Justyna Dorsz

Writing

A trick to writing clearly

You probably heard the advice “Write Like You Talk”. When we talk with friends we use simple language, words that come naturally to us. We are concise because we have limited time. And then, when we try to put the same ideas and stories on paper, we have trouble expressing them in a similar way. I know I have this problem.

My first blog post I wrote here was a story about how I got into designing t-shirts. But, at first when I wrote the post and gave it to my brother to read, he hated it. It was unnatural, completely not how I talk, more like some kind of official statement. I rewrote it a few times, each time trying to make it be more like a short story that I was telling a friend.

A few weeks ago, I’ve read an essay by John McPhee where he advises how you can go even a step further. Not only do you imagine you are writing to a friend or someone close to you, but you actually write “Dear…” at the top of the page. He uses “Dear Mother” as an example.

I’ve been working on a longer post about making money on Threadless and one thing that I try to keep in mind when I write is that many people who read it might be just starting out with designing and selling online. I try to write in an approachable way, explaining everything as I would explain to a friend. And I actually have two friends who’ve recently asked about designing t-shirts. So, at the top of my page I wrote “Dear Asia” and then imagined what I would tell her about earning money on Threadless and wrote that down.

Bad output

I stumbled upon an interesting tweet by Julian Shapiro. I know it’s a few months old but I liked it so I am sharing it here in case you find it useful too:

To finally start creating good stuff you need to create a lot of bad stuff first. It applies to writing, but also to drawing —a drawing usually needs a few tries too. You draw your first idea, see that it doesn’t quite work, iterate on it, until you arrive at something good.

#200

Seth Godin wrote:

What I’ve found is this–after people get to posting #200 or beyond, they uniformly report that they’re glad they did it.

“The first 1000 are the most difficult”

This is my 200th blog post and I report that I am glad I write this blog.

The beginning was difficult. It took me hours to write a post. Some days I really didn’t have any idea of what to write about, and I would start panicking in the evenings. But I always wrote something, even just a short note about a new design. And now not only is writing a lot easier but also I don’t worry about running out of ideas for posts anymore.

I don’t plan on stopping. Yes, it takes time to write all those posts. But I see many benefits:

  • I got better at writing. I have a long way to go to be a good writer. But I am better at it than I was 200 blog posts ago.
  • I connected with other bloggers and artists! A few people who read my blog wrote to me and it has been great chatting with them.
  • I got to share my process for making and selling designs, and a few designers told me it was helpful.
  • It inspired me to consider other writing-related projects like maybe writing an e-book. More on that soon.
  • This blog is also a place where I promote my online apparel stores, like my Threadless and TeePublic shops, and the games that I made with my brother.

You could write a blog too. In 200 posts, you will most likely report that you are glad you did it.

Morning Pages

Photo by Thom Holmes on Unsplash

In the last week of 2020, I bought a notebook and decided I was going to write morning pages, starting from January 1st, 2021.

If you don’t know what morning pages are, Julia Cameron, the author of “The Artist’s Way”, says it this way:

the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness

You can read a longer explanation on Julia’s website.

A lot of people recommend doing morning pages: Tim Ferriss talks about it sometimes, Austin Kleon wrote about it too:

You might think you know what you’re thinking, but seeing your thoughts down on the page tells you what’s really going on inside your head.

I have tried to make it a habit a few times already, but I never stuck with it for longer than two weeks. This time I bought a notebook specifically for writing them. I wrote morning pages on January 5th, 2021, and then the notebook got buried under all my other notes, and I forgot about it. I unearthed it yesterday and wrote in it again. This time I am determined to stick to it.

There’s one thing that makes building habits easier — public commitment. I’ve decided to write morning pages every day, and I am announcing it here publicly. So you, Dear Reader, have now become my accountability partner.

Another thing that Julia says:

Morning pages are nonnegotiable. Never skip or skimp on morning pages.

I like this attitude. Developing a habit is easier when you convince yourself that there’s no possible way to get around it.

Unlearning

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Schools should have taught us about a lot of things: law, managing money, doing taxes, budgeting, nutrition, negotiation, communication… the list goes on.

Worse even, schools not only didn’t teach us useful things, they taught us things that we now have to unlearn.

I remember when they asked us to choose our career path. We were fourteen years old. Fourteen! We had a so-called “career day” where we were given two-page descriptions of the most common professions: doctor, nurse, police officer, teacher, programmer. Guess if “writer” or “artist” were on the list.

There were possible income brackets and schools you needed to finish for each profession. And they asked you to choose one. This kind of narrow thinking and conforming to social pressures is one of the major things that everyone should unlearn. That’s a huge topic, and I will write more about it later.

But for now, there’s one other thing that school taught us wrong — writing. We were asked to write so many essays, and yet most of us can’t write a compelling article on any topic — and it’s not a surprise. We were judged on criteria such as length of work and the number of arguments that we presented. Adding adjectives — a bad practice — was an acceptable way of making your writings longer, and teachers encouraged it.

No wonder we can’t write concisely and clearly. Schools didn’t teach us that, they taught us the opposite. We have to unlearn what we know, and then learn to write well ourselves. That’s one of the reasons why I started this blog, and you should too. If you want to write better, you need to practice often, and starting a blog helps establish a habit of daily writing.

I like all the reminders that I should blog daily

I’ve started writing my blog a few weeks ago and it’s been difficult to keep going.

When I was learning to draw a few years back I remember how tiring it was to draw ANYTHING. And when I started making designs for t-shirts even designing the shortest text was taking hours. Nearly 15 years ago I was learning to program and that too was so exhausting that I took breaks every few minutes but somehow I forced myself to write one small program after another.

Now drawing is fun and programming is my favorite activity. So I suspect that writing gets easier with time too. I just like to be reminded because it sure doesn’t look like it right now.

Seth Godin wrote:

For years, I’ve been explaining to people that daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating and (eventually) fun.

I am waiting for it to be fun! I can’t wait for the day when I sit in front of my computer and instead of panicking I think: “I get to write another post, what fun!”

How long is it going to take for writing to get pleasant? Well, Seth Godin answers right in the title: The first 1,000 are the most difficult. He also says:

What I’ve found is this–after people get to posting #200 or beyond, they uniformly report that they’re glad they did it.

That seems doable — just 180 more to go until I am glad that I blog.

Tagged With:

“On Writing Well” – Book Notes

“On Writing Well” by William Zinsser

I’ve read “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser a few times already, but I’ve reread it these past few days. Now that I am writing a blog, I want to write it well. And the book is full of useful advice.

Here are a few highlights so that I can always keep them on hand:

SIMPLICITY

Strip every sentence to its cleanest components, remove words that don’t serve any purpose, e.g.:

  • “Are you experiencing any pain?” → “Does it hurt?”
  • “A personal friend of mine” → “A friend”

AUDIENCE

Write for yourself, write as you talk, write to enjoy yourself, don’t give a damn what the reader might think, don’t be timid or evasive.

USAGE

Be careful with words.

As an example, here are two ways of using the word “too”:

  • Wrong: “too” is a substitute for “very” (clutters the sentence): “His health is not too good”, “He didn’t feel too much like going shopping.”
  • Good: when sardonic or humorous use: “He was not too happy when she ignored him.”

LEAD

The most important sentence in any article is the first one. Nudge curiosity, keep the reader inquisitive.

Good lead examples:

  • “I’ve often wondered what goes into a hot dog. Now I know and I wish I didn’t.”
  • When in doubt start with a story, like so:
    “At some point rather early in the spring of 1947, a Bedouin boy called Muhammed the Wolf was minding some goats near a cliff on the western shore of the Dead Sea.”

Bad lead examples:

  • Future archeologist: “When some future archaeologist stumbles on the remains of our civilization, what will he make of the jukebox?”
  • Visitor from Mars: “If a creature from Mars landed on our planet he would be amazed to see hordes of scantily clad earthlings lying on the sand barbecuing their skins.”
  • The cute event that just happened to happen: “one day not long ago” or “recent Saturday”.
  • “Have in common”: “What did Joseph Stalin and (…) Akira Kurosawa have in common? They all loved Westerns.”

ENDING

The last sentence of each paragraph should have an extra twist.“Make the reader smile and you have him for at least one more paragraph.”

“The perfect ending should take your readers slightly by surprise and yet seem exactly right.”

“Bring the story to full circle – to strike at the end an echo of a note that was at the beginning.”

People should come away wanting to hear [the writer] again.

VERBS

Better use active and be precise e.g. don’t say “he stepped down”, choose “retired” or “was fired”.

ADVERBS

Most are unnecessary.

ADJECTIVES

Also usually unnecessary. Make the adjectives do the work, don’t use them as decoration, only use when they convey important information.

LITTLE QUALIFIERS

Remove! “A bit”, “a little”, “sort of” “kind of”, “rather”, “quite”, “very”, “too”, “pretty much”, “in a sense”.

PERIOD

Short sentences are better.

EXCLAMATION POINT

Don’t use often.

“Don’t use to notify the reader that you are making a joke “it never occurred to me that the water pistol might be loaded!” Readers are annoyed by your reminder that this was a comical moment. They are also robbed of the pleasure of finding it funny on their own.”

SEMICOLON

Slows pace, use rarely. Usually to add thought at the end of a sentence.

DASH

Use in 2 ways:

  • Amplify or justify: “We decided to keep going — it was only 100 miles more and we could get there in time for dinner.”
  • Set apart a thought: “She told me to get in the car—she had been after me all summer to have a haircut—and we drove silently into town.”

MOOD CHANGERS

Use “but” or “yet” at the beginning of a sentence. “However“ is weaker than “but”. Clear confusion with “later” or “now”.

CONTRACTIONS

Use them, style will be warmer: “won’t”, “can’t”.

THAT AND WHICH

Always use “that” unless it makes your meaning ambiguous. If your sentence needs a coma to achieve its precise meaning it probably needs “which.”

  • “Take the shoes that are in the closet.” – Take the shoes that are in the closet, not the ones under the bed.
  • “Take the shoes, which are in the closet.” – Only one pair of shoes is under discussion; the “which” usage tells you where they are.”

CONCEPT NOUNS (nouns that express a concept)

Bad writing. Example: “the common reaction is incredulous laughter”, better: “most people just laugh with disbelief”

OVERSTATEMENT

Don’t!

“The room looked as if an atomic bomb had gone off there”

CREDIBILITY

Don’t inflate incidents or make bogus statements

PARAGRAPHS

Keep them short.

Don’t over-explain or put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Don’t use: “surprisingly”, “predictably”, “of course”.

INTERVIEWS

Quote people instead of writing about them.

Bad: “Mr. Smith said that he liked to go downtown once a week and have lunch with some of his old friends.”

Good: “I usually like to go downtown once a week,” Mr. Smith said, “and have lunch with some of my old friends.”

Details! When writing about people details matter.

WRITING ABOUT PLACES

Don’t write about everything, choose something different, that the reader might not know.

Eliminate facts that are known e.g. “beach scattered by rocks“ and “occasionally a seagull flew over”.

“Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time” – William Zinsser