Claw your way to good writing

You might have noticed that I have been posting disposable content and my newsletter is three weeks overdue. I’ve paused my regular writing because I’m preparing for next semester’s lessons at NTU. 

I didn’t expect to fall down a rabbit hole of readings. I can spend hours reading several books just to fill one PPT slide.  

What am I reading? Books about great writing and books with great writing. I’ve rediscovered the authors I love and I want to share them with the students in my writing class. 

Here’s an excerpt from Roger Ebert’s review of the infamous Catwoman movie: 

“Catwoman is a movie about Halle Berry’s beauty, sex appeal, figure, eyes, lips, and costume design. It gets those right. Everything else is secondary, except for the plot, which is tertiary.”

I miss Mr. Ebert’s writing so much. So clear, biting and delightful. 

Good writing takes effort and time. However, social media tempts us to prioritise quantity and speed over quality. Some people now rely on Generative AI to write their personal posts and comments just to tick the LinkedIn checkbox for the day. That flies against the very idea of a “personal post”.

I may sound like I’m contradicting what I teach in my workshops – that we should use ChatGPT to repurpose content for other platforms quickly. What I always emphasise is that we must still edit the repurposed content to match our intent and style. 

I repeat: Writing takes effort and time, even if you have AI to help you. If you find it ardous to write your LinkedIn post, you’re doing it right.