At work the last little while, I’ve been living and breathing Microsoft Word. It just happens that various stars are inline and I have to 1) write my summary for last year for my review, 2) write my goals for the next year, 3) write some copy for a newsletter, 4) write a paper to submit to IEEE, 5) write feature docs for upcoming work, and 6) write this blog. Well the last one wasn’t in Word, but you get the picture — it’s a lot of writing! When was being an English major part of my job description?

The IEEE submission is by far the hardest to write. We’re finally getting around to writing up (and hopefully publishing) my MASc thesis, although related technology has since been catching up. By “we” though, I really mean “me”. It’s a slow process, partly because I just want to retire the topic, but also because I feel the need to overload ever sentence when writing “academically”. If your sentences aren’t sophisticated, how can you signal that you (and by extension, your work) is intelligent?

The first day, I wrote ~1200 words, and yesterday another ~2200. I estimate I spend maybe 4 hours a day writing so my average of about 400 words (that’s not even a page) an hour is pretty slow! I guess I shouldn’t quit my day job. Oh wait, this is my day job.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: working