Edited

This blogging thing is dangerous. It's teaching me to use my own voice, express my own opinion, find my own style. The result was the potentially harrowing experience of being Edited!

I was recently requested to write an article for CharityVillage.org, Canada's top website and newsletter for nonprofits. What I wrote was a deliberately unbalanced, personal and strong condemnation of corporate give-away contests using online voting. Good writing, but not exactly in the neutral forgiving style of a national publication.

So they wrote back and said they'd be editing it, with my approval before publication. With a huge gulp! i agreed, and waited anxiously to see how much it would be watered down. But instead of becoming generic and neutral, it came back better. By removing Opinionated Rick from the narrative, it became a more authoritative treatise. In removing the few direct digs at corporate greed, it became less reactionary and more investigative.

I'm not about to change my blog style. In a world where we (quite rightly) need to be sensitive and two-way and careful, this site is a place to explore and share just what goes on in my own brain and soul and world, without worrying (much) about how it's received at the readers' end. In that way it's much like the unconditional love of a psychologist.

But I did learn a powerful lesson about employing other writing styles in other venues. Sometimes an op-ed isn't the best way to teach or share an idea. Sometimes, it would seem, the thoughts I have to share are more important than the fact that it's Me sharing them.

Anyways, for those of you interested in the professional side that I've been reawakening through FreeRange Consulting (which works with non-profit fundraising and organizational development, by the way, not farming advice!), here's the article.