A Handy Skill

You know, I realized something the past few days: writing can be a good skill to have. After four years of college, mostly in an English major, writing a lot has helped me in one big way: writing a little is stinkin’ easy. I’ve been writing articles on bicycle-related stuff – not much, 300 to 500 words – and honestly, it’s being kind of easy. I’m not saying I’m some sort of prodigy, or even very good. But small pieces, now, don't even increase my heart-rate.

People love the tortured artist; the ones who have to write (or paint or write music) because if they don’t they’ll go mad or depressed and kill themselves. And I’m glad those kinds of artists have found an outlet.

Other writers talk about the excruciating process of creating a scene or a story, and how much they hate it when it’s finished and it’s nothing like what was in their mind. How their characters take over and run rampant.

What almost never gets talked about is the skill of writing. There is, despite any protestations, a certain amount of science to the art of writing – not enough that anyone can be taught to write really good prose, but a fair enough degree of it so that when you’ve practiced it for a long time, normal writing (like blogs or articles) really comes rather easy. The blank page hurts your eyes a little less. 11 point font isn’t quite so small. Single-spacing is normal again. You don’t run to the fridge for a refill quite so often (or wherever you run for a refill).

Because when you learn to juggle eight balls, suddenly three isn’t quite so many. You spend so much of the day with words running through your head, and perhaps some of the day – if you’re lucky – with them running onto the page, that putting together a sentence isn’t quite as tricky as it once was. Everything you write suddenly follows the arc without you bending each articulation like something that can articulate into a curve.

And if you love language like I do, that’s incredibly fun. Sure, actual quality prose might still take you a minute…years…but it’s still good fun. And if you get exhausted of it (as, honestly, I have with my first novel lately) you can sit back and bang off some quite short pieces (non-fiction is generally easier) and just remember that yes, you do know how to write, and you still enjoy it.

Which is a handy skill to have.

(Bam. Bookends.)