It has been a day of far too many words.
Last night I stayed in, and spent a fair bit of time reading over my paper for the conference this week. I read it, I timed it, and I revised it many times, and this morning I sent it off. Fairly quickly I received some feedback from the session moderator that was absolutely true: I had spent far too much time with background information, preparing the audience for my message, rather than getting straight into it.
I guess I’d forgotten the art of writing concisely for the spoken word. It’s now six years since I came “off air” to go into management. I can’t believe time has gone that quickly. When I used to be on radio I could convey a story or an issue quite concisely in just a few paragraphs. Now it seems, it takes me 3,000 words to say what I could say in a few hundred.
I guess it’s reflected in this blog also. When I began writing, most posts were maybe 100-200 words. Now I can pump out 1000 words quite easily. And on this trip, the words have flowed. So this morning I spent a few hours on a major re-write, making it far more concise, which I am now much happier with. But by the end of it all, I was a little frazzled.
Having spent the last couple of weeks concentrating on articulating myself in Swedish, I had to return to English. And not just Australian English, but in English with an international audience in mind. This of course meant keeping an eye out for any unintended, culturally-laden Australianisms which would not translate easily. Anyway, it was a good exercise and I enjoyed it very much. But gee it was exhausting.
And it was kinda weird to go back entirely into English language mode. I’ve been trying so hard to speak Swedish while I am here.
I have no plans for the evening. Maybe a movie? An early start tomorrow, as I am catching the train to Malmo.
Leave a Reply