Re: Creativity

Subject: Re: Creativity
From: "Renze, Janet L" <Janet -dot- Renze -at- PSS -dot- BOEING -dot- COM>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 14:46:31 -0700

I agree with Jennifer Jelinek on the part about writing & finding a
peer:
>>>>Find a mentor who writes things you like to read. Find other writers =
>whose opinions you value and who you can trust to tell you the truth =
about your writing, not just what they think you want to hear.

I decided this was finally the year to start my cookbook/tales from the
kitchen. hopefully by Xmas it will be ready for friends/family (its
initial
audience) and along the way am getting lots of help from another
tech writer friend who also loves to cook! we are trying to keep each
other motivated on our "creative-but-techie" writing projects outside
of work, where it's much harder to chain ourselves to deadlines (hey,
that's what friends are for!). am compiling about 75-100 favorite
recipes
and little vignettes about their history, significance to me/my husband/
family history, or humor.

I tried to use "food" topics a few times in graduate school for various
projects--for a "short instruction" project I devised a scenario where I
was
teaching someone how to make a pie crust, and for another project
did a taste-test survey and write up (different kinds of chocolate chip
cookies--I even baked all the cookies myself and took them around to
target audiences--the works!). For some strange reason the prof. didn't
like my scenarios because he didn't think that food topics could
be "technical". This seems especially odd to me now because I find
my tech writing skills of editing, developing and adhering to a style
sheet,
providing appropriate levels of description and instruction, etc... are
coming
in VERY HANDY while preparing a cookbook! (not to mention page layout,
final production, estimating, and on). Don't even get me started on
the gender issues (traditional female topics)--went thru that all at the
time and it was totally painful!! life goes on!

back to the peer topic--> I sometimes think it's harder to give
meaningful,
directed feedback than to do the actual writing, so the peer review
activity is integral to growing as a writer, in my opinion. yours may
vary...

janet

Janet L. Renze Technical Writer
janet -dot- l -dot- renze -at- boeing -dot- com
(425) 234-8662 phone

>

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