Please grab a drink and form a group with two or three

others

Talk about why you are here

Will’s First Draft ProcessFor writing opinion based blogs and articles

Heading•A catchy title

Stand/Subheading•A summary of what to

expect in the blog/article

Opening Paragraph•Draw the reader with a

gambit or remarkable idea

Conclusion•What has the reader learned

about the opening and stand

Fact/titbit 1/quote• Some influential statement

Fact/titbit 2/quote•Another influential

statement

The cement• Bind it together and make it

smooth

The Heading and the Stand (five mins)Attract the reader with a snippet of what they’ll learn

• Why it’s hard to be a man … at Christmas (Guardian)

Spare us the penguin cufflinks, jaunty hip flasks and waffle bow ties. No man wants to end up looking like a 1970s antiques dealer with a serious drink problem.

• Insurers face City probe for spying on us amid claims that companies are trawling social media to harvest our data (Daily Mail)

The Financial Conduct Authority will look at how insurers use 'big data‘Concerns that customers have no idea what information firms have on them Some insurers are looking at Twitter and Facebook to find out our habits

• Tech divided over digital assistants (Stuff)

As companies rush to dominate the digital assistant market, debate continues over whether they should be sassy a woman or a machine.

The Opening Paragraph (10 mins)An interesting or remarkable statement to catch the reader’s attention

• There aren’t many times when it’s harder to be a man than a woman. Generally speaking, we earn more than women of the same age and background, spend less time on housework and childcare, and are allowed to go grey without being accused of “letting ourselves go”. (Guardian: Why it’s hard to be a man … at Christmas)

The conclusion (ten mins)Paragraphs that remind the reader what they learned, and return to the ideas in the Stand.

• Buy us socks, buy us hankies, even buy us slippers if you must, but please leave the cufflinks and bow ties where they belong – in the past. (Guardian: Why it’s hard to be a man … at Christmas)

Interesting facts, quotes or titbits (ten mins)Take an observation of real things that help form your opinion – if you’re writing about agile then you have a ready source of quotes in this very room!

• Take Marks & Spencer’s Christmas range... the “waffle” bow tie “gives you a modern look that will see you from day to night in sharp style”, while the USB cufflinks are “great for office-to-bar wear”. (Guardian: Why it’s hard to be a man … at Christmas)

• The newly appointed 54-year-old mother of three said many women would rather go home to their families in the evening. "Maybe the business dinner is a vestige of old business life," she added. (Stuff: Women who avoid boozy work dos)

The CementLinking paragraphs, context and your own ideas

• Of course, after-hours dinners and boozy late nights have always been part of the work environment. From the martini-fuelled lunches of the '50s and '60s , which we saw so brilliantly showcased in Mad Men, to the '80s power lunches that would start at a restaurant and end in an all-night members' club, these hospitality events are often the unseen glue that holds business relationships together. (Writer’s opinion linking paragraph in Stuff: Women who avoid boozy work dos. This links two quotes with context from interviews.)

• But it seems it has taken the appointment of the first female director-general of the CBI, Carolyn Fairbairn, to point out how much women - particularly those with children - feel left out. Context for quote in Stuff

• Bricks-and-mortar shops are even worse than websites, with cheap, nasty and, above all, useless items placed front and centre until you can barely reach the tills for driving gloves, money clips and silver-plated collar stiffeners. (guardian)

First draft done? What’s next?• Polish• Review, edit, edit, edit, lie fallow, review etc

• Publish• Pictures and graphics? Make it look lovely• We have the Blog-In blog http://wellingtonblogin.weebly.com/blog – send me

your blogs and I’ll post them up. William@glassworks.nz

• Promote• Tell everybody – twitter, FB, linked-in, and I’ll do some promotion of the

whole site, too, and there’s nothing to stop us promoting each others work.