Writing Writing (or My Writing Bootcamp)

Henry David Thoreau, you idiot. 

I was struggling to write Getaways copy for quite some time. This was partially due to the fact that the style changed nearly every month, and often by the week for an entire year. But worse, it was that I couldn't transition and hit the reset button like my team members. There was no flow in my words. I was frustrated and ashamed that I wasn't performing as well as everyone else. 

One of our managers took me under her wing and for a half-hour each day for one week, we met to discuss my writing.  Along with my daily sessions, I started transcribing live copy from the site to get a feel for the current language, style, and organization. Within just a few days, it started to get easier. I even earned compliments from our editors!

As an employee wishing to keep their job and an artist, I was ecstatic. I felt a huge transformation; I was reconnected with my brain again. 

The feedback sessions were incredibly valuable, but I attribute the brain surge to rewriting the copy on the site. Because when you're engaging with words like that, you get the feel of them coming out of your mind. It tricks your brain into thinking you're creating, even when you're regurgitating. So the question is - if you exercise your brain through this artificial "creation" process , will it eventually do it better when left to its own devices? 

Having read The Brain That Changes Itself, I'm lead to say yes, but I'm putting it to the test. I've dedicated a little time the past few nights to writing writing. Right now I'm working from Henry David Thoreau, the famed naturalist writer. I bought a copy of Walden last year and regrettably, could never get through more than a few pages of it. It's incredibly rich in detail and elicits fully formed, 3D impressions that are beautifully written. But when it comes down to it, it's hard to focus on because...well nothing happens. (Cut to me washed in the TV's glow while on-screen actors make-out while shooting machine guns.)  

This was tonight's passage. I wrote this by hand three times:

The wasps came by the thousands to my lodge in October, as to winter quarters, and settled on my windows within and on the walls overhead, sometimes deterring visitors from entering. Each morning, when they were numbed with cold, I swept some of them out, but I did not trouble myself to get rid of them; I even felt complimented by their regarding my house as a desirable shelter. They never molested me seriously, though they bedded with me; and they gradually disappeared, into what crevices I do not know, avoiding winter and unspeakable cold. 

Once I finished my transcriptions, I made a list of the words I'm not used to seeing. They're a part of my vocabulary, of course, but they're not something that's overly familiar in everyday speech or writing. But they could be. They belong. 

Word list: wasps, quarters, settled, deterring, numbed, swept, shelter, molested, bedded, gradual, crevice, and unspeakable. 

I'm aiming to pick a different author each week and hopefully 3-5 times that week, sit down and let their words play around my head. If I'm lucky, they'll stick and help me become a better writer.

**SPOILER ALERT: I've got a short story dropping next week AND I'm working on a project that comes in not one, two, or four or five parts... but three, count 'em, three parts. Keep clicking, my friends!**