Reading What I Mean and Not Just What I Write and a Few Other Thoughts for Those New to Blogging.
Have you ever written a post when what you wrote did not reflect what you meant to say or how you intended it to sound. I suspect that it has happened to most of us at one time or another. Some of the best treasures in writing here in the Rain probably had to over come some of this as they attained more experience.
In blogging we acquire what we refer to as a writing voice. Naturally when we become new bloggers we want to develop that voice but in truth most of us have no idea what it means exactly. And I speak from experience. As I was developing as a writer here in ActiveRain, many comments from more experienced writers would refer it and though I was uncertain of exactly how one gets a writing voice, I did know I wanted one so I could fit in with my peers. Over time, it seemed like I had actually developed just such a quality but to define it is still a bit awkward. In fact today 4 years from when I began to write, I hardly even hear " writing voice" referred to anymore. Fine with me, I have no idea how to get one other than to keep writing and I suppose it evolves somehow.
I would guess that we have all written posts when our facts were a bit loose or not totally clear and we were expressing ourselves as naturally as we knew how. Language skills aside, as real estate professionals we know our craft. But we are often at a loss at fully comprehending the nomenclature used through out all of our related industries and the abbreviated initials used by government programs, economists, and especially in our popular and useful social networks like Twitter and Facebook.
Sometimes when we are reading posts by our fellow members and other related professionals, we scan over their posts and we miss the point of what the post was actually about but we make a stab at it and leave a comment any way. Once in a while we may go back and reread that post and see that our comment is not even close to being relevant. But I would venture to say that after the writer rolls their eyes at the comment and realized that you missed what they were trying express, they still very much appreciate that you came by and left a comment on their post.
None of us always write as clearly as we might like to or as colorfully and entertainingly as we would intend. I know that there are also times when we hit a home run on a topic that gets a lot of attention from our peers and readers and it might even get featured✭. And if you are anything like me, you re-read the post and something sticks out as not quite right. Even to ourselves while we were writing the post, we didn't realize that what we wrote was not what we meant or at least as clear as we might have been. Best thing to do is to go back and clean it up, since the post will remain out there in Internet land for perpetuity. BTW, even after years of writing I still have to do it now and then. Actually more often than that, LOL.
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