New column entry
Jan 9th, 2008 by Peter
Just before Christmas I was asked if I could do yet another column for RENDSBURGerLEBEN and said “Well – sure”.
This summer, as I was in China, I was asked as well. I told the editor that even though I wanted to do the column, it would be difficult to write much about what happened in Aalborg at the moment. I offered to do a China inspired column, but that didn’t fit well into the magazine. So I was put on hold and haven’t done any since April. The whole deal with writing for RENDSBURGerLEBEN is that the city Rendsburg is a sister/friendship city to Aalborg.
It was pretty tough this time. I had an idea, but found it hard to put down in writing. Also keeping the letter count down to 1500 was a brain-squeezer. I managed to hit about 1800 in the end (just like my first entry). The whole experience taught me a lot. For example that if I want it brief and to the point, I should:
- Finish writing and re-read it some days later.
- Cut, cut, cut everything that is not essential for the story and then try to cut some more.
- Look at all words/sentences and replace those too long with shorter ones.
- Re-read the whole deal and do number 2 and 3 again until I feel done.
- Be happy that the whole deal is translated into German removing my Danglish grammar mistakes.
What it also taught me (or made me sure of) was:
- Normally I’m too lazy to do 1, 2, 3, 4 on this blog. Unless I have to deliver the goods to someone else (in this case a magazine), I will write, use Word’s spelling control and post. This is why my posts are horribly long and uninteresting.
- I’m not a professional writer.
- Writing in English makes me drop ~20 IQ points and use twice the time I would have used if I wrote in Danish.
- I write better stuff under pressure.
- My life is pretty boring.
- Aalborg, on the other hand, is not boring, but I’m an expert in making it seem that way. I’m a home person and rarely attend anything that can’t be attended from my home.
Stay tuned until tomorrow, where I’ll post what I wrote….
I don’t remember Aalborg as booring, but I also only was there a few times and when I was young. But I think it’s very brave you dare to write for a magazine – I think I would find as many excuses as possible to avoid doing that.
Nah… You could do that Claus too. Actually most bloggers could do that.
In all fairness its just a coincidence that I was asked. I live in Aalborg and blog. They needed someone that did both and would write a column for free. So they stumbled upon me.
Suits me fine that I don’t have to write the column every week. That would have been too hard. Fits them and fits me. They get a contribution and I get a more intensive writing experience. Everyone is happy.