Being in Grad School, also being abroad has challenged my confidence in my ability to write. During feedback sessions on different papers, PhD students identified several areas where I could improve my writing:
- lack of focus
- vague or missing structure
- long sentences
- not using every sentence to make my argument.
If I notice this and they notice this, why is it still happening?
For my undergraduate degree, I was able to get away with this: writing my papers at the last minute with a vague argument and a bunch of points that sounded interesting but did not always support my main point.
Writing More has Reveled the Problems
I have spent the past almost two months now writing every day by
- working on posts every day (even if I miss posting them some days)
- writing the first draft of a book
- drafting my thesis
- completing short writing assignments for my different classes—which was not as common for my past classes.
Writing more often and across genres and the feedback from my exams prompting some reflection on my writing, I realized that I am an exploratory writer. I write to understand my thoughts. This makes sense because I started writing to make sense of the world and my place in it. This way of writing is not appropriate for all mediums. In informal contexts, it is fine, to a point.
I am becoming more and more aware of how much I write to people. This reminds me of Josh Bernoff’s point about treating your audience’s time as more valuable than your own in Writing without the Bullshit.
I don’t succeed in doing this.
Everyday Informal Writing
I have thought a lot about this because it appears in every form of writing. I wonder if part of this comes from the increase in our everyday, informal writing through text, email, social media posting, and in some cases, blog writing. In each of these forms, it is acceptable to use a stream-of-consciousness writing style. It is acceptable to send a million messages or paragraphs at a time that cover several topics before we make our point if we had one to begin with.
We don’t edit our daily writing. Only the most anxious of us think more than once about what we are saying via text or email. But how much time do we spend choosing our words? It depends on the recipient and how high the stakes are. And, of course, our own anxiety.
We use to worry about words and context when we were young and had a crush and each word held more weight because of the multiple layers of meaning. That doesn’t exist in our everyday writing so we don’t need to agonize over each word. As someone anxious enough about communication, I am grateful for this. But I recognize that it makes my written communication difficult for others to follow. So I follow up with more text that gets to the point when I have figured out what it is.
In addition to how much I write in informal contexts where I force friends and peers and professors to search for my point in paragraphs of texts, I do the same thing in my academic writing, also in my blog writing. Sorry guys. This process has made me more aware that it is time to work on the craft of writing. I was hoping to reserve this for March alone, but since writing is such a pervasive part of my life at the moment, I decided to start early. Therefore, I have developed a strategy to improve my writing.
What I Do to Improve my Writing
Reading books on writing
I have started reading books on writing, I will have a formal March reading list, but let’s say February’s reading list veered from Anthropology and into writing.
Reading books by authors whose writing style I love
I am in love with some authors’ writing styles. Some of them are similar to my own, but a lot of them are radically different. I read an article once that stopped me in my tracks. I have this tendency to read quickly and then go back over text a second time if I missed something. The first time, I read for comprehension but not for structure. But with this text, I had to slow down and savor every word. It was something I had never encountered before, even with difficult texts where I have to slow down to understand. There was something in the structure of the sentences and paragraphs that slowed me down. It was an article by a professor at the University of Chicago, Dr. Sean P. Brotherton.
I am reading books and articles by writers whose styles I love and his will be on it to understand the magical quality of his writing that compelled me to slow down to take in each word. As I read, I imagine hearing him speak, even though I have never heard his voice. Trying to emulate his style would not work for me since it does not match my chaotic nature. I would love to understand how he does it so I could adopt it when it would make sense in my writing.
Documenting and analyzing the structure of sentences I love
This of course ties in a bit to the last, but I have started a new notebook where I keep things I have learned and sentences I want to hold on to and learn from. I am copying them in by hand so when I have a few moments I can analyze them in more depth to see how they were constructed and what elements the author was playing with.
Taking a courser course on writing structure
I admit I have not started this yet. I am doing a writing structure course on Coursera taught by the University of Michigan. Structure is something that is lacking in my writing. In the next few months, I have two high-stakes exercises in structuring long texts that I am about to embark on: the structure for my thesis and the structure for my first book written as an adult. I figured it would make more sense to get some guidance on structuring academic texts since I clearly don’t know how to do that well yet.
Writing more often
Since the start of the year, I have been posting almost every day, even though I missed some. I have also written the first draft of a book, which is a huge deal for me. I am also writing more for some of my school work and have the possibility of being published at the end of the year for a group research project. So there is a lot of writing going on in my life, and there will be a lot of writing in my future. This means I will have plenty of opportunities to practice and improve my writing.
Planning my writing
As I said earlier, I am an exploratory writer. In the best of cases, I write my texts backward where I reason everything out then make my point at the end rather than state my claim and support my argument throughout. If that is the case, I can restructure the text and then fill in where pieces are missing.
This is not usually the case with my writing though. Usually, pieces come up and fit together and others come out of nowhere. I am not sure outlining is the best solution for me but trying it and forcing myself to outline a bit could be a useful exercise.
The better course of action is writing, figuring out what I want to say, and then writing a new text based on the point. Although I know this will be time-consuming at first, I am hoping it will get easier over time, and I will get better at figuring out my point earlier so I can give myself more of a roadmap from the start.
Dedicating time to writing and protecting it
I used to spend an hour in the morning writing my book, then another hour after my workday writing for the website. Since I finished the first draft of the book, I want to take a break before beginning my structural edits. After making this decision, I have been looking for a way to fill that morning writing block to stay consistent. I have had the simultaneous problem of being too tired at the end of the day for the blog posts. Moving the outline and first draft process to the morning and reserving my post-work day to edit may solve this problem, so I will be giving that a shot this week to see if it can be a mid-long-term solution.
Optimistic about the Future
I am not the best writer in the world—far from it. Although, I write better than the average person. But I desire to write more than most people. I also consume books and articles faster than anyone I know. This gives me more opportunities to improve my writing. My one-year writing challenge and all the additional projects I undertake are ways to help me improve my writing so someday I can claim to be a decent writer and maybe people will read my writing and might actually agree. A person can dream, right?