This week I don’t have any videos or pictures to add, just a short story.
As a child and young adult, I loved writing, specifically in my journal. I wrote twice a day everyday which started the day I learned cross my t’s and dot my i’s.
Somewhere between the age of 16 and 23 I began to hate writing. I was very nervous about writing academically and professionally. As Nicole mentioned, I over analyzed every sentence…in fact I over analyzed every word! Truth be told, I was scared of writing and my fear turned into hatred. When writing academically and professional it took me ages to get one sentence down on paper; I had all the information and ideas in my head I just couldn’t seem to get them down.
Godin summarizes my fears perfectly in Writing Naked, “The reason business writing is horrible is that people are afraid. Afraid to say what they mean, because they might be criticized for it. Afraid to be misunderstood, to be accused of saying what they didn't mean, because they might be criticized for it.”
I saw writing as a chore. I could verbally communicate my entire essay out loud without having it written down on paper. Why couldn’t I write essays? Proposals? Even simple e-mails?
After stumbling upon a box filled with my old journals, I decided to go through some of them. I realized that I had once loved writing and I could learn to love it again, or least not be afraid of it. So I developed my own strategy for writing.
1. Research: In order for something to be written clearly and effectively, it must be well informed. You MUST be well versed on the subject that you are writing.
2. Write as if no one will read it: Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation or structure. Just write. Write like you would in your journal and as if no one else will see it.
3. Organize, edit and remove: Now that you already have everything written down, you can organize the information and remove all unnecessary sentences and word.
After I started using this strategy, I found that writing both academically and professional became much easier for me. I found that by removing the element of ‘being wrong’ or having grammatical or spelling errors in my writing helped tremendously. I wouldn’t say that I have become a better writer, but my hatred and fear of writing has disappeared.
I still write in my journal every day and if anyone else suffers from a fear of writing, I highly recommend starting a journal.
Doubtlessly, it pays to be conversant with your topic and to edit your text for clarity, grammar, and organization. But that's still no substitute for writing courage.
ReplyDeleteI logged 10 years as a community newspaper journalist, and about five years as college newspaper writer (on and off again while an undergraduate and graduate student). I can think of many times when I wrote an article well - factual, clear, and gramatically correct - and still caught hell from someone; simply because I told the truth.
Fact is, not everyone is going to be pleased with what you write. That's especially true if you piece calls attention to someone doing something wrong, or something being done improperly.
Yet, you can draw criticism merely for stepping on someone's toes. It could be spotlighting a person or organization that someone does not like. It could be covering an apparently harmless issue that someone would prefer to go away. It could even be doing a feature on some seldom profiled person or group that someone deems not worthy of mention.
That's why experienced writers learn not to cringe at the specter of negative reaction. Look at it this way. If you let that fear dissuade you from writing about a topic, then you are imposing censorship on yourself. And censorship is to a writer's essence what an ax is to a tree's growth.
Emma - thank you for this beautiful post. I really enjoyed reading it and the advice was PERFECT. I felt totally connected to every word. It was clear, simple, relevant but most of all - inspiring. Great job :)
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