Words on a page

There are times when I get the feeling that I don’t do that enough. I’m definitely not always the most scintillating conversationalist, nor do I think that I have an incredibly captivating personality. In fact, I think I’m downright boring a lot of the time. That said, my more interesting thought patterns and use of language don’t make it on to the page often enough.

I’m talking about things like writing in they way I speak. Peppering my work with allusions (both jokey and serious) and little turns of phrase. Or even throwing in the occasional bit of weirdness for the fun of it. And while I don’t consider my writing boring, I believe that putting more of what I mentioned in the previous sentences into my work would definitely make it more interesting.

So, why don’t I do it? Probably because many of my attempts to do so were torn out of articles and essays by editors. I remember the first time that happened. It was in the early 90s, and I was writing a review of some piece of software or the other. When commenting on a part of the installation that vexed me, I wrote something to the effect:

Without so much as a by your leave, the installation program went and deleted my fax program. Then, it had the audacity to complain that the fax program (which it needed) wasn’t there. My email to the manufacturer was slightly more than angry.

Even though I was well within the word limit, my editor chopped out what I thought were the fun bits. A couple of more incidents like that, and I pretty much stopped trying to slip my personality into many of my articles.

Yes, being edited like that used to bother me. Now, not so much. I still try to slip what I can into a piece that I’m writing for publication. If it makes it into print, great. If not, at least I tried and am being true to myself and my writing.

Sometimes, though, trying to inject a bit of yourself into your writing can backfire. A few years ago, I wrote an article on text editors. Now, text editors are often seen as techie tools and my focus was on text editors for general use. To keep things a little lighter, I wrote this:

… many an average user — the non-technical person who thinks that C is the third letter of the alphabet and who may have moved to Linux from another operating system — sees a heavy geek factor in most Linux text editors. Chances are, many Linux users won’t use a fraction of the power of most heavy-duty editing tools.

The editor kept the comment about C being the third letter of the alphabet — and not the programming language — in the article. Well, someone took my words a bit too literally, and dashed off a nastygram to the editors which cited the passage I just quoted. He stated that I was arrogant for thinking and writing that. I guess my attempt at humour went over his head.

How much of yourself do you put in your writing? Feel free to leave a comment.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 5:30 am and is filed under advice, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.