★ Being A Better Writer

I was chatting on Ustream with a few friends on Saturday when a young man recognized me as he follows me on Twitter and reads my blog posts on TheAppleBlog. He wanted to ask me a few things so I gave him my email.

Side-Note: My email is adam@adam-jackson.net. Terrible email address but I never ignore emails. If you take the time to write me, I will respond to you with an honest, “i’m really busy today so give me a few days to respond” or I’ll take an hour to give an honest answer. You took time to write so I’m taking time to respond.

This guy is around 15 years old or he may be even younger. He asked how to become a better writer. In his email:

Can I like pay you to consult with me on being a better writer and how to write good stories. It’s just not something a freshman grammar teacher will teach you. Aka, writing a blog post.

I responded with an inquiry to review a few of his public pieces and promised to follow up. Mondays are always a bit crazy so I gave him a short response last night but said I’d give a better answer, very soon.

Hmm. these are good. My only thought and I’ll try to keep this short….

Write about what you love, be fearless and share as much as you can. Be the one who speaks up ONLY after learning as much as you can about the subject and when you speak, mean it and stand by what you say but never be afraid to admit when you were wrong. Always say thank you to those who correct you and always apologize to those who deserve it.

Above all, write all of the time. Write as much as you can. that’s how you’ll become a better writer.

I said to myself that this wasn’t a good response but it was deep enough that it might take some time to decipher, much less than actually following through with my advice, which would take years.

Yesterday, while chatting with someone over Skype, I said that my high school GPA was a 2.4. While she scored an A in journalism class at a university, I scored a C on Mr. Ryan’s creative writing class in 11th grade. Here is a short story I wrote in 11th grade at the age of 15 and just before I went to San Francisco for my first Macworld Expo. Written on 10/08/2002:

“Do your homework!” he said.  Stood up and just then a gust of wind from the screen door blew my hair around like a whirlwind.  He took a step toward us and we ran to the back of the unfurnished house.  Every step we took had the sound of his footsteps.  Every floorboard creaked.  As we ran, I sneezed when colliding with a spider web; the mere feel of it makes me sneeze.  The blaring football game in the family room, or at least that is what the common name is, faded away then we were finally in our room.  I pulled my homework from under the UN sheeted bed.  There were drops of blood from my nose on the mattress when I was here last time.  Once again, there was a spider web.  I would rather spend an evening covered in these webs, than face the fate that my dear friend will face after I leave.

We both shook at the sound of glass breaking in the front lawn.  Well at least it was called a lawn; there was not any grass, though.  This has gone on every Friday evening when it is a full moon.  His mom does not stop her man.  Every time he touches this “STUFF”, he gets out of control.  That is why, although I get hurt too, mostly because of my lankiness, he is not there alone.  No matter how bad it gets, we can always sneak out through the window and hide in his tree house.  Tonight was one of those nights.

The window was broken in one of the outbursts of his father.  The hole was patched by duct tape.  I like always but my leg, hands and some of my body parts on the jagged glass.  Jason has always been good at getting out and only cutting his hands.  I immediately see a narrow cloud covering the moon, our path to the tree house is cut through the center of dead briar bushes; so wear something long to go through, and be no older than 10.  It is a tight squeeze.  The monster, that is his father, trotted out to the barn and the squeaking of it tore my ears off with a steak knife.  He grabbed an ax, and started chopping his way through the briars.  Involuntarily, a trickle of urine ran down my leg.  He was calling out our names saying he would not hurt us, and you could tell he was gritting his teeth while the words almost punched us in the face………

I don’t have any shame or embarrassment for posting this. It was a story I wrote after casually blogging from the age of 11 to 15. I’m still under the impression that I’m a terrible writer. I’ll admit to you right now that I am a bad writer. I lack proper punctuation and my writing level isn’t above high school age as you can tell from my use of small and easy to use words. I am bad at maintaining focus and staying on track with the original story as I sometimes steer off course to offer a side-note or mid-sentence correction that should be edited in later in a proper way.

I’ll give you an example of what’s important with great writing. It’s about the story. Most of my story telling abilities come from my father who spent 2-4 hours a day telling stories of Chinese masters and the adventures of the Samurai to groups of Aikido practitioners. Having attended his class 5 times a week since I was 2, most of these stories I’ve heard dozens of times but I began to teach the classes myself and public speaking and story telling began to become a part of me. I got better through repitition and by doing it every day. In my teens, I’d offer examples of principles he’d teach when he and I chatted on the drive home from class. I’d offer real world examples of a principle that’s merely explained by throwing someone to the ground and Dad would smile that I was able to properly bring things to a level that people would understand and he’d call me up to offer an explanation of what he just demonstrated in a physical movement and this lead me away from technical writing and more creative writing.

At Apple, I used that ability to sell computers and inspire my team at the store to follow policy but sell the Mac lifestyle to customers, how to hold yourself and how to convey the excitement of one-touch processing in iPhoto to a customer on the edge about paying $1799 for an iMac.

Throughout all of the public speaking, storytelling and teaching, I kept writing and never stopped. When you add up my posts on this blog, Tumblr, TheAppleBlog, Twitter and a few private blogs I keep for posterity and reflection, I write 2-5 thousand words a day. Only half of those are edited before hitting publish but I have never stopped writing. As an example, this post took about 25 minutes to write and it’s around 1,550 words.

My advice for an aspiring writer remains unchanged to what I said in that initial email. What I wanted to paint in his mind is that good writers aren’t born that way. Their lives lead them to it. My teaching, learning and creative spirit helped in so many ways. Being an only child until I was 11 coupled with moving to new schools every couple of years forced me to be alone a lot where my inspiration was limited by imagination and a notebook was my best friend. Blogging became that outlet and, even today, The Internet and blogging is where I get answers to whatever is bothering me. I don’t have a friend that I can confide in. I don’t have a sister that’s my age who can offer advice on life choices or hear my rants and raves. I have writing. When blogging (both short and long form) are the only way you can express yourself and get feedback from the world, it’s essential that you become good at it.

I’ll reiterate:

Write all of the time. Write when you’re tired and when you’re wide awake. Write instead of playing a video game. Write instead of watching 30 minutes of television. Back away from Twitter and write long-hand and then tweet a lot to get your succinct thoughts down to an art in 140 characters. Write privately about your day. Be descriptive and share everything about yourself because, through writing, you’ll learn more about yourself than any therapist or shrink could tell you. Let writing become your friend and lover and even if you’re absolutely disgusted with what you wrote and you know there’s bad grammar and punctuation, hit that publish button and see what happens.

You never know. It might be fun.