Down the Rabbit Hole

I feel like I've fallen into the proverbial rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland. Work is getting so confusing and the path forward has never looked more uncertain!

I've started writing the longest pieces of news that radio uses and aside from minor tweaking, my work is being vetted by my editor with few complains. He even walked up to me and told me that he sees improvement in my work and my latest piece required few edits. When I grinned like a Cheshire cat, he told me I should be grinning.

My editor is funny in that way.

However, seeing how I've yet to clear my voice, I had to wheedle and kowtow to my senior reporter to get him to record my news story. After procrastinating and answering emails and doing his own work, which in the process made me miss the 7pm news bulletin, he grudgingly started to record my story.

That's when all hell broke loose.

Apparently, my sentences were too convoluted and long and difficult to read naturally. He had to keep re-recording and when he was finally done, he gave me a look of death that conveyed all his loathing for my work.

Sigh, I suppose grammatically my work is fine. Fine for print that is. But when listeners are relying only on their sense of hearing, such long sentences are ineffective. It's difficult for the reader to read, and difficult for the listener to listen to.

I suppose my editor was reading from a print point of view and it looked okay to him. But having not recorded news for so many years, he perhaps overlooked the fact that what looked good on screen didn't always translate well verbally.

Time to stop using 4-syllable words and stick to simple stuff. And short sentences. That's apparently the most heinous of my crimes.

Like they say, write to inform, not to impress.