"Kew Gardens in Toronto" image by Linda N. An enjoyable annual festival in Toronto is the Beach Celtic Festival. My latest DeHaan Services article, "The 2013 Beach Celtic Festival in Toronto", publicizes this free event.
Entitled to a Writing Tip
I'd written about this festival in previous years. In fact, my choice to write about annual events in Toronto is a mixed blessing and curse.
The blessing is that people find my old articles every year, whether or not they've been updated. That makes my site busier than it would be otherwise, and that's a good thing. Of course, one problem is that the information is outdated.
But a bigger curse is that it becomes difficult to write new titles for the same events. I ran into that difficulty last month, if memory serves. The "best" title I could devise was almost identical to one written a year or two before.
One failsafe strategy is to include the date somewhere in the title for annual events.
Yet your loyal readers will notice that you've written a series of "The #### Annual Event Returns" articles.
I've begun to practice "safe titles", by searching my site for the topic in previous articles. Then I take pains to tweak the new title so I don't repeat myself.
A month ago I used "celebrate" and "celebrating" in back-to-back titles. Last week's "Three Free Labour Day Weekend Events in Toronto for 2013" repeated the use of "Labour Day" and "Weekend"; I'd written two articles with those words in 2012. So it's not just the full title; sometimes there is a pattern of words.
Whether you write about recurring events, or some other subject with a temptation to repeat specific topics, my writing tip is to create a procedure that forces you to review previous titles and enables you to make new creative choices for that vital section of your article.
While the "Beach Celtic Festival" is a major part of the title, the rest is sufficiently different that I shouldn't be accused of plagiarizing my own title. Stay creative in your writing!
The blessing is that people find my old articles every year, whether or not they've been updated. That makes my site busier than it would be otherwise, and that's a good thing. Of course, one problem is that the information is outdated.
But a bigger curse is that it becomes difficult to write new titles for the same events. I ran into that difficulty last month, if memory serves. The "best" title I could devise was almost identical to one written a year or two before.
One failsafe strategy is to include the date somewhere in the title for annual events.
Yet your loyal readers will notice that you've written a series of "The #### Annual Event Returns" articles.
I've begun to practice "safe titles", by searching my site for the topic in previous articles. Then I take pains to tweak the new title so I don't repeat myself.
A month ago I used "celebrate" and "celebrating" in back-to-back titles. Last week's "Three Free Labour Day Weekend Events in Toronto for 2013" repeated the use of "Labour Day" and "Weekend"; I'd written two articles with those words in 2012. So it's not just the full title; sometimes there is a pattern of words.
Whether you write about recurring events, or some other subject with a temptation to repeat specific topics, my writing tip is to create a procedure that forces you to review previous titles and enables you to make new creative choices for that vital section of your article.
While the "Beach Celtic Festival" is a major part of the title, the rest is sufficiently different that I shouldn't be accused of plagiarizing my own title. Stay creative in your writing!
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