by Kevin Pointer Sr.
Generally, regardless of the type of writing I try to be thoughtful, reflective, and intentional. I’m a research-oriented writer and won’t hesitate to explore best writing practices, examples, and so forth for a given genre or piece that I’m working on. Most of my first writing attempts start with brainstorming and freewriting followed by constant refinement. If possible, I may leverage similar types of writing or constructs that I may have done in the past.
More specifically, the kind of writer I am depends on the writing requirements, my audience, any style guide dictates, and my goals. I may sprinkle wit, relaxed diction – even occasional slang into casual pieces such as blogs, white papers, or certain article or book reviews. With these pieces I’m more likely to vary the length and complexity of my sentences such as using a one-to-three sentence length for a dramatic pause or effect. Got it?
I’m also likely to spend hours sourcing and crafting graphics to gain a viewing edge, to complement my writing, and to enhance the thoughtful writing persona and complete digital communications producer that I’m trying to project. Graphics are noticed first so I think text, graphics, and other visual artifacts should symbiotically work to engage readers and keep them engaged in our ever-evolving multi-media age. Recently, for instance, I experimented with using a Gecko to liven my blog posts up. Notice that I didn’t say liven up: Thanks Mr. Zinsser . . . I think? (page 12, clutter principle with the second paragraph of On Writing Well). At any rate, I carried through with the Gecko graphic in my culminating white paper.
Always looking for that engagement edge and in trying to find my voice I also recently tried a rhetorical device in writing the title for my first blog post ever:
Reading, Writing, and Your Smartphone:
Preprandial Ruminations Regarding Delivering Better
Content in a Deeply Distracted World
February 5, 2021
Did you spot it? The rhetorical device I used is actually in the subtitle. Contrary to Mr. Zinsser’s mantra regarding simplified, plain language I intentionally experimented with using two rather strange, complicated words – preprandial ruminations – just for rhetorical effect. Before I did some research, however, I had no idea what the first word, preprandial meant. Did you? I barely knew what the second word, ruminations, meant!. I was looking for at least one “big word” that I could fit into my blog’s title in hopes of luring my reader to take a look at my blog post. I was shooting for pathos, some kind of emotional reaction. After all, there are trillions of blog posts and I wanted someone to take a glimpse at mine.
From another perspective, my career and education as a technical writer and editor has informed who I am as a writer. In this particular domain, as opposed to my current freer flowing casual domain of blog writing, I came to realize that writing that is accessible, audience-focused, and that is definitely clear, accurate, and concise is most valuable jobwise. There’s no time for personality; complicated rhetorical devices or sentence structures; creativity; fancy, ornamental graphics; big words; nuance; or interpretation in engineering or scientific technical writing.
Postscript: You can add a listening writer to the list of what kind of writer I am. After receiving some feedback from my readers, I decided not to employ the rhetorical device within my subtitle of “Preprandial Ruminations Regarding Delivering Better Content in a Deeply Distracted World”. Instead, I changed the subtitle to simply read “Delivering Better Content in a Deeply Distracted World”. In my defense, as I mentioned in the post this was my very first blog post and I was experimenting to capture attention among the trillions of blog posts out there. Trying to find my voice. You could say that I was, as one famous journalist, William Zinsser, implored “writing for myself”. The rhetorical device that I used in the subtitle did get attention, but it was not the kind that I had hoped for. I was hoping for the kind of attention that might encourage some readers to perhaps push beyond their grasp a bit to be curious enough to learn some new words and, with my post developed skillfully enough, understand why and how I was using them. With this device I was attempting to “simply” suggest and develop the idea that it’s not even lunch time and, as probably millions of writers can identify with, and they find themselves thinking deeply about the fact that they have yet to write a single word! No matter my ideal intent, the readers have spoken!, and I have listened!
Another point of clarification: Why I chose a gecko image in my posts has also come up. Fair question but nothing too deep here. I had successfully used this image on another project and decided to try it on my blog posts as, again, I am experimenting with establishing a consistent voice, brand, and identity for my first blog. Think of the gecko used on the GEICO commercials; it seems to be just a fun little creature that people quickly associate with the GEICO insurance brand and products. I may later come up with some deep and clever reason for my gecko’s existence on my blog posts and how the gecko relates to my blog’s brand as I have purposely studied geckos and like-creatures for this very reason. At this point, however, I don’t see such background information as necessary because I’m not even sure if the idea of a gecko will stick. (pun intended). Right now, I’m just hoping that most readers will just accept my gecko graphic for its humorous and light-hearted intrinsic value and its function as a consistent identifier across all of the posts within my current blog.
