Battling writing atrophy

During my Junior year of college, I was writing news releases and public relations materials nearly every day for my various courses. During my senior year, my writing shifted to focus more on the research I was conducting, but I had an internship that required some writing. However, the writing was more social media content and through the whole internship, I wrote about five news releases.  I liked the clients and the topics so writing about them was fun.

Then I didn’t really write anything (aside from blogs and emails) for over a month. In my first two days at my new job (at an advertising agency) I found myself writing five news releases for various clients, some of whose work I had no experience with. Talk about change!

I’m pretty sure that writing styles have their own muscles that atrophy when you don’t use them. Even though I know AP Style (as well as how to use the manual!) and how news releases should be structured, that first one was tough.

Even if you write on a regular basis, it is possible to get rusty if you set a style aside for any reason. I wish that I had stellar advice for keeping the various writing muscles built and functioning well, but I don’t. Sometimes you just don’t have a reason to write that way nor the time to practice.