000 words for my thesis. Writers will be soon be surpassing that toil in less than 3% of the time.

NaNoWriMo has received a lot of strong opinion, largely because it encourages quantity over quality. The official page freely concedes, ‘Make no mistake: you will be writing a lot of crap’.

Sometimes I have sympathy for the freedom, precisely because adding 500 words of quality to my doctoral thesis seems like a colossal achievement. It is also something that, for better or worse, the world of academia has contemplated itself. But I also loathe it for the way it can disregard the graft that goes into a small amount.

Writing often delves into dark, private pursuits. Continue reading ‘Private Pursuits: The Difficulty of Writing’

Keeping Ahead of the Game

Published October 10, 2010 research , Writing 6 Comments
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self-marketing

Image lifted from Rob Cubbon's excellent guide to self-marketing.

Timing is everything.

I recently completed my first ever assignment as a freelance copywriter. As happy coincidences go, the same day saw a long overdue catch-up with expert of the trade, London based copywriter, Al Allday.

Such meetings, I cannot deny, offer me a mixture of encouragement and trepidation. Our career paths lie roughly in the same direction. Al hit the motorway, while I’m still navigating the long way round. While back-street manoeuvring supposedly makes you a better driver, motorways get you from A to B in the best way. Without doubt, following Al has made me a better writer.

Writing, many people don’t realise, must be split into disciplines. Continue reading ‘Keeping Ahead of the Game’

Editor

Published September 8, 2010 Writing Leave a Comment
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More silence. I am becoming my own PhD subject. Privacy, unfortunately, is multi-faceted. On the one hand, a fascinating subject, but on the other, also a rather uncomfortable mindset. It is like a form of writing anorexia (and I know how loaded that term is); there is more pleasure in the discipline I take from choosing not to write. Perhaps it is the vulnerability or fear of betrayal. Perhaps it is the protection, away from the uncomfortable places that writing invariably reaches. I continue to believe I am doing the right thing in keeping emotional charges locked up.

But this is just it. How many tabloid stories continue to roll out at the expense of private lives? What they uncover tends to be mischief and skullduggery,  just about enough to justify the intrusion in the majority of eyes. I don’t want my private life uncovering. I read a fascinating piece earlier about editorial decisions, which suggests that all good intentions do yield to become the paving stones towards hell.

Continue reading ‘Editor’

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