Getting in the Write Mind

I laugh out loud when I realize how much I now write on a daily basis.  Since starting this blog I have written over fifty-thousand words, not counting the work I do each day for my clients.

Thirty years ago, however, I could not write my way out of a paper bag.  Somehow I managed to graduate from high school; up in my attic I have a thick stack of papers with As emblazoned on them that would hardly pass muster today.   Endowed with false confidence from my high school education, I set our for college thinking I had mastered the “read-a-book-write-a-paper” game.  When I arrived on campus, however, I discovered quickly that everyone was playing with a different deck.   In my required freshman expository writing class, we read modern short stories and wrote short papers.  The stories stumped me outright; I had no lens through which to process what I was reading.   I could not find the familiar symbolism of Shakespeare, or the quaint period irony of Jane Austen.  There was nothing in my toolkit with which to interpret modern themes.  On one infamous occasion, the writing teacher distributed my paper along with that of a close friend—both of our names 'almost' obscured—as two extreme examples of writing on a similar topic.  One was beautifully executed; mine was the other one.

Having been called out as a bad writer in a Harvard English class was a shame I carried for a long time.   I tried in vain to avoid classes with papers, even stooping to take the one notorious English class with no writing assignments. I worried about my ability to survive long term at a venerable institution of higher learning.  Then I found the sweet spot of my education.  I began to see how the courses themselves followed a natural flow of ideas, an evolution of thought.  I then recognized several ideological connections between my philosophy, history of science, and art history classes.   I started getting goosebumps at lectures, as one by one a string of my professors won Pulitzer Prizes in successive semesters.

Then one day there was an audible click.  I may have been late to the game, but I finally got what it was all about.  As I became more expert in my chosen fields of study, I realized that I was beginning to accumulate knowledge; suddenly I had something important to say.  That’s when writing lost its demonic power over me.  After that, I never stared at a blank piece of paper again.  Ideas flowed from recognition and analysis; the piece of paper in the typewriter was just there to sop it up.

As a professional strategic planner, I logged a lot of hours over the years writing business plans, industry white papers, brochures, and eventually websites. I enjoy the challenge of revealing the virtues of concepts and products that people take for granted. Everything has a story to tell. The fun is in finding the hook and then slowly pulling away the layers one by one. At the company where I worked for a dozen years, I became the go-to person for generating excitement about our products. With my background in healthcare policy and finance, I could help our clients understand how new applications and technologies would improve the way they did their jobs.  Of course we had a team of professional writers in the marketing department whose job it was to create sales materials.  It always baffled me that they resisted learning about the jobs our clients did, or about how our products worked.  It is not possible to write convincingly about something you do not know.  Instead, they would try to take the pieces I wrote and transform them into reusable marketing Mad-Libs. 

Writing is never an exercise in filling a space with words.  I often think of the way that Michelangelo described carving his sculptures.  He did not take a form in his mind and impose it upon the stone; rather, he “liberated” the figure from within.  He recognized the meaningful beauty and simply discarded the rest of the material.  Similarly, good writing comes from finding what needs to be said;  my difficulty in college had little to do with writing skills and a lot to do with lacking exposure to all manner of things.  Having lived through a personal renaissance of a sort, I am a big proponent--perhaps militantly so--of liberal arts education.

Over the years, as my kids worked their way through school, we spent a lot of time discussing the process of writing papers.  Today, kids are taught a strong emphasis on formulating a thesis statement.  They are even required to underline the thesis (or have their score reduced by one grade)—a practice which seems to have followed both of my kids to college.   But they do not always have the tools to formulate their own point of view.   I took to asking them simple questions like, “What was the best part?” or “Who was your favorite character?” or “What makes it a good book?” or “Does it remind you of anything else?”  These questions (and the follow-up “why” questions) helped them transition from retelling the story to talking in the abstract about the book: its significance, the journey of a key character, striking symbolism, parallels to other books or styles.  I would admonish them if they tried to write a paper before they had something specific to say.

Which brings me back to this blog.  Early on in this venture, one of my friends asked if I was doing this to challenge myself, or to rant, or as a form of therapy.  I guess it depends upon the day.  I tend to see life through a comical lens and I enjoy revealing the humor I sometimes find in the mundane.  When there is a story that is meaningful to me, sometimes I enjoy the challenge of framing it in a way that resonates with others.  We all have a lot of personal baggage, and I sense from the responses I am getting—some public, some private—that many followers of this blog enjoy connecting with the more poignant stories.  The most trying moments for me have been those where I vacillated between exposing myself or playing it safe.  If I have learned one thing, it is that honesty is difficult.  Finally, as someone who writes professionally for industry, I am enjoying the opportunity to write on a wide variety of human subjects.  From that perspective, having suppressed my own ego in my writing for so many years, it is both challenging and liberating to be able to exercise my own voice. 

On a final note, part of the fun of writing this blog is to ferret out those of you who have something to say.  If I strike a chord, or hit a nerve, I hope you will share it with the rest of us.

Tomorrow's blog:  Love on Avenue Louis Pasteur