One Way to Be a Better Writer: Read?

I've heard a number of people say that to grow in writing, you must read a lot. One person said to read all sorts of different things, easy and difficult books. Another said to read challenging philosophy books.

I'd say a better piece of advice is to do things that include not only that but watching TV, browsing the internet, visiting new places, talking to people, and just do what you'd normally do. The reason this will help is experiencing life--the very topic most all writing is about--is what you'll be writing about. If you write something more abstract and philosophical, it still can benefit when you write in a way that relates to life, with examples, analogies, and metaphors. And when you can use language you hear everyday.

The best writing is sometimes the simplest: write what's on your mind. Stop waiting and saying "Oh, wait, I have to do one more thing to get better." Sometimes that can be procrastination or fear of not being good at something.

Reading books on writing is helpful, but you also need to practice and write. When you actually write, you start to see what you like and don't like in how things are worded or titled. You start to develop a "voice." You remember what you added or changed last time and start to feel more confident. You see what works.

If you're blogging, I've heard many people recommend writing something that helps others. Write more than what you did today or an opinion you have that might not help someone else.

Natural Length Writing/Posts

Consistency is one thing editors and proofreaders aim to achieve in certain ways. A style should be used in a certain way throughout a piece of writing. For instance, was "#" or "No." used to represent "number," and if so, if it's repeated, is it the same format?

Some people like consistency in photo size and word length. In a print world that makes sense, because it's hard to change sizes--the production cost might change if you add or remove pages. But for the web, it doesn't matter so much, except for what people expect or accept.

That's why I'm not sure there should be a required length for online writing. Each publication or blog, sure, can have a style where each piece tends to be a certain length. But even then, I don't think it would bother me if the length was different for each post or article.

All that should matter is if there's enough in the content of the piece of writing that the reader will enjoy or benefit from it.

I don't often follow blogs, but the one that caught my attention for a while is probably one of the shortest: Smart, Pretty, & Awkward.

Book Review: A Cup of Comfort for Writers

I bought an "inspirational" book for writers for two dollars, put it away, eventually found it again, and then read the entire thing. Reading the entire book means it must be good. I don't often finish a book unless I really enjoy it or find all of it to be helpful or new information.

A Cup of Comfort for Writers is the book. The first two chapters/essays were hard to be motivated to read, but the essays following those struck me as helpful and even fun. Sure, every once and a while I ran into an essay that I didn't like as much, but I knew a following essay would be enjoyable. And I was right.

Being a type of person who loves words and writing feels like a unique thing--so, reading stories of people who are wired to love them was encouraging.

It feels good to see other people put words to your feelings, and show how this love for words plays out in different settings and lifestyles.

Another thing I think happened is that it made me a better writer. I've heard people say that to be a better writer, you should read a lot. Well, with this book, I was reading good writing. On top of that, it was my favorite type that I like to practice myself--nonfiction!

Every time I look for websites, magazines, and books on writing, most of it is on fiction writing. That seems to be the need. But I don't ever intend to write fiction. I see value in it but I also wish I could see more focus on nonfiction.

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.

The Bus - Generating Writing Ideas

The public commuter bus is a place to think of ideas for writing. So many interesting people walk on and off the bus every day. All varieties of backgrounds and cultures can be noticed in the way people speak.

There are also other multiple benefits, that for now, during the summer and fall months before winter hits, seem to make riding the bus worth it:

• Walking (to bus stops)
• Being outside more. Plus, you get an excuse to just stand or sit there for a little while and enjoy the sound or the colors of passing cars. Normally that would seem strange if you're not under a bus sign.
• Diversity. I love different cultures and ethnicity! Each one has something beautiful a part of it, and helps to offer a way to reflect on your own.
• Reading. If my stop is long enough, I pull out a book. Which I tend not to do that often at home sometimes—so many other things to do there! But I know reading makes me happy.

I've been reading an introduction to one of Dostoevsky's books, and it talks about how he really enjoyed the same thing—meeting people that aren't really in literature or very rarely seen there, and then writing about them. Interesting characters who dare to be themselves, to show up in public, and drive a very huge rectangular vehicle and still seem so nice when a new person tries to put their ticket in upside down.

Confession of a Proofreader

A moment ago I became paranoid that, when wanting to write about a punctuation mark, I'd end up using the word for a very sad medical problem! Is it "comma" or "coma"? It's funny how one letter difference can be a completely different thing. I had it right this time—"comma."

Recently I noticed someone in a forum unintentionally writing "defiantly" when he meant to write "definitely."

I mention this not because I care if people make spelling errors (well, except for at work when I am asked to find those), I just love to marvel at how language works, origins of words, and how that influences things. For instance, in Roy Peter Clark's book The Glamour of Grammar, he mentions how both words "glamour" and "grammar" derive from the same word.

Hoarding Words

A strange thought that often goes through my mind when I think about writing here is: Hey, wait a minute, maybe you should not write this but keep it in your mind for later--you might be able to take this and add it to other ideas later for a book someday! I start to think, sure, let's not write today. But I am so bad at keeping notes or a notebook of writing ideas like Anne Lamott does and recommends in Bird by Bird.

I re-read an old post of mine that got the most pageviews so far, and it was a beautiful thought about noise in a coffee shop. I don't think I've thought of that since. I would have just a lost beautiful thought if I hadn't  written it down three years ago.

So I'm starting to think if I don't write in my blog what I'm thinking might be fun to write, then I will loose that beautiful (ahem, or slightly mediocre but interesting) piece of writing! Which would honestly be okay, but less fun. I could keep a notebook or notes but the odds are that I probably won't and might loose the notes/notebook, but I do find more motivation to just write here.

I'm sharing this with you in case you have that thought that is probably procrastination telling you to not work today! Be encouraged. Just write it down. Probably what you write will do two things:

1. Every time you write, writing gets a slightly, slightly bit easier.
2. It most likely  will provide a springboard for more beautiful or interesting thoughts to write down!

And I guess you might be encouraged that you did write something down once and it looked okay--so it'll be motivation to keep it up.

You know you've been working too long on your company's blog when ...

When trying to try in a blog web address, you type part of it as ".blogpost.com" instead of "blogspot.com."

I feel like I've written a lot of emails with the words "blog post" to the blog editor recently at work. Today's the first time I've "mispelled" the URL that way.

Editor's Note

Today I wrote my first editor's note (a short, often italicized introduction to an article)! I was asked to "set up" an excerpt as an article and noticed that the last time that we did that we had an editor's note. By the time  I was done writing it, I found I could tie the whole thing to a news article from a couple days ago. It felt great. It'll publish next month.

I'm thrilled that I got to write one. I guess because the word "editor" is in "editor's note" and I wrote it. So I'm an editor then, right? And I'm also still amazed when anything I write gets published.

Grammar Love

Yesterday grammar made the news—on the homepage of Yahoo News to be exact.

This week I started reading The Glamour of Grammar (2010) by Roy Peter Clark. I'm really enjoying it! It's a book that celebrates the intricacies of language with a little bit of how-to in it.

As I read the book and talked with our editorial intern last week, I realized more that words and language are exciting to me in the same way my artistic friend gets excited about colors and design, and in the same way that my hubby loves board games that are deep in strategy. And also in the same way that I see the contestants who did well on So You Think You Can Dance feel about the art of dance and performance.

So yesterday I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a copy of Writer's Digest magazine. I've never bought a single issue of a magazine since it's usually twice the price of one issue of a subscription, but this time I felt compelled. It's a "Top 10" theme that includes enough content about non-fiction this issue and I'm enjoying it. Unfortunately (for me), other issues of the magazine usually covers mostly fiction.

An ancient lit professor in college loved to talk about the Oxford English Dictionary that showed etymology. He was a happy guy who made everyone laugh with phrases he made up. Since then, every once and a while I've wondered if I should get that type of dictionary for fun. The author of the book I'm reading mentioned the dictionary in that way. We'll see.

New Strategies (for Me) in Writing

Earlier this month I published my first article that I felt proud of on a blog in my organization. My only other article I've published was so short, and it ended up being half-written by someone else when it was edited. So I felt like it wasn't really, totally mine and that my writing was too short.

But for this article I found I had much, much more to write about. And another one is scheduled to go live next week!

So looking back, I see that I've found three good strategies to gain motivation to write more:

1. Find my own article ideas. I used the "news" and "blog" feature on Google Search trying different key words. The articles that most drew my attention from the search gave me a lot to write about. I usually only can write about three or four paragraph, but I found myself writing more when I found my own article ideas.

2. I realized how news articles often work. Back in April I was following the news, reading almost any and every article I could find, about Sony's Playstation Network shutting down unexpectedly and for over a month. I quickly found that many news sources cited and reported only what other news articles and press releases said--and only that it seems like--nothing new to add. How easy is that? Just re-state it in your own words. But I really liked the articles that said new information or an opinion. So when writing recently, I've used an approach of finding a news article, summarizing it in my own words while thinking of how it relates to my audience, and then adding on the end what resources and articles my organization has to help readers learn more about the topic. Fortunately, my organization has a wealth of that sort of thing, and I pick what news to talk about based on what I can point to from my organization.

3. Blogs fit me well. I don't like reading lengthy articles. It just seems way too long to me. So I found that the shorter, one page at most, blog articles that link to other places is what I enjoy a lot. I like that companies have taken on blogs, so that they can have professional writing on it.

I know that the biggest question for most people is how to even get a chance to be noticed and published. I work in office support in a publishing company--so for me my experience is "getting your foot in the door." But even then the opportunities aren't right there. For over a year I haven't been asked to write anything for work, but in one week two different people asked if I wanted to write! I feel like this shows that we don't necessarily control everything. It's really up to God's timing when and if that door will open for a time. So I'd say wait patiently and do what you enjoy--whether or not people see your name in a by-line.

A Book About Identity

After reading and writing what feels like hundreds of e-mails at work, I often feel like reading is the least fun. But somehow I still go back to reading! It's inescapable. I guess this is one indication I do like editorial work, since my love for reading comes back every so often.

This week I'm reading my first Os Guinness book. I never heard of Os before I read a biography on Francis Schaeffer that mentioned Os. First of all, I think the name Os is awesome. Secondly, his writing is full of quotes and stories from all sorts of people and times in history. And he really thinks deeply.

As I read his book, The Call, I feel like I'm listening to a friend tell me all his deep thoughts. Maybe it feels like listening to a friend also because he doesn't say, "Do these five steps." Instead he takes time to show how what he is writing about is complex, that our life on earth can't be perfect, and that's okay.

I think good friends normally don't tell you a number of rules to follow to solve your problem; rather, they acknowledge that life is complex, and that it's okay that you haven't reached perfection, and that life is more than that (it's more about fun and friendships).

The book is about how to view identity and calling in life. Identity has always been a topic I've been interested in. I guess my interest is due to living in our culture: it seems like the culture says you can buy and chose your identity--like being goth or a cheerleader type or a sports person. But I've always wanted to know what more defines us, what more tells us it's okay to just be absolutely unique (but if we're unique, something different than anyone else, how can you define each person?).

Calling is something I'm not as interested in, but this book combines the two. Your calling identifies you in some way. This is interesting.

Anyway, I wanted to list what books I've read so far in 2011. But only because I'm too lazy to remember to write it anywhere else! A friend told me he writes down each book he reads, and I find merit in that. So here it is:

1. Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life by Colin Duriez (biography)
2. Home by Marilynne Robinson (fiction)
3. God's Plans for Your Life by J. I. Packer ("Christian Living." Okay, the title sounds very boring, but it was good! I read most chapters, and from them I learned valuable things.)
4. The Good News We Almost Forgot by Kevin DeYoung

And now I'm reading the book I mentioned above. I think I'll actually finish it. I have a history of starting lots of books and not finishing them.

The Lazy Writer

A friend who's read my past writings told me to think about writing again. I told her, no, no one would read it. She said two people would. But since I really like her, I made an effort to think about it.

My solution: buy a notebook to write down thoughts about writing. Anne Lamount in Bird by Bird said this changed her writing life.

I really was coming up with lots of ideas I thought; I needed that notebook pronto! So I went out to the store and bought one for two dollars.

My mind must be playing tricks on me: Now that it knows I have this notebook with me always, it refuses to give me good writing ideas. Like it's frightened of more work or something.

Well, to be fair, my mind is fine—I just fail to write things down quickly. I think fear gets to me. I can't get out of my head that writing poetry (what I used to love) is just sheer emotionalism with good theology traded in for a good sentence or two.

But it hit me at some point to think about memories with friends and as a kid—where amazment at how things simply are was normal. I think I want to write about that, and to praise God for making it all! What a great goal.

Now, for actually sitting down and doing it, I'm not sure how that will work. I feel like I just don't like staring at paper. I'm realizing more that I sometimes don't trust myself to not go overboard with writing fluffy-ness. I need to be nicer to myself. But how do I start?

Oh, letting go of perfectionism is never ease. I'm still a recovering perfectionist.

A Couple Books

I thought I'd update you on what I've been reading and how it relates to my thoughts on writing.

Right now I'm reading Wayfaring by Alan Jacobs. When I read the introduction, it felt like I was in a college English class again. For me, that's a good thing—as long as there's no homework, of course. Good English classes explore important, deep questions through story. I'm also looking forward to this book because I've heard that Jacobs is a deep thinker and has a good understanding and interest in faith.

Last week I read Permission to Speak Freely by Anne Jackson. I thought it would help me to feel more open to writing in an informal style or in the way I would normally speak. It did indirectly help with that. The book was not about writing but was mostly about Anne's life and her wanting people to know about God's acceptance and how we should accept and love others. She had a wonderful point: that no one is without a secret—that everyone is the same when it comes to currently having or having had experienced something painful in one's life. It's a good message to a culture that seems to want to run from pain. Pain is real and a part of life, and it's Christ and love for him and others that helps us through it, no matter who we are. That can relate to writing informally too, because people just want to be known and know they're not alone. Writing too formally often reminds me of someone wanting to appear above others or not wanting anyone to know the person behind the writing. I know that’s not the intent, but I don’t want to write in that way—at least not when I’m writing for fun.

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.