#HAWMC Day 15 – half-way home. Hallelujah. Maybe.
Writing with style. That makes me think fondly of E.B. White’s Elements of Style, the first book about writing I ever read. I know that Bill Strunk co-authored EoS, but since E.B. also wrote Charlotte’s Web, he gets to mostly-solo when I’m in charge.
My dad gave me my 1st copy of the book, and it helped me form my voice and style when I was still in grade school. The nuns did their damnedest to turn me into a grrl who wrote properly – IOW boooooooooooooringly and according to their rules – but Strunk & White saved me from perpetrating written assault in the years since.
Thanks, dudes. Daddy, E.B., and Bill. All of you.
Words come easily to me … most of the time. The closer to a deadline I get on projects where I don’t feel a connection to the topic can be problematic, causing me to both procrastinate and self-flagellate (figuratively only on that second one) as the deadline gets closer … and closer … and … aaaaarrrgh! But I don’t blow deadlines regularly, often, or really ever much at all. Can only think of one time when I did, and that turned out to be due to the chemo treatments I was getting at the time.
Chemo-brain made me unable to write. That was Panic City, letmetellyou. I sat down to knock out a simple press release, and … couldn’t figure out what to do. Words weren’t coming, I couldn’t figure out where to start, I was totally frozen and staring at a blank screen.
I’ve never been so frightened in my life, other than when I heard the word cancer and my name in a sentence the first time.
A week later, the words were back, and I recognized that I was witnessing the chemo-brain sequela I’d been warned of by those who had been-there/done-that before me. I exhaled, knowing that I wouldn’t have to figure out some other way to earn my keep than come up with words on demand.
I write almost as fluently as I speak, which is pretty fluent. I write with incredible ease, in pretty much any setting. I write in another’s voice (translation: for clients) just as easily as I do in my own.
As long as a keyboard is involved. I still – occasionally – hand-write thank you notes, but my handwriting has been rendered execrable by the [redacted] years I’ve been using a QWERTY keyboard. That started when LBJ was living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Looooooooong time.
My style? Very conversational, often confrontational, occasionally controversial, and from time to time I even invent words when none exist that effectively communicate my meaning. Read my entire oeuvre (here, over at MightyCasey.com, and many other places you can find if you follow all the social breadcrumbs) and see what kind of sense you develop of the real me.
My guess is, you’ll know plenty.
