Just a few of the stories I wrote back in elementary school.
I have a love-hate relationship with writing. It started in elementary school where I first learned that sounds created words, and words created sentences. These sentences could be crafted into any story that I desired, and it didn’t matter if it was real or not. There were no rules to writing (besides mechanics of course). Middle and high school allowed me to experiment with a variety of genres. I flourished in creative writing classes with fictional narratives, short stories, and anything that allowed my mind to wander into strange universes that I could translate onto paper.
Non-fiction is where the hate comes in.
I loathe any type of writing that requires copious in-text citations, hours of scholarly investigation, and a narrow topic that I have no interest in. Research papers give me existential dread and severe procrastination. The only paper that I enjoyed writing was in my freshman year of college, where I wrote about body language and lie detection. I was excited to write that piece because I choose the topic and was thoroughly invested in it. It’s when my creativity is stifled that I become bitter and dejected.
Fortunately, a degree in elementary education requires very few non-fiction pieces as proficiency is shown through teaching and hands-on work. The writing done in primary grades is simplistic and basic but allows for any kind of imagination to roam free. There are no fancy words or filler material; it’s straight to the point, easy to understand, honest, and allows personality to shine through.
An excerpt from my New York Times best-seller, The Magic Pencil
I always saw my writing that way as well. I keep things concise and comprehensible because I don’t see the reason behind saying the same thing over and over again in different ways. Usually, if I was doing that, it would be because I had a page limit that I was struggling to reach, and my focus was not on the quality of the paper but meeting the requirements.
It wasn’t until I started a job outside of teaching that I lost any semblance of confidence I had as a writer. Moving from elementary education to higher education, I noticed several things: people have an advanced vocabulary, simple correspondence sounds “official” and “scholarly,” and there is a level of elegance in the way sentences are put together that I haven’t acquired yet.
Nearly every time receive an email from the college or administration, there is at least one word I need to look up. When writing correspondence myself, I tend to use basic verbs and adjectives as thesarus.com waits on the sidelines. Reading other people’s work naturally leads me to compare my ability to theirs and always leaves me discouraged. I believe I’m at a level way below where I should be for someone who has spent so much time in school and working in academia.
If I’m writing to an important recipient or about a sensitive topic, I read the email several times and try to find anything that can be misconstrued or taken out of context. I’ve seen other people suffer from such mistakes and having to “put out a fire” that they unknowingly made. Having to be cognizant of this, writing now gives me great anxiety. I no longer enjoy writing for fun or just because. My lack of confidence stops me from even trying and has sucked the pleasure out of it.
Source: Reddit
I’m not sure if I necessarily have a writing process that I follow. It generally goes something like this: write two sentences, delete a sentence, write another sentence, delete everything, and start over. What I try to do is just write whatever comes to my mind and not worry about how it sounds, if I repeat words, or if the tone comes off harsh. Once the idea is out, then reword and adjust the voice. I read it back to myself in my head and out loud. I send it off to several people for review and nit-picking, consult a thesaurus, and sometimes leave it as a draft so I can stew over it while doing something else.
It’s tiresome, mentally exhausting, and just not fun.
I hate that it’s come to this between me and writing. I want to feel like I did years ago when I wrote stories about whatever without the apprehension of my writing ability or how my audience will perceive it. I’m not sure if I need to solidify an effective writing process that works for me, or if I have to understand writing, in general, a bit better. What I do know is that I can’t continue how I am now because I will only grow more dismal about writing as time goes on.
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