This photo of Mt Ruapehu from Ohakune was taken around 1910.
Most people who know me well know I’m an ‘extroverted’ introvert and a very private person. I might be on Facebook and Twitter but it’s not like I’m into sharing my every action or thought. Speaking in public or writing and publishing a blog aren’t easy for me – so why do I write?
I write because it’s not easy for me. I write to practice writing, to become better at it, to try different styles of writing. Sometimes I’ll bash out a post as a travel-log or musings upon a topic. Other times it’s a quick and dirty update with photos so that I can see my progress. Going back and re-reading my posts last weekend as I added categories to them was a great reminder of my ‘before’ and ‘after’.
I have an uneasy relationship with words. Whilst I may have been the earliest of my siblings to speak, I was born with a hearing impairment like a number of children at that time. That means I don’t always hear what people say, misunderstand their meaning, and misinterpret what they have said. That’s lead to some hilarious and painful conversations at times.
We have such a strong aural tradition as a society. From parents reading and singing to their young children, listening to the radio, or live and recorded music. TV shows and movies were around but not as dominant as they are now. I’ve always loved reading books. There I could be more certain of the words I was reading, and gain my understanding of their meaning from the words around them and the context.
I may have loved reading as a child but I was rubbish at English in my first year of secondary school. I’d always sat at the front of the class during my primary schooling due to my dodgy hearing. At secondary school I was often sitting in the middle of the class due to my family name. I changed it when I was 16 so I then ended up sitting at the back of some classrooms. I don’t think I can blame my class seating position on my understanding of English though!
I went to the sort of girls’ secondary school where the ‘brainy’ kids did French and Latin as their third form (Year 9) electives and everyone else did Shorthand-Typing and Home Economics. My mother figured that I’d struggle with French so it was Latin and Shorthand-Typing for me! I may not have ‘passed’ School Certificate (NCEA Level 1) Latin but at least it took my understanding of English from a ‘C’ to an ‘A’ in three years.
The other thing it did was take my writing from simple to complex. Let’s face it, a sentence in Latin translates to a paragraph in English so I was rocking those tenses! Unfortunately that didn’t always translate so well to the business world, where active language and plain English are preferred.
By my 30’s I was having to relearn how to write business documents in a way that others could actually understand. Readability statistics are now my best friend! More recently I’ve explored copy-writing techniques to improve my business writing. But writing fact-based documents which have specific legal meaning is not the same as writing for personal pleasure. A journey of 10,000 hours starts with a few blog posts. Thanks for joining me on this journey.
Next time: The cabinets are coming, the cabinets are coming……………..
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