Day 93 of 365 - Rapporteur or Ranconteur?
Sometime last year, I subscribed to the Merriam-Webster word of the day newsletter. Each day I get in my email a word with it's definition, origins and examples of use. I'm really enjoying it, and also pleased at how many words that I am already familiar with.
Sometime in the last month or two, the two words in the title appeared, on different days.
Rapporteur - a person who gives reports (as at a meeting of a learned society)
Raconteur - a personal who excels in telling anecdotes
I wanted to remember those words for a blog post, because my hope is that, eventually, my writing here will be a blend of those two things. Given my theme of health and vitality, of course there is bound to be reporting of information, approaches and strategies. But, unless it is a topic you are specifically interested in learning about, it can be rather dry.
So, I also want to be including as much as possible little anecdotes about myself in relation to the topic of the day. I imagine my posts to be rather eclectic - composed of elements drawn from various sources. Hopefully, I will do a better job with more writing practice, of combining those elements in interesting ways for the reader.
Anne Lamott, a writer whose work I admire very much, says in her current book Almost Everything:
"If you do stick with writing, you will get better and better, and you can start to learn the important lessons: who you really are, and how all of us can live in the face of death, and how important it is to pay much better attention to life, moment by moment, which is why you are here." The lessons she speaks of certainly resonate with me.
Anne is a wonderful raconteur. Her long, rambling sentences and anecdotes are authentic sharing about life. She manages to hold our attention with her humor and personal tales to make important points about faith, hope, love and people. As the saying goes, life is in the details, and she does a very fine job of examining and sharing those details via her vignettes.
I have always enjoyed writing, but, once finished with school studies my primary way of writing has been by journaling for myself. I don't do that as often as before, usually only weekly now. At one point, I think it was in my forties, I did a writing program by correspondence. There were some books that came with the course and related lessons. On a regular schedule I was required to submit writing which was critiqued, graded and returned to me and I got a completion certificate at the end of the course.
Blogging is a different kind of writing, at least to me, in the approach I've chosen to take, of having fairly brief, informative posts which also share some of my personal story. In any case, having a physical or an online dictionary has been a helpful writing resource. May my skills as both rapporteur and raconteur develop more seamlessly over time.
Sometime in the last month or two, the two words in the title appeared, on different days.
Rapporteur - a person who gives reports (as at a meeting of a learned society)
Raconteur - a personal who excels in telling anecdotes
I wanted to remember those words for a blog post, because my hope is that, eventually, my writing here will be a blend of those two things. Given my theme of health and vitality, of course there is bound to be reporting of information, approaches and strategies. But, unless it is a topic you are specifically interested in learning about, it can be rather dry.
So, I also want to be including as much as possible little anecdotes about myself in relation to the topic of the day. I imagine my posts to be rather eclectic - composed of elements drawn from various sources. Hopefully, I will do a better job with more writing practice, of combining those elements in interesting ways for the reader.
Anne Lamott, a writer whose work I admire very much, says in her current book Almost Everything:
"If you do stick with writing, you will get better and better, and you can start to learn the important lessons: who you really are, and how all of us can live in the face of death, and how important it is to pay much better attention to life, moment by moment, which is why you are here." The lessons she speaks of certainly resonate with me.
Anne is a wonderful raconteur. Her long, rambling sentences and anecdotes are authentic sharing about life. She manages to hold our attention with her humor and personal tales to make important points about faith, hope, love and people. As the saying goes, life is in the details, and she does a very fine job of examining and sharing those details via her vignettes.
I have always enjoyed writing, but, once finished with school studies my primary way of writing has been by journaling for myself. I don't do that as often as before, usually only weekly now. At one point, I think it was in my forties, I did a writing program by correspondence. There were some books that came with the course and related lessons. On a regular schedule I was required to submit writing which was critiqued, graded and returned to me and I got a completion certificate at the end of the course.
Blogging is a different kind of writing, at least to me, in the approach I've chosen to take, of having fairly brief, informative posts which also share some of my personal story. In any case, having a physical or an online dictionary has been a helpful writing resource. May my skills as both rapporteur and raconteur develop more seamlessly over time.
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