I work with many writers in complex and technical fields who have to continuously write about a specialist topic. This can be a theme such as Social Protection or it can be the type of document such a s a formal report or an audit or an evaluation.
Information no longer lives in hidden silos or on dusty library bookshelves. Almost everything written (in some of the agencies I work for) finds its way quite quickly into the public domain via the Internet.
This is a potential disaster for the writer who had in mind a much more selective audience.
So it is like my trip to France today. Looking at new sights, experiencing new ways of doing things, talking to new people – I get an understanding of the audience I need to reach and the perspective that needs to change. I stick my head out of the silo.
Audience is king and if what you are writing doesn’t mean anything to your audience then you have wasted your time and, more worryingly, you have wasted theirs.
