Skip to content
our writing skill doesn’t match our expectations
- we are often disappointed when we try to write
- having used words throughout our life
- we expect a high degree of proficiency
- we talk all day, an average of 7,000 words spilling out
- we read fiction, poetry, articles and other forms we love
- but reading and speaking don’t prepare us for writing
writing is more than words dropped onto paper
- writing attempts to recreate meaningful experiences
- it begins with a summoning of images, ideas, and perspectives
- fiction writers progress through a stage called “world building”
- nonfiction writers collect and collate research
- all the time making connections between different times and places
- what connects a Chinese emperor and a factory worker in the 1900’s?
- they both died of mercury poisoning
our writing doesn’t resemble the finished works we read
- we start writing as an aid to thinking
- complex ideas cannot be held in our mind alone
- they need to be recorded, tested, and weighed
- the finished works we read have been scrapbooked
- trimmed, rearranged, pasted, and fringed with borders
- substantive edits, line edits, copy edits, and final proofing
- in comparison a first draft is embarrassing
- Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree before the kids have spruced it up