Outside the Classroom:A Different Take on Creative Learning.
In the academic fields of literature and language, a creative writer is highly appreciated. Several universities and colleges both in India and abroad offer courses on creative writing. If you are an acclaimed creative writer, your proficiency in the language can hardly be called into question. It is taken for granted that you have mastered the language and are able to play with it as per your wishes. You can compose poetry, write stories, argue convincingly and so on. Armed with such abilities, you may think that a job in the industry that involves writing will be a piece of cake for you. Pause here and think again.
Lucrative opportunities like technical writing and blogging require extensive writing from you but not the kind that you have been producing so far in your classrooms. I once attended an interview for the post of technical writer in a reputed company where I was asked why I want this job. I confidently replied that creative writing is one of my skills and I would love to apply that skill in my job. My interviewer smiled and told me “creative” writing is not what is expected out of me. The focus should be to keep the language as simple as possible and be straightforward. The writing thus has to stem from an entirely different attitude and perspective.
You need to keep in mind that a company is hiring you to write about itself, its objectives, its products etc. Through your writing, existing and prospective clients will form an idea about your company and what it is all about. It is up to you to make this idea as clear to them as possible. So you need to free your writing from veiled references and images to make it clear and comprehensible. When you are writing about a product, you have to make all specifications easy to understand and when you are blogging about the company and its services, your style needs to be simple so that your writing is understood by everybody. A poet or novelist can get away by saying he/she writes for a specific target audience, but you won’t usually have that excuse. So does that mean there is absolutely no creativity? Not at all; you need to be creative to make your writing simple, comprehensible, yet eye-catching.