Am I Good With Words?

A reflection on my writing style.

Dating back to elementary school, I have loved to take information I learned from a class or teacher and synthesize a summary note card.

You could call me the queen of SparkNotes.

I’ve always loved finding the most concise language or structure to best remember a concept or theory. I like looking at a piece of work and using it as a tool for understanding or implementation. And for some reason, that seems to be the only way I can write now. When writing, I almost always start with an outline of information.

Introduction,

point number one,

point number two,

point number three,

conclusion.

Over the years it’s become clearer to me that, while my ability to write grammatically correct sentences is strong, I only really know one kind of writing - highly structured technical writing. Paired with a strong inclination to structure and consolidate information, I am finding it really difficult to write more narrative, creative pieces that tell a story to better connect with you. Most of the topics I tend to write about are also more technical by nature, but I know that with more experience I’d be able to talk about them in a more narrative way.

I rarely include emotion in my writing, and when I try, it feels exaggerated or unauthentic. I am hoping to learn how to better weave my messaging throughout a piece in a way that doesn’t feel like I turned an outline into paragraphs.

Admittedly, I really don’t write much, which is also probably part of the problem. When I do, it’s in small bits of time, at home, in a variety of locations that may not even be really that conducive to creativity. Right now I’m sitting outside in a lounge chair with a lap desk, in 40 degree weather, with a coat on, so I can keep Toulie (my sweet pup) company in our backyard. I’m fighting the urge to give up on a writing course (even though I just started) because I can’t tell if it will even help me and I’m feeling like I may be wasting some precious time. But I keep reminding myself that I’m being encouraged to write a one-page, single-space piece (as a part of this course) that will, at the very least, be writing practice. At most, it will be a poor writing piece compared to a much transformed piece in a few weeks.

So, for the next 2 months, I am hoping to write a few reflection pieces. I want to practice talking about things that aren’t just technical but include the personal. And for the record, this sounds so uncomfortable to me. But I also believe heavily in being bad at something before being good at it and I trust y’all to give me grace through this experience!

“Before you can be great, you’ve got to be good. Before you can be good, you’ve got to be bad. But before you can even be bad, you’ve got to try” - Art Williams.

I hope, by the end of the month, I will notice a difference - whether that’s a difference in the quality of my ability to write more narratively or just a difference in the amount of comfortability I have in doing it. (Hopefully both!)