Why Writing is Selfish—and Why That's a Good Thing

The Semi-Great One will be at ConQuest in Kansas City, MO, on Saturday, May 23, and Sunday, May 24, with copies of The Power Club. Come on down and say hello!

Every time someone says they have never liked to write, I wish I could wave a magic wand and make them start liking it. 

But I can't.

What I can do is encourage each person to find something they like—anything at all—and build on that. 

As a writer, I've come to enjoy several aspects of writing, including: 

• the physical sensation of typing 
• being able to share my thoughts (without interruption!) 
• learning more about myself and my ideas through writing them down 
• watching a piece of my writing evolve through revision
• the payoff of publishing a book I've worked so hard to nurture and shape

If some of this sounds selfish, it is! There's no point in undertaking a serious effort such as a career, vocation, or learning a new skill unless you derive some personal benefit from it. 

But you can also expand on that personal benefit and reach out to help others (which is personally rewarding in and of itself). 

For some people, it works for them to see writing as a step in a process—you need to write in order to get a job, graduate from college, etc. This thinking has never worked for me. 

It takes too long to think of doing all that hard work for some distant goal that may or may not ever come to fruition. (You may die before you graduate, the economy may tank before you get that job, and so forth.) 

I'm selfish. I need instant gratification. Writing provides that instant gratification while, at the same time, serving as a step to larger goals. 

So I get to hit two targets with one arrow, but I focus only on the one target.

Find something you like, whatever it is, and embrace it. Build on it. 

Also, don't think you are restricted to writing in a particular way. Explore fiction, screenplays, poetry, and other genres until you find something that clicks. 

Most important: Don't expect perfection from yourself. Have fun and play around with your writing. Write a crappy first draft, just because you can. Write your entire essay in reverse, just for the heck of it. Make up your own language, just because.

If you find something you like about writing, you will probably find the other aspects you struggle with falling into place.

It won't happen over night, but you'll enjoy the ride! And that's what writing basically is: a journey toward self-discovery and connecting with others.

Why Spell Check is Not Your Friend

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The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.– Mark Twain

Ah, computers!  What wonderful tools for writers.  You type in your words and, if you make a mistake, your spell check corrects it for you.

But not so fast.  Spell checks are great for speed and efficiency, but they can also make us lazy.  Worse, they make writers ignorant of the skills we need to become better writers.  If you rely too much on a spell check, you can use the "almost right word" and not even know it.

Take these examples from recent student papers in my college composition course:               

If you are one of the few people who has savior acne problems . . .

Everyone may need some correction to becoming better at his or her weak arrears. 

Another stereotype that needs addressing is alcohol. Yes. There are tones of it. 

He believes rabbis will be the cause of the walking dead.

To be fair, the last one came from an in-class, handwritten exercise, not a computer-processed, spell-checked essay.  Even so, it reminds us why we should know the difference between the right word and the "almost right word."

I’m pretty sure the student meant “rabies” instead of rabbis.  As for the others, a close reading of the text makes it clear what word each student meant to use (severe for savior, areas for arrears, and tons for tones).

   

What went wrong?   Each student probably typed in what seemed to be the right word, and, when no red squiggly lines popped up to underline the error, he or she moved on.  (The words, after all, are spelled correctly.)   Or perhaps the computer tried to assist the student by offering suggestions after the first few letters were typed – suggestions that happened to be wrong.

Okay, so students make mistakes.  Big deal, right?  Why not just laugh about it and move on?

Because laziness and ignorance do not end at a few poor word choices.  They can cause major problems for writers who get into the habit of being lazy.  In The Writer’s Way, authors Jack Rawlins and Stephen Metzger describe a student paper that was supposed to be about jazz legend Duke Ellington.  As one of the authors puts it, 

[the student] simply did a global ‘search and fix’ before he submitted the paper to me.  Because his computer didn’t recognize ‘Ellington,’ he ended up with a paper about ‘Duke Wellington.’  I handed it back without reading past the first paragraph.

Now, imagine you’re not a student writing a paper for a composition instructor.  Imagine you’re a writer who wants to sell your story to an agent or publisher.  How would you feel if the manuscript you’ve worked hard and long on comes back to you with a rejection note (if you’re lucky) to watch out for similar errors?  What are the odds of that agent or publisher taking seriously anything you send them in the future?

Spell checks do have advantages.  They can help us with blind spots (for example, I often have to stop and remind myself whether "referred" has one or two "r's" at the end) and teach us how to spell unfamiliar words.

But relying too much on spell checks can bring disaster.  Their is know substitute four having god spilling skills yore shelf.

Work Cited:

Rawlins, Jack, and Stephen Metzger.  The Writer’s Way.  7^th ed.  Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2009.  Page 194.

When Does Writing Become Easier?

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The short answer: It doesn’t.

The longer answer: One of my composition students recently wrote on an anonymous card (a method I use to encourage honest feedback), “Why does writing have to be so difficult?” He or she was referring to the practice of crafting thesis statements for essays, but the question could easily apply to any aspect of writing, including fiction.

My initial answer, trite as it may sound, was that nothing worth doing is easy. I don’t have to be a sports fan to admire the dedication and hard work athletes put into perfecting their skills. Musicians work long and hard hours to master their instruments. Mechanics and doctors study for years so they can diagnose a problem and fix it.

Writing, like all of the above, is a skill as well as a talent. To write well requires hard work, dedication and that old axiom: practice, practice, practice.

And the more you practice, the easier some aspects become. After writing several essays, my student will probably develop a sense of what makes an effective thesis statement and what doesn't – so, in future classes, he or she won’t become bogged down by anxiety when given a writing assignment. Likewise, the writer who writes more than one novel or short story develops a sense of when scenes don't move the story along, when there's too much description (or too little), when characters lack distinct personalities . . . and how to fix these things.

But!

There are always new challenges to face. For fiction writers, one such challenge comes after you’ve spent long hours and years perfecting your writing skills. How do you go about selling your work to an agent, editor, or reader?

Which brings me back to my initial answer to the student: Nothing worth doing is easy.

I'd love to read your comments. What aspects of writing have become easier for you? Which ones do you still need to master?

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• Why Do I Write? (wendykomancheckswriting.wordpress.com)
• Banishing Writer's Block