Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge Day 15 #HAWMC: Writing Style

• Posted on April 15, 2012 at 9:17 am

At day 15 of the WEGO Health Activist Writer’s Month, we participant bloggers have reached the halfway point.  

Today’s prompt asks us to describe our writing style. Now that we have been writing for 15 days straight, we must have some patterns or trends we follow. Questions to ponder on this topic include how the words flow from mind to keyboard, do we handwrite first, do we plan our posts, when do we pick the title, and where do we write best.

My ideas flow from several sources, planned or unexpected. Sometimes they are sparked by other blog posts I’ve read from Google Alerts or bloggers whom I follow regularly. Ideas also originate from conversations I’ve had with friends and family during the week or from hikes or biking trips I’ve taken. A few times my instructors in watercolor painting and creative writing have nudged me to prepare a post on what I’ve learned in class.

Once a promising topic pops into my mind, I create a draft post with a title. In the space for inserting text or photos, I type a few sentences or paste a few links, just as Marie in Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer does. This draft post serves as a placeholder. As the spirit moves and the muse prods, it’s easy to go back to it, flesh it out, edit it and polish it into a final piece. Sometimes I add pictures or videos right away. But other times I add them later as I find just the perfect image to accompany the piece I am writing. And sometimes I upload photos fresh from a trip memorialized by my camera. These images tell the whole story. As authors of children’s books know well, pictures can definitely be worth a thousand words.

I’m not one who normally handwrites first. It’s much faster for me just to put fingers to keyboard and type away. My most useful course in high school was typing. I had no idea at the time how useful this skill would be as technology grew into what it is today. Where would we be without keyboards? The only time I write longhand is when I find myself waiting for something to happen and don’t have a laptop or i-pod available.

For example, just this week the idiot light came on in my car–and stayed on. While I was waiting for the mechanic to find the source of the problem, I walked to a nearby diner. All I had was a John Grisham book and a scratch pad. Because my creative writing course was taking place an hour from then, I started writing out sonnets in long hand on the lined paper, ignoring my page-turner hardcover. I haven’t put writing assignments to paper in an eon. Crossing out words and inserting others felt foreign to me, like I was living in a developing country. I could hardly read my own edits when I was done. But it worked. By the time I got to the course, I had rewritten the sonnet out completely so that the instructor could actually read it.

When I create a post I usually select the title first to remind me of the topic I’ve chosen. But often I change the title as the theme evolves. Bloggers will often find that the post has a mind of its own, like a fictional character you create who takes off in a direction you didn’t plan for.  A title that struck me as clever or punny when I first wrote it doesn’t necessarily work after I have put the finishing touches on the post.

I write best in the morning, after I’ve had a few cups of coffee and a solid breakfast, usually oatmeal and fruit. I’m at my most alert state then. But life has a habit of getting in the way, and I don’t always get to create a post at that time. So if I sit down to type in the afternoon, I’ll drink green tea to restore my energy.

When I write, I sit in my rolling office chair in a spare room at a desk where my computer resides.  I like quiet and solitude in this state, so Pandora or any other source of music is turned off. As I type away, my stream of consciousness will often kick into gear until I get to a point where I need to go back and read the whole piece again. When the post is done and I click the “Publish” button, relief washes over me.

But more important than relief, happiness and healing spring forth from knowing I’ve completed another published work that might help others.

What’s your style of writing? Whatever it is, keep on keeping on. It’s a balm.

 

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