Toe in the Water

A Personal Note on Writing

A Personal Note on Writing

Had a revelation today.

This wasn’t a brand new one. It’s one of those I have occasionally and then forget for a time. Until something reminds me of it.

Which is what happened this morning. Brought on by a note I wrote to a fellow WDC writer. I was reading it back to myself when the moment occurred. Suddenly I realised (for the hundredth time) that I don’t write anything - I compose it. Can’t help myself. Every time I write, I choose words carefully and give thought to its flow and readability. Even lists and notes to myself have the same technique applied to their creation. I just can’t stop myself from spending far too much time in making any writing sound good.

I tell you this not from any desire to show how much of a writer I am to the core, but to point out how ridiculous it is. There is no conceivable excuse for being so picky in the creation of such unimportant things as shopping lists or memos. It’s like a disease or obsession that I am unable to control.

This really came home to me in reading the note I had just penned. It was the most baroque assemblage of old fashioned expressions that I’d transcribed in a long time. I just hoped that the recipient (she knows who she is) would understand my verbal complications.

In a futile attempt to vindicate myself, I should mention that I follow the creed of writing the way I speak. That’s what we all should do. And it’s hardly my fault that I speak like I write and write like I speak. I’ve always known that I’m a dinosaur.

One of my two late sisters used to say that I was pompous. Mea culpa.

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