I'd Rather Be Writing » personal essays

If You’re a Writer, Write

Tom Johnson — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:03:34 +0000

Many of you—at least a third, I’m guessing—are writers by nature. You majored in English, dabbled in creative writing, probably immerse yourself in literary novels at lunch. You love the written word. You revel in your expertise in grammar, your fine tastes in sentence structure and semantics. You proudly display your Chicago Manual of Style on your bookshelf. Maybe you even secretly want to be a novelist. Perhaps you have an unfinished manuscript tucked away in your desk drawer that you think about finishing. Writing—the more creative, literary kind—is in your blood.

Fortunately, now is one of the best times for writers to be alive, because you can write and publish without hassle. According to Phillup Greenspun, the web provides a flexible format that removes traditional restrictions of length. You’re no limited to magazine length (5 pages) or book length (200 pages) of content. You can publish 20 pages essays, or 2 paragraph thoughts. You can write fiction or nonfiction, on any topic you want. You could publish your novel serially, or write your book chapter by chapter in a wiki-like way, or do any creative thing you want.

So why is it that, given the opportunity and tools to write, so few embrace it? I have several thoughts as to why.

1. You enjoy the idea more than the work

Most people enjoy the idea of being a writer more than the act of writing. The same could be said of a lot of activities. I once fantasized about doing triathlons, but it was really the idea of being a triathlete that appealed to me more than running, biking, and swimming. I also once fantasized about medicine, but it was the idea of “being a doctor” that appealed to me more than putting my hands inside bloody skin and tissue to fix people.

The truth about writing—the reason why people may daydream about “being a writer” but never seem to find the time to write—is that it’s a lot of work. Coming up with original ideas, organizing and structuring those ideas, editing and polishing your sentences, refining your thoughts, and finding time to do it all rather than sit back and watch TV or work in the yard—is something akin to completing that triathlon. It’s a lot of running/thinking, swimming/writing, and biking/editing. And it’s taxing. Winston Churchill compared writing to fighting a monster:

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.

Instead of slaying the monster, it’s easier to sit back and think about “being a writer.”

2. Your elevated awareness sets higher standards

Another reason you may not find time to write is that your literary awareness is on a higher level, which makes writing more challenging. You’re aware of what good prose looks like, and so the standards you set for yourself are more rigorous. You’ve got William Faulkner and Jane Austen or some other famous writer on your mind, and you know that to write something worth reading, it will take a lot of time, more time than you’re willing to commit. For the limited time you do have, all you can produce is mediocrity, which you won’t sink to.

This high-brow position isn’t very excusable, because knowledge of higher standards often gives you more talent and capability. And if you have limited time, you can just stretch your efforts out over a period of time. Still, being able to recognize that your first drafts are junk can be a motivational deterrent.

3. You’ve fallen out of the habit

Although the previous two reasons are possible, most likely you stopped writing because you’ve fallen out of the habit. Desiderius Eramus, a fifteenth-century Dutch humanist, said, “The desire to write grows with writing.” The reverse is also true. The desire to write shrinks the less you write.

Habits aren’t particularly tricky to establish. It’s mostly a matter of doing it. Once you start doing something, it becomes easier to do it. When asked for advice from a young would-be writer, E.B. White, author of dozens of essays, said:

You asked me about writing—how I did it. There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed. I must have written half a million words (mostly in my journal) before I had anything published, save for a couple of short items in St. Nicholas. If you want to write about feelings, about the end of summer, about growing, write about it. A great deal of writing is not “plotted”—most of my essays have no plot structure, they are a ramble in the woods, or a ramble in the basement of my mind. You ask, “Who cares?” Everybody cares. You say, “It’s been written before.” Everything has been written before.

In other words, if you want to write, just open up a blank Word document and start typing. It’s that simple. The rest—the form, the purpose, the ideas, the publications—will follow. The more you write, the more desire you’ll have to write. And the easier writing will become.

Final Thoughts

I decided to write this post because I’m frequently asked—by fellow writers—why I blog [write] so much. For me, I consider myself foremost a writer. I majored in English, studied creative nonfiction writing, and find value in the act of writing, especially when I have nothing particular on my mind. I enjoy creating something from nothing.

I prefer personal essays and nonfiction over fiction, so the blog is a natural form for me. But whatever preferences for form you have, don’t give up on your more creative or literary writing. You don’t have to submit your writing to journals and magazines for publication. A blog can be a worthy publishing format. I get more reward from the comments, trackbacks, emails, and other feedback on my blog than from any other writing endeavor. Whatever style and format you choose, if you’re a writer, write. The opportunity is there.

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What to Blog/Write About

Tom Johnson — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 08:09:30 +0000

When you first start blogging and even years after you’ve been blogging, the question of what to write about is constantly on your mind. In the past, I’ve followed traditional advice (from people such as Lorelle at WordPress.com) and maintained a specific focus to my blog. I’ve also recommended this strategy to others. In fact, after recommending it to one blogger, she reported that having a specific focus helped her come up with ideas to write about.

This past week I’ve been rethinking the need for a specific focus. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I had an epiphany the other week about my life, and I looked at my blog and felt that I wasn’t writing the way I truly wanted to write. If someone were to hack into my database and corrupt it, causing me to lose all, I wouldn’t be broken-hearted. A lot of these topics — on technical communication — don’t have a lot of meaning to me.

Which caused me to ask why I’m not writing about things that mean a lot to me. When life is all over, I would like to have written everything I wanted to write. Otherwise, what’s the point of spending so much time blogging/writing?

A lot of writers feel compelled to write a literary novel, or to write poetry or even book-length nonfiction. But for me, I’ve always been fond of the personal essay. I like the honesty of the voice, the realism and the spark of discovery. Philip Lopate, Joseph Epstein, Ian Frazier — these were my literary heroes in graduate school.

I tried to imitate them, but for lack of material, I resorted to too much personal narrative, and it didn’t have the same appeal as the personal essays I admired. My essays were also tough to get published, much less to receive payment for them.

After graduating, I found that in getting a job, technical skills and tool knowledge were valued more than creative writing and literary knowledge, and I moved in that direction for about the next eight years.

My blog helped satisfy my desire to write, keeping my creative side quenched enough to allow me to be a happy procedural writer during the day. In the evenings, ideas for work-related posts came easy — all I had to do was pay attention to the events of the day. My blog helped move my career forward, making me visible in the profession and connecting me with other professionals.

But still, inside, despite the frequent technical communication topics of my blog, it was the personal essay form I wanted to write – the reflective narrative that interweaves personal experience with topical exploration. Personal essays actually fit well with blogs, I think. A good blog post can pass as a personal essay, and a personal essay can pass as blog post.

Personal essays describe a form that can fit around any content, including technical communication. Surely a good many of my posts could pass as personal essays.

But I have varied interests — not just technical communication. Sometimes I like to pick random topics and see what I can make of them, the ideas I can squeeze out. I believe I can start at any point and find something interesting to say. For example, one time while teaching composition as a graduate student, I told students about this idea of starting anywhere and dared them to bring up a topic. A kid held up a walnut with a brand on it. For the next hour we talked about animals on campus, such as squirrels, and whether one should feed them. Heated debates ensued.

More than ideas though, good writing has to tell a story, and I try to see the story even when story isn’t apparent. Story is, I’m convinced, the most important element of writing. A good story doesn’t have to feel anecdotal, or include protagonists and rising action, reaching a climax and turning point, followed by a change of character and denouement. But if you look at events and histories and other ideas, they have a kind of story in themselves. They rub against conflict, evolve to overcome it, and change things as a result.

Audience is another consideration in my writing. You often hear the advice to write for yourself and no one else. I wish I could actually believe that advice. As hard as I try, I can never completely remove the audience from my mind. I’m not explicitly writing for anyone in particular, just a faceless entity who may be reading my writing at some odd hour in the night. Perhaps I should bring my posts as reading material when I go on trips, because as narcissistic as that sounds, that’s what the advice seems to suggest.

But I don’t mind writing for an audience. For me, the experience of writing and reading is about connection. Connection with the Other, as Emmanuel Levinas might say. Whether you write as a form of therapy, to express something inside, as a tool for thinking, or for remembering, below it all is a desire to connect with others. On the deep, philosophical level, I believe we write to overcome the sense of isolation and solitude that haunts us. I know I can’t connect with others until I write about things that first connect with myself.

This week, which is Spring Break here in Utah, I’m going camping down at Wolverine Canyon in Southern Utah. Maybe the four days in the desert — away from technology and my blog — will help me find my writing roots. (I also might be washed away in a flash flood, making the whole question of what to write about obsolete.) But overall, what I’m trying to articulate is that I want my blog to mean more to me than it does. I want my posts to be more significant in my life, to be the content I need to write to have made it all worthwhile. It makes no sense spending hours each week in activity that doesn’t fulfill, in every way, my motive to write. So while I may continue to focus on technical communication, as well as a variety of other topics, my future posts will embrace more of a personal essay form.

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A Career in Technical Writing: End of Part One : PoeWar.com Writer’s Resource Center

Tom Johnson — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 07:09:06 +0000

A Career in Technical Writing: PoeWar.com Writer’s Resource Center.