3 Think about your own writing. How has it improved from your first to your second assignments? What have you learned? How had proofing and subbing work changed your awareness of your writing?
I believe that my writing/prose has developed significantly from my first to second assignment submission. I have always been confident in my writing ability since college but the demands of journalistic work such as word counts and writing for a specific demographic has meant that I have had to take on a lot of new techniques / stylings to ensure I met the assignment requirements.
Specifically, focus on ensuring my work / pieces were in keeping with the assignment criteria was important, and I was able to carry this across when working on my reviews portofolio. With guidelines being a shade regimental at first, it was a strange experience trying to incorporate my own voice into articles so heavily shaped by the assignment criteria. However, when working on my second assignment, I found the guidelines a lot more welcome, having spent the previous months developing my own prose coupled with a clear indication of the audience I found very beneficial. Another aspect I believe I learned from was keeping to a word count - in particular the need to keep the article / piece as raw and focused as possible. Without the constraints of a word count meant that any piece I had previously worked on had a tendency to be very wordy and lacking in its emphasis; whereas keeping to a max word count meant I had to spend time reviewing my piece, ensuring that any excess was removed whilst keeping the stronger elements intact.
Historically I have found it difficult to review my own works from another perspective but having read through various other journalistic pieces in class with both subbing & proofing oppourtunites have meant in turn I believe my own drafts have felt the benefit. Traditionally I was only able to read my own work from my personal perspective, but development on this aspect during class has meant working on my review portfolio allowed me to re-read my own prose from a target market mindset. One example is my often unnecessary use of cliched vocabulary without seeing how forced and irrelevant its usage was. However on reflection I was able to refine my own prose; 'writing that is full of cliches is annoying to read and suggests laziness on the part of the author' (MacWarlock, 2011)
MACWARLOCK, 2011 Prompt Proofing [online] [viewed 29 April 2011]. Available from: http://macwarlock.co.cc/prompt-proofing-blog-post-how-to-improve-your-writing-part-4/
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