In the last semester of my graduate schooling at the University of Colorado - Boulder, I decided to enroll in a creative writing class. I didn’t have a specific reason, but, despite the worst efforts of a couple bad English teachers in high school, I had come to truly enjoy writing as an adult. I figured it might be worthwhile (and fun!) to learn about the craft of creative writing before I stepped into the real world.
It turned out to be a very good decision.
At the start of class I was asked to write a Writer’s Statement of Purpose. In a nutshell, I was asked to summarize my relationship with writing and what I hoped to get out of the class. It was an interesting excercise that placed into perspective just how important reading and writing have been to me throughout my life.
I wrote about my boyhood love of the Redwall series, my discovery of journaling in my early twenties, and my rediscovered love of fiction in more recent years. I mentioned some authors that had influenced me, like Kurt Vonnegut, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Hesse, and David Foster Wallace, and I lamented the restricted style of all the technical writing I had done, specifically how its influence self-consciously stiffened my prose.
The subtext of the whole statement can be summarized as follows:
I have circuitously discovered the importance of reading and writing on the personal, interpersonal, and societal levels. With this knowledge in mind, I want to develop my own writing ability so that I can more deeply engage with this world. That is, I want to find my voice.
Now, at the conclusion of the creative writing class, I’m happy to say that I did find my voice, or at least, I’ve begun to uncover it. I like to think of it as an instrument. Occassionally it’s out of tune or a bit raspy, and sometimes it doesn’t quite convey the melody it tries to carry, but it is still my voice, and mine alone. And, when it does strike the right notes and rhythms, it rings clear and sharp. In those rare moments, I feel a very deep sense of wholesome satisfaction.
Of course, I still have much to learn (as is true of anybody of any skill in any craft) and I will never be perfect. I’m sure some will complain of my sentence structure or my comma usage. But I stubbornly refuse to let the fear of imperfection be an obstacle to the development of my writing. I’m going to write, and god dammit I’m going to share it despite its flaws. There is no better way to improve than to try your best, share it with others, and learn from the feedback.
With all that said, I have spent a few hours rereading and reflecting on what I wrote this past semester. Below I tease out three features of what I believe to be my nascent writing style. I’d like to write the remainder of this statement as if I were teaching these three things to my future self, just in case I should forget!
First and foremost, write what is meaningful. You might ask, ”what do you mean by meaningful?” and that is indeed a good question! Meaning lies in the hidden truths of our everyday life. It’s the smell of a fresh cup of coffee on a Sunday morning, the pure joy of throwing a rubber ball to a gleeful dog, the glimpse of a bird flying overhead and out of sight. These moments are too often treated as mere filler between the “real” parts of life, but this is all wrong. If we cannot experience these simple moments fully for what they are, then we are missing out on our own life, and that is an unthinkable tragedy.
Of course, meaning lies in the big truths, too! Too often the most obvious truths go unnoticed or unappreciated. For example, I have gotten older since I started writing this, and I will never get that time back again, because like it or not, I am always aging. I am always choosing how to spend my limited time on this earth, and the truth is, I never have known nor will I ever know exactly how much time I have left. I know this on some level, but on another level, I’m in denial about it, or I forget about it, and that is exactly what makes for an interesting and important piece of writing.
Obviously, I cannot in just a few short paragraphs answer the age old question of “what is meaningful?” I’m not attempting to take on such a stupid task, and I don’t believe there is a single answer to the question. In my opinion, meaning is everywhere, but you have to refine it a little bit before it’s worth anything. What I’ve described above is some territory in my life where the raw stuff bubbles up a little more readily.
At the end of the day, I don’t give a shit about writing something unless it can gesture to something meaningful, and I’d be wise to remember that.
Second, write only what is essential. I once lamented an episode in my undergraduate days where I enrolled in “Writing for Engineers.” The class emphasized concise, clear writing, and discouraged all else. If math could be converted to language, this was what it would look like. After taking this course I complained that “the whole project turned my insides gray.” However, throughout the past few months I’ve changed my mind on this. I’ve written a lot of technical writing since taking that class way back in 2014, and after taking this creative writing class, I’ve realized just how strong my writing fundamentals are as a result. The whole point of technical writing is to convey what must be said and then to move on. This writing tendency manifests itself in my writing in a few, useful ways:
My work has detail, but is not overwritten. I don’t waste time describing how the light trickles through the canopy to rain down on the bushes below. Well, I will write that, but then I’ll move on. You see the forest? You see the sunshine? How about the bushes? Okay, you get the picture. Let’s keep going.
My work doesn’t get stuck. There’s no purpose in including something that doesn’t have purpose. Either it’s essential to the piece or it’s superfluous. If it doesn’t do any work for the direction of the piece, then it doesn’t belong in the piece.
My work conveys something. If the piece doesn’t have a direction, then it isn’t ready to be written. It doesn’t need to be perfectly thought out in advance, but if it meanders around without purpose then the reader will get bored, and that is the worst case scenario.
My work has detail, it has summary, it doesn’t get stuck or overwritten, and it always conveys something. This is only my opinion, but it’s the honest one that I have. My initial chagrin at all that time spent in the weeds of technical writing has turned to gratitude for the skillset it has given me.
The third point is to write with humor and honesty. I couple humor and honesty together because I find the two so often go hand-in-hand.
The virtue of honesty is obvious. You’ll sound like an idiot if you don’t know what you’re talking about, and even if you were to successfully bullshit your way out of overt idiocy, the writing itself is no less insincere. Maybe others can make something useful out of that, but not me, and I doubt I’d respect the words of anything that emerged from such a process. Further, honestly requires serious self-reflection. You cannot be honest unless you know what you think, and if you don’t know what you think, then your writing will reflect that. Good writing requires honesty.
However, honesty quickly turns boring without a good dose of levity, and that’s why humor is so important. I don’t want to pour facts onto a page, I want to convey something meaningful, and humor can act as a wonderful lubricant to deliver that message. Note that I do not mean humor in the sense of being carefree or frivolous. No, that would be to denigrate the whole purpose of writing! Why write anything if it doesn’t matter? Nor do I mean that the piece must be funny. Sure, if it is funny, that’s great! However, I’m not a comedian, I’m a writer. What I mean is that the writing should be sincere, but not take itself too seriously. Life is short. Life is complicated. Everybody is tangled in a personal web of contradictions while sipping a cocktail of inherited bullshit. What I have to say may be insightful or useful or entertaining, but it’s also just a bunch of words from some guy upside down in a web sipping on his own cocktail.
Good writing should make you feel or think something real, but it should go down easily, too. The best meals are healthy and tasty.
So there they are, the three takeaways for me to carry off into my writing future: write what is meaningful, write only what is essential, and write with humor and honesty. What comes next for me? I’m transitioning out of school and back into the workforce. I’m not exactly sure what the future of my writing looks like, but I know that I’ll still be writing every day. Whether it’s work emails, blog posts (like this one), presentations, journal entries, or messages to loved ones, I can use the lessons I’ve learned from this semester to be a better communicator of ideas. Time will tell how my skills will be used, but used they shall be.
I’d like to close by referencing the final line of my initial Writer’s Statement of Purpose that I wrote back in January. “I’ve mentioned several of my literary heroes above, and if I could become just 1% more like any of them, then I’d consider myself a writer.” By experimenting with style, by putting effort into writing and rewriting and rewriting again, and by developing some semblance of a personal style, I can honestly say that I have achieved that goal.
I can honestly call myself a writer.