Sometimes I’m not in the mood to write, y’know? And when I’m not in the mood (when I’m lazy (all the time)), writing becomes a thousand times harder.
I knock on a door and am greeted by Meghan Fuzzen, a PhD candidate in biology whose research focuses on determining the impact of treated wastewater on the reproductive health of fish in the Grand River.
I binge-watched How to Get Away with Murder for the past two days instead of doing anything productive. It’s 11PM.
Let’s talk about procrastination.
In the last few weeks I’ve been listening to the Mortified podcast, which features adults reading their adolescent diaries in front of a live audience, with no exaggeration, no embellishment, “just god-given awkwardness”. Every episode is guaranteed to produce cringing smiles.
I kept a diary of my own for six years, running from grade nine through my first year of university.
I did a co-op term as a technical writer at a high tech company here in Waterloo.
The job of a technical writer varies from company to company, but essentially it involves writing text that allows customers to understand how to use technology. In my case I was documenting software changes, and the process went something like this:
(Unless it's our Instagram you're looking at!)
When you look at someone else’s Instagram account you see the great vacation, the beautiful hair, the new girlfriend, and the winning game. You don’t see the peeling sunburn, all the days she hid under a hat, the heartbreak it took him eight months to get over, or the years and years of practice that led to a single successful game.
During my undergraduate years at the University of Toronto, I took a class on a Roman poet named Catullus. For a long semester I laboured over his poetry, trying to wrestle his sophisticated Latin phrases into easy English. From all the hundreds of lines of his poetry that I worked on, one word stands out in my memory: palmulas.
When American TV show ratings start to plummet, characters with British accents get added; when websites need more views, one solution is the use of clickbait.
I was standing next to someone at the crosswalk out in front of South Campus Hall and I noticed the word “Forward” tattooed across her ankle. Single words inked on skin are a huge trend right now, and a quick search shows that the words people choose represent a summary of life goals, belief systems, or ideals.
One of the things we do at the Writing Centre is show you the tools available online that can help you develop your writing skills. Here are ten of my favourites.