Writing and Talking

An Approach to Composition

(This is the first of a series of articles I presented to online students of writing at Kennebec Valley Community College. Observing that students are generally much more comfortable speaking than writing, and seeing that students too often write like they speak, I constructed the entire composition course around a comparison between writing and talking.)
I always seem to run into the same two problems with my own writing, and I notice my students running into these problems, too. They are:
Problem #1: I Can't Get Started		Problem #2: My Writing Stinks
When I sit down to write, whether it's an email, a school assignment, or a letter to my spouse, I have a hard time starting. There's always a moment of paralysis when I start, and I'm just not sure how to go on. Talking doesn't feel like writing. I'm not afraid to start talking, possibly because I can watch people's reactions and smooth things over if I say something dumb. Writing feels like I should know exactly what I want to say before I start. And that makes it almost impossible for me to start writing at all.		I—and I think most people—write like we talk. My thoughts are a bit jumbled, and the words come out that way. In talking, that's not such a critical problem. The person I'm talking to might nod her head to show she understands, or she might say, “Yeah, I know,” or she might look perplexed, or she might interrupt me with a question. Since we're both interacting with each other, we can sort out what I'm trying to say. I can rephrase my ideas on the fly until they make sense. But in writing, my jumbled thoughts create a huge problem! I can't get any facial cues or verbal feedback. I'm typically not around when somebody reads my writing, so I don't get to clarify the fuzzy bits or to make it seem logical. In writing, I get only one try: if it doesn't make sense to the reader the first time, it probably never will.
It gets worse. The solutions for Problem #1 and Problem #2 are contradictory. Let me explain.
Solution #1: Just Do It!		Solution #2: Think About Every Word
Problem #1 is that I can't start writing. How do I solve this problem? The simple answer is from that old Nike ad campaign: “Just do it.” Somehow I just have to get started. I tell myself, “Don't worry about saying something dumb.” “Don't worry if you say everything in the wrong order.” “If you're not sure how to spell 'accommodate' (Or is it 'accomodate'? 'Accommadate'?), just go ahead and keep writing.” Because I know that if I get hung up on every little problem, I will never write any actual words. But this solution (“Just do it”) makes Problem #2 even worse. If I “just write,” then everything will be out of order and disconnected and random and jumbled—just like it comes out of my brain.		Problem #2 is that my writing stinks. The solution for Problem #2 is to think before I write. I tell myself, “Plan everything carefully.” “Make an outline to keep things in order.” “Find exactly the right word before you write it, and look words you're not sure about.” And this solution (“Think about every word”) makes Problem #1 even worse. Trying to think through everything in advance makes writing impossible. My brain isn't big enough to plan my whole document in advance, and I get so lost in the planning that I never actually my first word.
I've never found a perfect solution to these two problems. (If you find one, please share it!) The best answer I've come up with is to handle both problems separately. First I solve Problem #1, and then I work on Problem #2.
First . . . Just Do It!		Then . . . Think About Every Word
One way writing is easier than talking is that you have as much time as you want without bothering anybody. I can write, and write, and write, and while I'm doing it, I'm not boring anybody to death. I can stop and look out the window, and then write some more. A new idea can pop into my head, and I can write it down. If I talked that way, whoever I was talking to would lose patience in a hurry. He wouldn't be interested in my rambling on and on. He wouldn't want me to change the subject every time a new thought occurred to me. But when I write, I'm all alone. I can take all the time I want, let my thoughts wander, and relax.		Another way writing is easier than talking is that I can change things. We've all had moments when we have said something stupid or hurtful. And it's an awful feeling to see somebody's face change while you're talking and realize that you've just made a bit of an idiot out of yourself, or maybe worse, that you have insulted this person. In conversation I feel like I say the wrong things frequently—so much that I actually have a problem with shyness. I'm shy because I'm afraid that I'll say something to make people mad at me or to make them laugh at me. When I write, I can fix my mistakes. I write stupid things all the time. Disorganized things. Irrelevant things. Illogical things. Mean things. But nobody else has to see them, because unless I'm in a terrific hurry, I can look back at what I've written, and I can take as much time as I need to fix it: to organize it, to delete what's irrelevant, to clarify what's illogical, and to change what might be insulting.
I always try to remind myself that writing and talking aren't quite the same. My writing has to be better than my talking, really, because I won't be around to clear anything up when somebody reads it. But the good news is that nobody's looking when I write, so I don't have to be afraid to “just do it.” And even if my writing stinks the first time, I have the luxury of fixing it before anybody else sees it. Some of the Prewriting exercises that we've read about in our book are designed to help us solve Problem #1. The “Pump-Primer techniques” from chapter 1 (listing, freewriting, sketching, etc.) all help us to get words on paper: cluttered, unpolished, and chaotic. Journal Writing (we read about it in Wyrick, pages 25-28) helps us get into the habit of putting words on paper. Like anything, writing gets a lot easier once it's a habit. (And the Internet blog is a great approach to journal writing—more on that later.) Just as I try to solve Problem #1 first in my own writing, I decided to start this class by attacking Problem #1: “I Can't Get Started.” We can think about every word afterwards. For the first couple of weeks, let's just do it.