Thank you again for contributing this article. I wish you the best of luck with White River. I hope it grows into a tremendous resource.

I wrote this guest post for Poewar.com. While it’s one of my best writing tips ever (balancing the personal and professional in your writing), I’m really hoping tons of people click the link so that I win the most-trafficked guest post contest and ge…

I guess you kind of have to look at it in terms of your audience, too. Can I write an academic essay? Well, if hard-pressed, I could brush up on it and come up with something. Do I think a professional approach reaches more people than does a personal one? Depends on the audience, but in general I don’t think so. It’s the writing, which I think is what you’re getting at, that transcends the professional and moves into the personal that really remains with a person throughout his or her life.

Far fewer people will share my interest in T.S. Eliot’s “wrestle with words” (master’s thesis topic) than, I think, would be able to empathize with my struggle to soothe my infant daughter as her two, tiny front teeth erupt through tender gums.

That said, I can certainly see your point about wedding the two. As I said, it all depends on the audience and where you intend to go with the essay. And I’ve been out of college for so many years now, it’s very possible I’ve completely misinterpreted your essay; if that’s the case, my apologies.

Oh, just wanted to briefly respond to Carolina’s comments. I tend to go in the opposite direction. The writing I like some people (maybe a lot of people) would find too stuffy, too boring, too academic or “erudite” maybe. I can certainly understand what you mean–that maybe somebody is dancing around with his words saying “look at me” to flaunt his or her supposed brilliance. I guess it all comes down to personal preference and where we draw the line of separation. On one hand, I don’t like writing to be dumbed-down for me; I adore rising above the precious little that I know and trying to learn something I don’t (whether it means picking up a Roget’s thesaurus or Dorland’s medical dictionary). I just naturally like puzzles, ferreting out tough writing (well, what most people, I think, would consider difficult; I know I do!) by the likes of James Joyce, Faulkner, Eliot, and so on. However, at the same time, I certainly can become bored by the rigors of reading something incredibly difficult–just an unflattering impatience in me as a human being. I think it comes down to what your preference is in terms of writing: not necessarily a concrete vs. abstract battle but maybe even genre and/or school of writing or even subject matter. But what you hint at is spot on, Carolina; in the wrong hands, difficult writing is a nightmarish, poorly contrived collage of high-fallutin’ witticisms, half-hearted poetry, and so on.

A fine essay, Tom. Thanks for sharing it with us!

This article perfectly explains what is at the heart of writing an appealing blog post or essay — learning to balance the personal/private with the professional/public….

@ mommy bloggers: I salute you all, regardless of how personal or professional you write it. You could write your blog as a how-to guide to parenting, but I’d rather join in your trials and frustrations than read about only the techniques that worked. I already own enough parenting books that think they know all that.

An anecdote about infusing “personal” style into my work writing, for instance, when documenting API references, or hardware/software design guides: I’m reminded of a recent application note I edited where the author wrote: “When the gc command blanks your screen before it returns you to the ‘#’ prompt, don’t worry….” After this talk about making things personal, I regret editing it out.

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