Writing is Actually Simple!

Writing is simple. It all comes down to two things: What you want to say, and how you want to say it.

What you want to say is already in the bag. The center of a piece of writing is the message you want to deliver, and it’s there as an anchor point, to pull you back when you veer off course. Because that’s what happens with writing, it’s easy to lose yourself to your internal monologue. We talk a lot of garbage when we speak— we tend to ramble and switch topics, rehash history to provide context, and we can do it in seconds. It makes sense inside our heads, and we can follow the thought naturally despite the mess, but verbalizing it is a different story. It’s like trying to describe a bizarre dream to someone; you can never do it justice, they had to be there.

The more complicated what you want to say, the more complicated the writing becomes. If you’re sending an email to express interest in a job, then the message is simply, “Introductions, express interest in the job and why, invite interest.”  The email serves its function perfectly. But if you want to write about how society crumbles when diversity becomes a metric and a quota, then that’s a more complicated message, one that can’t serve its function by email.

Which leads to the how. The butter and backbone of writing. It’s the package and the experience. You can communicate your interest in a job through song and dance if that best helps communicate the message; we call them auditions, but our medium is writing, so we do it through email and a letter of interest. How is the choice of medium. Some things work best as a poem, others as a screenplay. How is also about voice and style— word choices, sentence structure, tone… Though technical, they are followers of voice and style and are there to strengthen them. The more you learn about them, the easier you can manipulate them.   

What and how, apply it to every paragraph, stanza, or section of a piece— assuming you have a strong enough grasp on language, and you’re solid. Everything is in place and doing something to serve the purpose of the piece. Then it just becomes a matter of evolving either the what or the how.

If you’re an artist, then you already know what is required to learn to express through writing. And if you’re an artist at heart, then you’ll figure it out. And if you just want to write that email and couldn’t care less about the art form, then ChatGPT and other AI tools are your best option. But writing is an art form; it requires knowledge and practice, and most importantly, heart. Even if it’s just an email. Without it, writing is simple and boils down to just two things: what and how. And that’s not enough.