Background:
As a young child, I had already begun the search for my creative identity. My love for art trumped all other subjects, despite that early grade school was heavily visual-based for all anyway. Still, I learned to thrive with creative art activities and quickly identified that I like to communicate visually, only advancing as I grew older.
There was a time when I thought I could proceed my creativity into writing. I live in my head with almost constant flows of ideas that have the potential for a win, and writing appeared like a good way to bring that out. However, my sudden interest in writing quickly faded into nothing, and I returned to the visuals that I knew and loved so well.
Besides the required writings through continued schooling, It wasn’t until I began my professional career that I started writing again. Creating blogs and product descriptions for a retail website was new to me, but I adapted quickly. Writing for these purposes was simple, realizing that the information only required skimmability, and it didn’t need much meaningful content. I realize now that this writing style was not very valuable to myself as a writer or for the audience – though, it was an attempt to keep the retailer as up to date on the web as possible. My realization came from extensive studying on reading, writing, and creating content in the world of our distraction economy; I’ve learned quickly that script for digital platforms has transformed to become easier to read.
Revelation:
Because of what’s said above, I’ve come up with a few conclusions for myself:
- Coming up with the ideas to write about is the easy part.
- Writing non-valuable web-based content is simple.
- Writing meaningful content is difficult.
As I learn to become a better creator through the master’s program Interactive Media and Communications, I’ve discovered that writing a blog post every week, which requires purpose and reaching my intended audience, is challenging. I always knew that writing was demanding – it takes a long time to develop the ideas into words, write in a way that makes sense, and revise, revise, revise. However, to be a knowledgeable source for my intended audience has been well worth it in the end, though it doesn’t always feel like it in the middle of the creative process.
The Process:
Something that assists me in getting through the creative process is a writing process. If I ever retained an exercise for writing, I didn’t perceive it until now, where I’ve needed to make my writing more worthy. I begin my writing with something I like to call idea sentences. After identifying a topic, I’ll write down all of my propositions in the form of sentences as if those sentences belong in the blog or article, similar to a brainstorming session. Sometimes, as I write down words, new thoughts come to mind, and I move on quickly. Once I have several idea sentences written down, I decipher which ones are worth keeping and revising, re-locating, re-wording, and continued to form valid paragraphs.
After idea sentences are revised and shifted into separate paragraphs, I typically take leave to give my brain a break and return to writing with a fresh mind. Essentially, my entire writing process is revising. I write quickly, leave, return and revise, take a break, add and revise, and so on. Through this writing process, I’ve advanced my ability to write well for meaningful content.
So, am I a writer? It seems that even if I don’t feel it at times… A writer am I.
Carr, N. (2008). Is Google Making Us Stupid? [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://justread.link/P_I7bAFku
Julie Anderson 