Monday 31 January 2011

the craft of writing

Do you remember in high school when we filled in a multiple choice survey with tens, no hundreds, of questions, designed to help us choose our future career? The seemingly endless questions were about abilities, lifestyle, and "workplace values", whatever they were. After we nervously filled in the answer sheet bubbles with our sharpened pencils it was sent off to be analysed. Two weeks later we received a one page printed sheet with our best choice careers bluntly stated. Several of my friends and I were mystified by the names of jobs we had never heard of previously. My two optimal jobs? Metallurgist and technical writer.

I laughed off these two bizarre suggestions. I floundered through university, undecided, eventually ending up with a maths and history degree. And then I hit upon what I wanted to do: I became a teacher.

But recently I have started to wonder about writing again and I have begun practicing on my food blog. And I've been reading books about food writing, style, and vocabulary. It's exciting to learn a new thing.

I'm not saying that I've decided to change careers. But maybe those hundreds of questions had something to say, after all.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Sare,

I never got to fill these in... and if I did I dont remember what they claimed my calling was. So cool that your remembered.