A former colleague signed up as an ACC subscriber yesterday. I am not going to lie as it means a lot each and every time someone is willing to put money on the table for the work I do spent a lot of time crafting.
She had written me one day last week about my column, mentioning that she was a lurker. I knew she had read at least a few ACC entries last year when she sent me notes directly on them. They were encouraging yet commented on the nub of my column each time. She is a friend so this is not surprising.
But she teaches writing, so I recall the trepidation of opening each and every one of her messages because writing has been a disappointing activity to me at times.
I tended for many years to write with both too many words and passive voice. I have always assumed it was because I studied Spanish grammar for so long, a language frequently prone passives. Perhaps it was something else.
But I also began to recognise my raced past my words on the page. I mentioned this to a counselor I saw almost twenty-five years ago, admitting writing so bloody hard because I jumble up the words with a bunch of ideas rather than one. I always know where I am going but the reader doesn’t. I summed up saying I am much better at explaining things orally than in writing.
She immediately said it’s not surprising as she saw me making mental shifts much more quickly in conversation rather than laboriously considering each and every nuanced word to assure precisely the message they seek to convey. She pointed out that she and I had lots of really deep conversations, often painful ones, during which she had absolutely no problem understanding. I commented that several people labelled me an auditory person over the years which made her nod. She asked me whether I had ever thought about how hard it is to be an academic who isn’t comfortable speaking with facility on her feet?
Huh. Why, no. I thought everyone should be able to do that but also knew many people who were almost petrified by the task.
Oddly enough, that brief exchange paid significant dividends. It provided me a counter narrative (recall we were discussing narratives in terms of stories we tell as a nation just day before yesterday) to my deeply held view I was just not that conversant in writing English, despite writing for forty plus years when this conversation occurred.
The exchange—evidence in practice that actions create consequences—somehow freed me to write ever more easily and with a determination that perhaps if I slowed down, I could do it more easily.
Son of a gun.
I began gradually to have confidence—this is so obvious but wasn’t at the time— to address revising more effectively than I had. I see now that I got impatient with the editing process, thinking it wasn’t the important part so I expected everyone to see what the jumble on the page intended to say.
I realise you are laughing at this now as it sounds so daft but that one conversation opened a door to possibility that I had never considered. We forget that the support systems at colleges and universities, much less private K-12 schools now offer, were not common only two generations ago. My undergraduate institution had no writing center that I recall as we were assumed to have mastered that when we arrived at college. I had mastered a lot of stuff but not that one so I abandoned it prior to this revelation instead of addressing it.
Don’t misunderstand, please. I did well in college but writing was just not something I relished the way some people do. I will always agree to present a speech with great confidence but somehow the writing process still requires me to work considerably longer than it seems to take others. My husband, for example, treats anything he writes with delicate care much as one would spend time over a watercolour painting he produces so carefully. Each draft of his work results from multiple edits, none of which ultimately entirely thrill him but at some juncture pass the ‘satisfaction’ test (most of the time). His sentences are beautifully built, peppered with precisely the correct vocabulary, and provide the reader the precise transfer of his thinking. He sometimes bemoans not being Eudora Welty who I believe advocated for brief, direct syntax but he certainly avoids much of the detail I figure I need include (I am working on surrendering detail).
My husband and his elder daughter are also fierce crossword puzzlers. I didn’t know my late father-in-law but do understand that he bred the crossword joy into my husband and daughter-in-law to the point that I make sure I read the ‘Style’ section of the New York Times before anything else for fear I will never see it once the puzzling begins. I am convinced solving those puzzles not only includes vast vocabulary to celebrate but offers a thought process different from others which benefits writers.
I too have become an ardent puzzler but never at their level. I prefer the modest Wall Street Journal or Washington Post challenges Monday through Thursday, recognising that Sundays are simply over my head; Friday and Saturday versions are hit or miss (usually the latter).
The crossword challenges also help me recognise something I suspected years ago: my English vocabulary sucks. I struggle to select precisely the word to express my thoughts but instead ‘write around’ to describe whatever a single perfect word could convey. I suspect it was that phenomenon which led my dissertation advisor to exclaim ‘Cynthia, you do use so many words’ as he was reading my drafts. If I were writing it today, I can confidently say no, not quite as many as forty years ago.
This is all an explanation of why opening Katy’s email messages about ACC intimidated me last year. It’s also a personal manifestation of why actions do have profound consequences as a conversation twenty-three years ago freed me to test alternative explanations to my approach.
I write the column every day (we are now up to 557 straight) as my commitment to the readers. Most days I enjoy it, though finding a topic daily is easily the hardest part. I am committed to make it worth your time (remember yesterday’s thoughts on time that is unrecoverable?) but confess the ‘heavy news’ wears us all down.
I am delighted I enjoy it more than I would have in the past as I truly believe actions create consequences; my objective remains to enhance civil, measured discussion means to people must want to read, debate, and circulate what I write. I am confident readers will query me, rebuke me or suggest other ideas which I most heartily welcome and desire.
In sum, do send me thoughts on my writing, my pictures, my arguments, and your experiences as well. Is your writing stellar so you have suggestions for how any of us can improve? What lessons have you had in a similar situation that led you to revise your behaviour to a better end?
Actions create consequences. No truer statement is uttered.
Please note that https://CynthiaWatsonCaptures.substack.com is a new purely photographic substack for which I would also love your reactions.
Be safe and be well. FIN