The first thing that springs to mind to discuss when talking about the Bio writing classes is the difference in the writing. It is much more difficult than I expected to write the Bio in 50 words, I struggled to find enough words to begin with thinking too much about being concise and not really understanding what to add. Then I struggled trying to fit what I had into a 50 word constraint. It has to be said however that having read through the sheets and spoken about it a little I found it much easier to know what I wanted to add to the Bio in question. The editing stage too was more difficult than I had anticipated, when editing other peoples work (false student examples) I found myself being much more lenient with what I cut than maybe I should have been. I know for a fact had it been my own work I would have been a fair bit harsher, which is fine if I am doing a first edit on my own work or even a second. But not for instance if I am helping to edit someone else’s work. Despite this I do actually quite enjoy editing which although I had realised this to a lesser extent in the past became much more obvious in this session.

The other thing I wish to look at in this short piece is the way in which a biography comes in much more useful than I would have necessarily expected. It is useful and required for a lot of things, if you are performing at an event or sending a letter to an agent to name a few. I was a little surprised that there is not a standard length for biography submissions to agents or other events; however it makes sense that varying biography lengths can test the writer in more ways than the initial submission might reveal. It might not seem very testing in fact I thought that the session would be much less difficult than it was but it is really incredibly difficult to find a very concise way to say quite a lot. Hence why the harsh editor on such things is really more of a friend as I found out, such information of course was very useful in reassuring me that it was okay to be harsh. Part of my initial reserved approach to the editing came out of a wish to not offend and respect the information that had been included even though some of it was more harmful to the submission than not.

In short the session was useful for a number of reasons, first and foremost of which is that I have now come out with a 50 word biography, a second being a restored confidence in my editing ability. Lastly it helped to open my eyes to just how useful having a formed Biography could potentially be.

That’s all for now. Hope you are all having enjoyable days.
Hugh.