the dharma blog

I thought that today would be a good day to write about writing because I went to a seminar presented by IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) at St. Thomas this morning. The seminar was essentially about how to write good. Or is it “how to write well?”

The guy who led the seminar (he will remain nameless until I have something nice to say, let’s call him Mr. X) is a consultant and speaker and the four hours was certainly entertaining. But, I really thought I’d be inspired to wax on about the wonders of writing, writing technique, and the general power of writing in how it can help you connect, persuade, describe.

But, I’m not feeling too inspired. (And I’m not feeling too good either. I’m not hungover, I’m dehydrated.) As much as I tried to dig up some inspiration all afternoon, it hasn’t hit me. All I can think is that for all Mr. X’s useful instruction on grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, and his admirable emphasis on Hemingway-like clarity and brevity, his clinical approach was great only for helping people who only write because it’s part of their job, and not because they love to or have something they want to say.

It was boiled down, easy-to-understand, and made you think. But it didn’t make me want to write and I think good motivation is key to good writing.

And it made me self-conscious. I haven’t felt this kind of self-consciousness about my writing for a long time. Did I use a comma splice inappropriately? Did I de-emphasize the most important part of my sentence? Is there a better word I could have used there? I say fuck that. It’s not like I don’t have lots to learn about the craft of writing – in fact, I’ve got several lifetimes worth of learning that I’m trying to cram into this one – but to paraphrase how he quoted some other guy: The best place for correctness is behind us. In other words, you have to know the rules before you can break them.

I don’t know all the rules, but I hate being reminded of the ones I’ve already learned and forgotten.

This may have been a pointless post, but all I’m trying to say is that I enjoy writing about things that interest me (for a good idea of what those things are, check out the “categories” list in the right column), and the distance between writing about those things and writing only because you have to for work is a vast terrain.