Writing Well

It's the occupation... have been doing alot of writing at work of late (since this assignment is all about helping the client document their internal controls and procedures, and highlighting the deficiencies), and as a result, for the first time since school days, I've had huge, and I mean, MAJOR, scrawls over my writing.

I've never claimed to write exceptionally well... after all, the main audience of my output has always been myself... but I never thought I wrote deplorably either... so I must admit the first few times I received my manager's review copy, my heart sank.

After a couple of months of her repeated reviews, I've stopped feeling so disheartened... but just for kicks, I decided to run the Flesh-Kincaid test on a piece of my writing, and I discovered that I did not do all that badly... Yes, I ramble a little, and I do use super duper long sentences, but at the end of the day, it does not take a PHD in English to decipher my writing.

So what constitutes writing well? In school, it used to be long essays, narrative sentences, and multi syllabic words, all presented in perfect grammatical form. And then somewhere during work days, it was all about being short and sweet, and getting your point across in the most effective way. I've decided that for me, good writing is anything that "touches"... that "connects" with the reader. Be it writing a proposal or a novel, a piece of writing has to appeal to the reader.

Which brings me to my "book of the month". I think many people should have heard of this book, "The curious incident of the dog in the night-time" by Mark Haddon... to me, it's beautifully written. It's simple yet superbly engaging. I bought the book many a year ago, but as usual, kept it in my "Library" for future reference. It's a teenage boy's attempt at solving a murder... a dog's murder... and the said boy suffers from Asperger's Syndrome. As expected, his logic is both simple and complicated at the same time, and the author just manages to bring out the boy's emotions to the T. Definitely worth a read.