Having Something to Say

Guest Post by Danny Dowell, www.theologyponderings.blogspot.com

I enjoy writing as a hobby and am not qualified to speak on professional writing, but I have certain musings about trends I see in aspiring professional writers.

One tendency of aspiring writers is they seem to focus solely on the craft of writing. They have a fluid beautiful style of writing and then go to grad school to study the craft of writing.

There is a certain obsession with style that a lot of aspiring writers have. The reality is that most good writing needs content.

Even good fiction is based on content. The content is often a step back and hidden in the backgrounds.

All the really great works of literature are filled with ideas. We may or may not like these ideas but the provoke thought.

There may be social commentary, political commentary, commentary on how people relate to each other, or something that delves into the human psyche. But always the great works have content hidden within.

Sometimes these stories leave more questions than answers.  Content does not need to have a finality.  Content can provoke thought without giving the solution.

We remember stories because they teach us something or move us to feel something more so than because of the language these stories use.

Basically good writing needs to be based on good ideas. Maybe the aspiring writer should not study writing at all but study a broad array of subjects to write about?

Maybe studying writing will lead to a breakthrough for aspiring writers, but fluid style has a limited interest.

People want something which inspires or captivates the imagination. Most of these things are based on ideas.

There are some mass published works that sell wildly and have no content value at all. These works are the sort of thing you hope your friends would not read.

I hope the aspiring writer would hope to have something of value to say. Often having something of value to say is much harder than saying that something well.

A piece of writing can always be stylistically improved by a skilled editor. But a piece of writing devoid of content will always be devoid of content.

The writing style moves to further the content, but it is the content that makes the story worthwhile. Without content the story is just an array of beautifully arranged words which are of little value.

Why Write?

I'm thinking through the value of writing. Motivation in writing for most people—and I'll admit a past one of mine—was money and fame. At some point I started to think that it's not worth writing if you're not an expert. Why should people read? To learn, I'd answer. And you learn from experts. But I'm thinking through this. There's at least a joy in writing and a helpfulness to others in writing as a non-expert.

One English professor in college said the value in writing was to write information in a new way. Bring old information to today's readers in a way that they like to read it, or new information to understand better what’s current. I like this description but it hasn’t been very motivating to me. The reason is that I still read authors like Dickens and Dostoevsky, authors who wrote in the 1800s that are worth reading in their older style and world. I also wonder how new a lot of what we experience is. It seems like humanity struggles and rejoices in the same type of things since the beginning of history.

My guess is that a value in writing as a non-expert is that there is beauty in writing. Something about it that makes the writer and reader think in a different, better way. Something that points to something beautiful. Something that helps people who wouldn't have a chance otherwise to grow. A gift and showing of love to others you haven't met.

Some evidence that this might be true comes in a recent CT article about my favorite band, Owl City. The article quotes Adam Young as saying about his motivation to write and sing: "I started writing for myself, wanting to create the kind of music I always wished I could walk into a record store and find on the shelf."

He’s attained that goal and his music is an example to me of what is more quality art in writing. Adam's music is different in a good way. Instead of lyrics and music focusing on break-ups, which is what I hear mostly on the radio these days, it's all about imagination, interesting things in life, and humor. I'd love to bring that to writing in some way too. I know it most likely won’t be as good or successful as Adam's, but I'm not in it for the success or to see how good I am. I'm more interested in finding joy in expressing a gift I've been given--the joy I see in some dancers on So You Think You Can Dance when they experience for themselves the freeing aspect of dance and share their gift with everyone watching.

I know that my writing style/motivation may simply just be the result of reading and thinking about issues, and then thinking of interesting ways to share ways I've grown and learned—to rejoice in how God gives us such a capacity to continue to learn and grow for years and years, no matter how much we learn.

That seems fitting and relaxing to me. One reason is that everything should be for God's glory. Another reason is that I feel like if God gives you a gift, it's very rewarding and good to grow in that gift. Writing simply will help me grow in writing. Also, at work, when I've been given a writing assignment a deadline is always looming over my head, and I feel the pressure of needing to be perfect or like my writing will be chopped and moved around because an editor has a different style of writing they prefer over mine.

This is a place to write in my free time and to not worry about those pressures. Maybe if I write here for a while, then when I do write for work, I’ll be so used to writing that I won’t think about the pressures. I also like the thought of possibly sharing my experiences and thoughts with others for their benefit too. I wouldn't mind if people wanted to tell me their experiences and thoughts too. Feel free to if you happen to stumble upon this blog, and have any thoughts on the merits of writing as a non-expert.