Freelance Unbound

We’re coming up to about halfway on several student journalism units I’m teaching – and already the prospect of student assessments is looming threateningly over the class.
So – a few words of advice to J-students faced with writing assessment deadlines.
Relax
One strange phenomenon I’ve noticed about student writing is that it’s much better when it’s not being assessed. That is, when students send me email about their project, they tend to communicate much better than they do in the stories they write for their project. It’s a performance anxiety thing. Students often get quite self-conscious about their writing style. They start using long words they don’t really understand and can’t spell, alongside tortured syntax that makes no sense. If you’re a journalism student (or, indeed, journalist), don’t do this.
Write short sentences
Instead, keep sentences short and organised. Make your points simply and logically. Don’t get all high-falutin’ about your prose.
Pretend you’re telling your story to a friend
If you freeze up in front of your web site’s content creation window, one good piece of advice is to draft your story as an email to someone you know. Imagine they’ve asked you what the story’s about – your job is to explain it to them clearly so they understand it. Which is, basically, what journalism does.
Record an audio draft
Some people are fine about telling a story verbally, but then get tied up trying to put it down on paper. This can affect journalism students (and even working journalists), especially at the start. So make verbal notes into an audio recorder and work on the story from them.
Find your voice
There’s no real mystery to writing – but it comes easiest when it comes naturally. Key to this is tone of voice, or style. Style isn’t about being fancy, it’s about saying whatever you have to say fluently and clearly – as you would in conversation with people you know. Be comfortable with your writing. Yes, you need to adapt your style to your material – a serious piece on a train crash will read differently from a celebrity gossip story. But it needs to be your voice each time.
Practice
Finally, as I’ve written before, the key to developing your own voice and becoming comfortable with writing is to keep doing it – regularly and often. Write every day – don’t save it all up for the assessment and do it the week beforehand. Though obviously many students will – and they will wonder why it seems so difficult to do.