The Craft of Writing

This business of writing is surprisingly hard. When I stopped teaching just before Christmas, I thought that I would aim towards writing somewhere around 500 words a day. Given that my first novel upon re-reading it is really bad, I just wanted to get better at the craft of writing before I started my next novel. Before I had a blog, I would write about my trip across Canada when I came back. Even while working full time I usually managed to write a 1000 -1500 words a week; while writing my master thesis for weeks on end I wrote at least 2500 - 3000 words a week. I just assumed that I would be able to, at the very least, keep up this pace. But I have not even come close to that volume of production and it is a bit frustrating.

I am gradually coming to understand that it is relatively easy to write about something that one is either comfortable with or that one knows a lot about, it is much harder to write when one has nothing to say. An example: a few days ago I watched a piece on CBC's The National done by Neil Macdonald ( a reporter who I particularly admire for his analytical writing style) about the number of items that are posted on the internet that are designed to look like legitimate news but in fact are paid for by advertisements. I had just that evening posted a question on Facebook. By the next morning my question was buried by the endless drivel that a variety of "friends" has posted from some list or another. I thought that doing a piece combining some comments from Macdonald and discussing how we are becoming a culture that confuses news with commercial branded editorials and other clever bits that look like real news but are in fact items written to attract consumers. As well I thought I would throw in a rant about the silly inflammatory stuff that some "friends" post that is either completely wrong or leaves out so much information that the piece is either not useful or even worse dangerous.

After working on the above for an hour or two, I just gave up. I just could not make it work. I, while carding and spinning spent another couple hours thinking about the topic. I have come to the conclusion that I had made some cardinal mistakes. Mistakes that I use to warn my students about including taking on a topic that is too large and trying to combine too many elements that may not be closely related.

I still want do a rant on the silly stuff people post and I will. I also may do something on a culture that communicates primarily through items that are cut and pasted from someone else. But not at the same time.

Another case of the teacher saying do as I say - not as I do.