I am at my most unnatural as a writer when I’m writing about myself.
Especially in bios for social media or website profiles. Tackling the About page does me in.
I end up giving in to cliches as I try to balance professional and friendly, with a dash of authenticity.
Passion for excellence and warmly engaging?
Warmly passionate?
Professionally genuine? Genuine professional?
A wealth of experience?
Fresh eyes and a cold nose? Oh wait – that’s Shep.
Just lately I’ve realised that I’m so much better at writing about myself when I don’t think I’m writing.
So I’ve started collecting some of the ‘non-writing’ that I’ve done. Things like email replies to people or comments on social media. It’s so much easier to explain my writing and consultancy work to that one person
And I think that’s the key – one person.
When we are replying or responding, we are talking to a person and not some nebulous audience ‘out there.’ We are writing to help that person understand and feel connected. Choosing what we say and how we say it becomes a matter of serving the express needs of a person in a moment.
It’s not so easy to replicate when we have to do ‘proper’ writing that represents us indefinitely as a bio or About Me.
We don’t have to.
We just have to remember to save and store what we’ve written when we’re in the flow, and then remember to drag it out and make use of it again and again.
Writing’s never easy but we can make it easier.
