Learning To Write

Longtime followers of my blog might have noticed an relative outburst of posts in recent months, and wondered what triggered this renewed interest in flooding the internet with Opinions That Might Not Matter. Part of my motivation is obvious: I’m hoping to write posts that you find interesting, and that encourage you to subscribe. But there’s another, more personal reason behind all of this flurry of activity: I’m trying to improve my writing skills. Because I’m not very good at it.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy with the quality of my writing. I actually think that it’s pretty damn decent, considering that English isn’t my native language. But just because the writing is good, that doesn’t mean that I’m good at writing.

Putting down my thoughts has never been easy for me. A while ago, one of those internet psychology tests attested me a brain that is evenly split between left side and right side activity. In theory, that means that I am good at gaining a holistic view of an issue while also being detail-oriented enough to obsess over specific parts of the problem. In practice, it means that my creative process is incredibly scatterbrained, with a severe tendency to ADD.

I don’t think I have ever written an entire essay straight through. Neither have I ever laid down an entire outline first and later filled the individual parts with content. No, I’m all over the place. I start laying down the framework, get distracted by a particular phrase that I want to use later on, write down that phrase so that I don’t forget it… and already get sidetracked by the next thought (that I just have to write down so that I don’t forget it). If you’ve ever witnessed a dog who’s been set loose in a sausage factory – that’s me. Or at least I would imagine that’s me.

All of this perpetual shift of attention has it’s price: I live with the constant feeling that I could have finished a particular piece of writing twice as fast as I actually did, if only I’d imposed a clearer structure and more discipline on the process. And that’s why I’m writing all these articles. To learn how not to chase every new thought before I am finished with the current one. To commit to the process. And to build the trust that I don’t have to formulate every idea perfectly during the first pass, but that I can come back and fix uninspired language later.

They say that writing is a skill like any other, and that the bread and butter part – the actual writing (not the flashes of brilliance that leads to interesting content) – can be learned. So this is me, practicing. And hopefully writing something interesting in the process. Maybe. The best quote I’ve ever seen in this regard is the tagline of Warren’s blog: “My work on display for the world to see. And possibly ignore.” If that doesn’t sum up the explosion of weblogs perfectly, I don’t know what does.

P.S.: As an indication that my ploy is working, I wrote this entire post on my iPhone – in one go, straight through, while sitting in the parking lot of the local Best Buy. That might not mean much to you. But for me, that’s a fucking gold medal-winning performance!