April 2009 Conciseness Counts Challenge - Who's In?

[Celeste Stewart]

Let's go with short summaries for May then, unless someone has a burning desire to try something different. I think focusing on the short summary is a good challenge because we all must do them, regardless of our niches. How will it work? Hmmn. I guess the goal would be to change our mindsets and move summaries from "afterthought" to "high priority." Maybe each day we choose one older summary and improve it. When writing new articles, spend ten additional minutes specifically on creating the summary. How does something like that sound? That way, not only are we improving our new summaries, but our older ones as well. Before and after posts would be fun :)

[HayleyWriter]

Hi all,

The short summary challenge sounds good. I like the idea of fixing up some old ones too. Emma, it sounds like you have met April's conciseness challenge a couple of times - once with the blog and once with the article from 600 words to 450. Well done! Celeste, I think these challenges are terrific, because it makes you focus on a different aspect of writing for CC each month. It's so easy to get caught up in writing for requests or writing the fun articles that we forget to focus on our writing as a craft or trade skill that can be continuously improved. The short summaries are like that because most authors don't think about the summaries as an important part of the article. Yet the short summaries are the first sample of your writing the customer sees. I definitely want to work to improve mine anyway. Should we post the before and afters in this thread, or will you start another thread for the May challenge?

Hayley

[Celeste Stewart]

I'll make a new thread soon. Some writers might not be reading this one if they didn't want to do the blog thing but they may be interested in joining the fun of Shining Short Summaries. (June Challenge - Reduce Overuse of Alliteration) LOL