Pushing Words to the Page

I remember when I started this blog - it was supposed to be an exercise in writing, and therefore sharpening mine. But I don’t think I’m there yet.

This post has been triggered - once again - by the outstanding Terry Godier. Not by a post, though, but a documentary instead. Turns out that not only can he write like a champ, but he plays guitar, shoots documentaries… I mean, how can someone make me feel more incompetent?

I remember when I started this blog. I had two objectives - write whatever the hell I wanted to write, but avoid the usual moaning that drove all my previous crappy blogs that died a death, and do it regularly - both to force me to keep up a habit and sharpen my skill in writing.

You’d think that as a professional tender writer, I would be pretty well covered on that front, but not so. Aside from the usual denigration of my own capacities - natural in an ADHD trait sporting individual such as myself - I’ve read back through my previous posts and only found a few that I’m proud of.

The other thing I suffer with - evident in this sentence and the many before it - is long sentences, split with em-dashes. I do it a lot. I find it hard to write short, punchy sentences, until I’m back in the edit.

I prefer my writing to follow a stream of brain dumps and only in the edit do these words get refined into shorter, punchier stuff. That would be the case fo a lot of my earlier writing, but I never really edited them. Once written, they were done. A later edit would drag out the self hating ADHD’er, and that would be the end of the writing.

So I write, long form and rambling, then hit publish.

The other other thing is that I rarely approach these writings with a structure. I have a thought, write about it, and when I run out of steam I hit publish.

That doesn’t lend itself to good quality writing. Terry’s shows polish and consideration for the craft of writing well. Making a point. Not overdoing it, but making his mark, moving on, and gradually building the structure of his post as it develops. By this I mean he’s telling a story, and it builds as it is read, rising to a glorious crescendo at the end.

As you can tell, this post is more of the rambling variety, and not each sentence contributes equally to the content or objective of the post as a whole.

The next thing that occurs to me after a short pause is to explain what I’m going to do to fix that and make my writing better. Problem = solution; the mental model that has followed me all my life. In this case, though, I’ve written this early enough in my posting schedule that I will go back and edit it.

That’ll mean that the points I’m making about long form writing may be lost in the edit, but I’ll add notes as I go. To explain where stuff was cut, and where words were made more attractive.

Or maybe I won’t.

The point of this is to acknowledge an excellent producer of content and express a desire to be able to carry my words onto a page, rather than simply push them and call it done.

Perhaps that will survive the edit.