How do you write?

I've been chatting back and forth (in the real world) with a Mad Mind this week, about writing in general.  We've both started blogging just recently, so it's come up in conversation quite naturally..

I was a journalist for a while, people consider me to be a good writer, and I often get asked about it. I've always thought I was a better editor than writer - it's much easy to sit back and re-arrange the work of other people, than to create original work yourself ;)

Here, at his request, is what I told the MadMind about his first blog post:

"I will give you the advice I give anyone who writes, or feels like they are struggling with writing, and that is to read it out loud before you commit to it.

It doesn't matter if you are a good out loud reader or whether you *like* reading out loud.  Your post was pretty well structured, but there were a few sentences that felt kind of awkward.  If you read them out loud, you will *definitely* find those right away.

This also has the benefit of teaching you to write the same way that you speak.  In broadcasting it's called writing "the spoken word" and it's the style every broadcaster wants to achieve.  It's less formal, more friendly and more approachable.  It's also easier to read for the readers. It allows you to "Omit needless words" as Strunk and White recommend and it keeps you from getting all florid in your prose - no one these days feels comfortable talking like a bloody Victorian!

My final lesson I learned from working for ten days at the CBC.  Their style guide specifies writing with one thought per sentence. Sometimes, it results in a lot of small sentences which sounds choppy, and so I don't follow it to the letter.  But it *will* improve your writing and prevent you from committing style suicide with long run on sentences, over use of commas, and weird clause structures that can ruin a reading experience."

Yesterday, someone on Twitter asked about the environment people write in.  Specifically, do they like or require noise or do they need absolute quiet to achieve their writing goals?


As I noted above, my challenge in writing is to create original material.  I can get good ideas, but rarely can translate them into a finished, written product. So, a nice quiet environment is what I seek when it comes to writing from scratch.  However, if I'm compiling material from several sources or if I'm revising a draft (you *do* use drafts don't you?), I like some music on in the background and generally noise is not a bother.


Then I ran across a guest blog post over at Blogging Authors by Ralph Ewig. He talks about the "specific instruments" used for writing.  He mentions starting out with a 5 line LCD equipped word processor. Yes Ralph, those were heady days weren't they?


I too use particular instruments when writing, which also seem to be specific to *what* I'm writing. If I'm writing poetry it has to start on a blank pad of paper with pen in hand. It seems that kind of emotionally charged writing requires a different approach. Revisions are done on my computer. If I'm writing technical material such as is required by my job, it's done start to finish on the computer usually in WordPerfect.


Writing this blog has been a different adventure.  In trying to embrace the mobile nature of social media, I subconsciously committed to writing blog posts on the Mac laptop provided me by my employer. I like the computer but I find the Mac keyboard a wretched horrible thing. The so-called "chiclet" keyboard makes hardly any sound, the keys are almost flush to the case and I am distracted trying to feel the keys to keep my finger location on the keyboard.


I find more of my blogging is back on the desktop computer.  I have a nice black plastic keyboard I can literally pound on and the keys are noisy and have distinct edges to them, so I encounter fewer typos and get nice physical feedback from every key press.


It's tricky stuff this writing.  How are you finding it?