Blagnet.net

Good writing

Johnny Kramer has some good advice on how it’s done and how it’s not done. I have a feeling that, when I read his column more carefully and thoroughly, I will see how a lot of his no-no’s apply to me. I am not a trained writer, I admit (trained as in taking a single college class that taught you how to write or graded your English-writing abilities. Spanish, yes, but English—I finished with that in high school). I think my two big shortcomings as a writer are trying to sound too deep, colorful, or powerful, and using long and winding sentences in an attempt to pack a series of points all into one sentence. The results of these two mistakes, respectively, are: sounding like I’m trying too hard to be…well, deep, colorful, or powerful; and lack of clarity.

Though I do want to bring up in my defense that teachers and others have told me from when I was very young up to now, in graduate school, that I was a really good writer. (Do I sound like an American Idol reject who got nothing but encouragement from family and friends all their life?) In science writing I get kind of chided for not utilizing a variable enough vocabulary—using the same word in two or three consecutive sentences, when more options exist to throw some variety into the writing. I say: If the word is right once, then it is right two, three, a hundred times, and you should mean what you say and say what you mean, and if you have to repeat a word a few times to state your point, then so be it. I am very stubborn like that, because I try to remain cognizant of what I think is the foremost hallmark of bad writing these days: the use of big, fancy words and long, complex sentences to try to sound like a good writer. With the millions of mediocre and bad writers who can publish all they want for free on their websites and blags, I’ve encountered a lot of writing that was bad precisely because the author tried too hard to sound like a good writer. So, my point is, despite my admitted over-use of the thesaurus and my attempts to write deeply and powerfully, I am aware that bad writing often results from trying too hard to sound like a good writer.

I think for lack of training, I’m doing pretty well (ditto for Kelly).