Find your voice

Image from Jem Yoshioka  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jemshed/3855102664/sizes/m/in/photostream/

On the drive home from the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) Annual Symposium in Galway I had time to mull over the key message from the conference and for me it was the importance of finding your own voice.  This really resonated with me as I feel that through this blog and Twitter I am beginning to find my voice. As an amusing aside, I looked at alternatives for ‘reflect’ or ‘mull over’ in a thesaurus for use in this post until the irony struck me and I decided to go with my own voice!

As someone who is relatively new to writing I was looking forward to being inspired and #celt12, The Written Word – Writing, Publishing and Communication in Higher Education, did not disappoint. Many speakers mentioned how crucial it is to find your voice, and to support your students to find their voice, and for me this culminated with Sarah Moore who gave lots of practical advice for writers.  This advice was very timely for me, as I near the end of my first year blogging, so I’ll share Sarah’s writing tips for those who might find it useful.

• Planning – it’s important to plan your writing, the structure, headings, the research question … with the caveat

• Read a lot – “You can’t dazzle with your writing if you haven’t been dazzled by the writing of others” … with the caveat

• Know the rules of writing- grammar, syntax etc. … with the caveat

• Share your work but be prepared for the feedback … with the caveat

• Show, don’t tell

• Writing can be hard work and sometimes you need to walk away from it

So from someone who is beginning to find her voice I’ll leave you with one final piece of advice