7. Show, don't tell. Dr. Ronald Johnson was a professor I had during my Junior year of college for a non-fiction class. I had heard the adage "show, don't tell" in many of my classes, but he drove the idea home with the use of peer-edits (where everyone reads your work and gives you verbal critiques in front of everyone else--the good, the bad and the ugly). The good pieces (and good writers) stood out in these sessions because they showed you how things happening (and how those things affected them), rather than told you. For instance: My hands shook when I walked into the kitchen, but I walked in tall and spoke evenly: "Can we talk?," I said to Brad. "It's about what you said earlier." --rather than I don't think my boyfriend noticed I was nervous when I walked in to confront him.
This immediately helped me revise my pieces so that I was showing my audience the story, and therefore letting them experience it themselves, rather than just telling them what happened. But it wasn't until I was looking into moving to North Carolina after grad school that the lesson came full circle. Their state motto is "Esse Quam Videri", which means "To be, rather than to seem". It essentially means: Come as you are and don't bullshit us. Be you, don't waste our time trying to prove otherwise. In a book I read about living there (oh you know I researched the dickens out of it), they explained that the people there would rather you be harried and rude than fake and pleasant. It actually offends them if you try to be anything but what you are at the moment.
I realized that this is exactly how I want to live my life. I never want to just seem happy, I want to be happy. I never want to just seem grateful, I want to be grateful. I want to show the people in my life my story, I never just want to tell them. (Cue up another blog goal!)
--Dr. Johnson also taught me that writers write (you are not a writer unless you are working on something) and that there is merit in everyday things (good writers can make those everyday things seem interesting, because they weave the story with things that connect and compel every day people).
8. You have to put yourself out there. Dr. Ray Ventre was my graduate advisor. Having had Ray as a professor previously, I felt just comfortable enough to propose some out-of-the-ordinary directed studies for my grad student study plan that would help me later on when writing for non-profits. But I had to drum up the courage to ask, and I had to put myself out there. I was proposing supplementing the classes they offered with other trainings and self-guided study that I had found via, you guessed it, research. I was terrified I was going to offend him, the department head, he who most likely decides the cirriculum. But Ray signed every directed study form I put in front of him, and I know he did it because he believed I was invested in my education, and my future.
It's not a coincidence that around the time Ray expressed that trust in me, I started taking more risks with my writing. I learned from him that you must put yourself out there. You'll be pleasantly surprised by who will welcome it, like all of you sweet people who have reached out to say you're enjoying my blog. Thanks, sweet people.
--Ray also taught me that you need to study the writers who have come before you, from the greats to the obscure people in your university's journal. Learning about them as writers equals learning about yourself as a writer. And there is always more to learn.
This immediately helped me revise my pieces so that I was showing my audience the story, and therefore letting them experience it themselves, rather than just telling them what happened. But it wasn't until I was looking into moving to North Carolina after grad school that the lesson came full circle. Their state motto is "Esse Quam Videri", which means "To be, rather than to seem". It essentially means: Come as you are and don't bullshit us. Be you, don't waste our time trying to prove otherwise. In a book I read about living there (oh you know I researched the dickens out of it), they explained that the people there would rather you be harried and rude than fake and pleasant. It actually offends them if you try to be anything but what you are at the moment.
I realized that this is exactly how I want to live my life. I never want to just seem happy, I want to be happy. I never want to just seem grateful, I want to be grateful. I want to show the people in my life my story, I never just want to tell them. (Cue up another blog goal!)
--Dr. Johnson also taught me that writers write (you are not a writer unless you are working on something) and that there is merit in everyday things (good writers can make those everyday things seem interesting, because they weave the story with things that connect and compel every day people).
8. You have to put yourself out there. Dr. Ray Ventre was my graduate advisor. Having had Ray as a professor previously, I felt just comfortable enough to propose some out-of-the-ordinary directed studies for my grad student study plan that would help me later on when writing for non-profits. But I had to drum up the courage to ask, and I had to put myself out there. I was proposing supplementing the classes they offered with other trainings and self-guided study that I had found via, you guessed it, research. I was terrified I was going to offend him, the department head, he who most likely decides the cirriculum. But Ray signed every directed study form I put in front of him, and I know he did it because he believed I was invested in my education, and my future.
--Ray also taught me that you need to study the writers who have come before you, from the greats to the obscure people in your university's journal. Learning about them as writers equals learning about yourself as a writer. And there is always more to learn.
9. Everything comes together in the end. Dr. Teresa Hunt was my professor, my advisor and my employer, but she was, first and foremost, always a mentor. She passed away unexpectedly during my last year of graduate school, but before she died she taught me plenty. I still think about her when I do a close edit or use hierarchical headings (riveting link right there, folks).
She told her students, who were headed down different career paths, from software technical writing to training and development (or non-profit writing for me), that their job in grad school was to learn how to write. Their employers could teach them everything else--the lingo, the trends, the expectations they had. All we needed to do was walk in with that one skill and we would be successful. This helped to calm the nerves we had, faced with making a career out of something that doesn't always lead to lucrative ends. (Every English major has heard the joke about asking if you'd like fries with that.) But, she was right; from the handful of classmates I've kept in touch with, we are all thriving at jobs that require a lot of us. Having a firm grasp on different styles of writing has made all of our paths a lot easier to navigate.
When I was on the fence between moving to New York and staying in Marquette for grad school, Teresa was the only one intuitive (or gutsy?) enough to tell me what I needed to hear: "You've been there, done that, Bobbi. New York will be waiting if decide to go back." I thank her every day for encouraging me to stick around and learn more.
I feel like this is true of the writing process as well. Give something your all, but trust in your skill. If you're unsure about something, put it away in a drawer for a while, and when you pull it out later, when you're a little bit wiser, the answers will appear.
On the other hand, you need know when to edit, edit, edit. The final product rarely resembles the first draft, but you won't know what the final draft should look like until you have a really, really ugly first draft in front of you. (Do we need to even go into how that applies to life?)
--And one more: Teresa taught me that once you know the rules, you can break them, but you absolutely must learn them first. When you study communication, it soon becomes clear that there are rules for a reason: 99% of the time, rules about punctuation and grammar (though sometimes annoying and seemingly arbitrary) help keep your writing understandable and allow your real message to come through. After all, you want your audience to focus their energy on the message itself, not interpreting the message, right? And I can start sentences with ‘But’ and ‘And’ like I just did because I know you’re not supposed to. But it works sometimes. Even incomplete sentences like this one. Breaking the rules sometimes can lend itself to the tone and pace of a piece. In short – you have to know what works all the time, the classic rules, before you can begin to successfully experiment with things that aren’t supposed to work but might. In life.... well, I think you get the picture.
She told her students, who were headed down different career paths, from software technical writing to training and development (or non-profit writing for me), that their job in grad school was to learn how to write. Their employers could teach them everything else--the lingo, the trends, the expectations they had. All we needed to do was walk in with that one skill and we would be successful. This helped to calm the nerves we had, faced with making a career out of something that doesn't always lead to lucrative ends. (Every English major has heard the joke about asking if you'd like fries with that.) But, she was right; from the handful of classmates I've kept in touch with, we are all thriving at jobs that require a lot of us. Having a firm grasp on different styles of writing has made all of our paths a lot easier to navigate.
When I was on the fence between moving to New York and staying in Marquette for grad school, Teresa was the only one intuitive (or gutsy?) enough to tell me what I needed to hear: "You've been there, done that, Bobbi. New York will be waiting if decide to go back." I thank her every day for encouraging me to stick around and learn more.
I feel like this is true of the writing process as well. Give something your all, but trust in your skill. If you're unsure about something, put it away in a drawer for a while, and when you pull it out later, when you're a little bit wiser, the answers will appear.
On the other hand, you need know when to edit, edit, edit. The final product rarely resembles the first draft, but you won't know what the final draft should look like until you have a really, really ugly first draft in front of you. (Do we need to even go into how that applies to life?)
--And one more: Teresa taught me that once you know the rules, you can break them, but you absolutely must learn them first. When you study communication, it soon becomes clear that there are rules for a reason: 99% of the time, rules about punctuation and grammar (though sometimes annoying and seemingly arbitrary) help keep your writing understandable and allow your real message to come through. After all, you want your audience to focus their energy on the message itself, not interpreting the message, right? And I can start sentences with ‘But’ and ‘And’ like I just did because I know you’re not supposed to. But it works sometimes. Even incomplete sentences like this one. Breaking the rules sometimes can lend itself to the tone and pace of a piece. In short – you have to know what works all the time, the classic rules, before you can begin to successfully experiment with things that aren’t supposed to work but might. In life.... well, I think you get the picture.
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