How to Write. Lessons Learned Along the Way

Somehow I went from being an 18-year-old writing instructor’s nightmare to a being a good writer.  There were a lot of steps along the way to that achievement, not all of them easy.   In this podcast, I am going to share some of my struggles, and my secrets, with you.  I always told my students that writing was a skill that one could learn.   I have seen students go from C to B in a few months after they adopted some of these ideas, so I know what I am saying.  

When I was teaching in Kenya, the British teachers taught me something they did in their schools.  It was called a precis, using a French term.  I came to love this exercise.  We would give students a 300 word passage and tell them to rewrite it in 100 words.  And don’t leave anything out.  This forced students to concentrate upon what was essential in a passage, and what could be dropped.  My colleague Elaine Clark said she would have students write a two-page essay rather than a five-page essay.  She said two pages required more discipline than five pages.  Plus professors could mark them quicker so it was possible to give more assignments.  I am not sure the students liked that last part.  

I do have a suggestion that might be hard to implement.  When I was 9 years old I had a heart problem -- rheumatic fever -- that caused me to spend a lot of time sitting on the sofa in the winter or on the porch swing in the summer.  (I totally recovered).  To pass the time, I began to read.  The town next to us had a nice library so every two weeks my mom would take my sister and me to that place and I would check out five books.  That was the number you could check out and I always took the maximum.  We had to return them in two weeks so I would start reading.  I seldom got through more than two, but the idea of having five books was exciting.  In my younger years, I would read boy books about dogs and horses.  But I also read adventure stories and  biographies about heroic leaders.  As I got older, I migrated towards history and biography.  I also had a secret weapon in the Chicago Tribune.  Every Sunday we would buy the VERY fat Sunday paper.  I think we got it for the comics but it had a very nice magazine of books.  Today the New York Times is the only newspaper that has a book magazine.  But every Sunday I would read those book reviews.   I learned how writers analyze and how they write.  

When I was a sophomore in college our English professor had us write an essay on a book.  She gave me a bad grade and wrote on the paper, “sounds very bookish,” as if I had stolen it from somewhere.  I was very upset at this.  Not only did she think that I had plagiarized the essay, but she assumed that someone from a small town in Southern Illinois could not possibly have written a cohesive essay.  I told her about the Chicago Tribune and she realized she had made a mistake.  I was happy that she did so. 

I realize that none of you can return to when you were 9 and start reading but do remember that reading  will improve your writing skills. Somehow it gets into your head. 

And some of the tips in this podcast can work wonders.