Barren pages get some words raining
There has been a surprising shift in my approach to writing. Any external request to express or clarify something in a written for would evoke a passionate hatred. I could feel the amount of time that is going to be wasted for no good reason what-so-ever. What others might complete in 5 min I would need to spend more than an hour. The reason was that many people considered my expression style as "weird" or "unusual", and would often ask for clarifications in the way they wanted just to make sure that we are on the same page. Talking is easier because you quickly clarify these concerns and carry on. Writing, however, is a double pain. I'd spend hours on rewiring and polishing a couple of sentences trying to clarify what might be potentially unclear and, then, I'd spend a couple on replying to feedback which typically meant "unclear." It's a frustration spiral.
At times when I'd panic and plea for help, the most common advice was reading more books. Probably great advice, but doesn't work for me. As an (too) active person, I have trouble sitting down and reading. The most productive reading is when I'm walking in a dull room with white noise and without anyone. As you might expect, this isn't always possible, so my reading is slow. How can you write clearly if you don't know the rules, and how do you know the rules if school grammar is different from the common folks' expectation?
The solution isn't clear but I think I'm approaching it. Not only starting a new paragraph isn't problematic anymore, but I'm also spending less time on polishing expressed thoughts. A year ago I'd quickly run away from any writing task but now I'm scribbling a coupled of pages every day. Some pages are for myself; personal notes and thoughts to keep my life organized and properly archived. Others are for work. Even though, at the moment, I'm a Software Developer Engineer, which some might imagine solely writing code, I'm daily updating documents, be that a documentation, design explanation or ideas pitching.
What's the change? To be honest, I'm not sure and it might be anything. But, if I were to highlight a few potential reasons, three that come to mind are:
- The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White. It took me a while to start reading this book but the delay was mainly because "it is a book" and books are scary as they typically have more than 50 pages (too much). But, depending on the edition, it's about 30 pages long and concisely explains "dos and don'ts" in writing. Logical rules to follow; a simple guideline to follow; a blessing!
- Grammarly. A service and a web application acting a spell-checker on steroids. It detects grammar misuses, unclear sentences, word repetitions and has a built-in thesaurus. Each detection comes with a brief explanation of why it was triggered and how to solve the issue. Given the broad demand and lack of alternatives, there's definitely more to come from the Grammarly.
- Lower expectations. Quality bar for writing outside academia is significantly lower. This isn't an insult. It's actually great to not stress out about imperfect sentences and slightly ambiguous words. Words don't carry that much liability so people are encouraged to make mistakes are that can be cleaned in the process. The focus is more on the story progression and less on defending thoughts. Lower threshold allows realistically learning from experience.