What are you doing right now? Just tell it to a friend!
Writing texts is not for everyone. If it has to be done in public in front of an audience, many people put down their pencils.
Worrying that the text won't be good enough and that you won't be well received can be a major obstacle to writing.
There is also often the opinion that writing has to be hard work. Something you understandably don't want to do in your free time.
Then, in our case, many interesting repair reports remain unwritten and knowledge and experience are not communicated. Which is a shame for everyone who is interested just in your topic.
Forget all that, it's unimportant because writing is
A simple, fun thing
In my professional life I have worked in communications for over 25 years, most recently as an internal communicator in an international company. My job included writing daily news for the intranet, managing the employee newspaper and filling the company's information screens with content. Always under time pressure, always worried about making embarrassing mistakes live in front of 2,000 employees that my bosses brought to me immediately on the phone. Errors in the printed employee newspaper could of course no longer be corrected
Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun, which I now also have in my private life when I write, for example here in the forum
Some suggestions
Since it is important to me to promote repair reports, some suggestions on how to write longer texts quickly and while having fun:
- Your enthusiasm for your work is the ink with which you write! Think about how you tell your friends about a successful project. The words fly through the phone as if by themselves. Whether you tell everything correctly in order is not important at all. The main thing is that you tell the story!
- You do the same thing with a text. You simply write down what comes to mind on the topic without thinking about whether the order in which you report is correct. Yes, it doesn't even matter if everything is correct. The main thing is that you write!
- At some point you feel that you have enough content. Was it actually tiring?
- This means the main work is already done! Everything important is on the sheet or screen in front of you. Like you told it to a friend.
- Now comes the comfortable part. You calmly look at what you have written and organize it. You think about how to tell the story to someone who has no idea about the topic but is interested. e.g. your 13 year old nephew who can do everything on his smartphone.
- Maybe you'll realize that it doesn't need that many words, just answers to the question: What happened when, where, why, how and with what result? Use the highlighter to mark the places in the text that provide answers.
- Now all you have to do is put questions and answers into sentences. E.g.: Today (when) I cleaned the battery compartment of my Nikon F3 (what) in my workshop (where). The battery contacts were dirty (why), so I treated them with electronics cleaner and a cotton swab (how) to get power back into the camera. That worked (result).
- And believe it or not, your text is there! Everything important has already been said. Now all you need to do is decorate the report with additional information so that the reader can get a good picture.
- As a photographer, you also know how to take good pictures. With your smartphone you can get close to your work and already have finished images that you can incorporate into the text.
- Read it once or twice and you can publish your text. You will find errors as soon as you are online, and you can correct them here in the forum without stress.
- If you don't get any answers, that's a good sign. Your readers don't have anything more to say. Of course, feedback and questions are even better. To you, the expert on the topic. And you do it like you do on the phone with friends: you talk with enthusiasm.
- After a few texts you no longer think about what you have read here and just write. And guaranteed to have fun!
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