Re: Writing: better or worse after years on the job?

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

Writing for a living has improved my writing in two main ways.

First, because my work includes technical, marketing, and business 
writing, I'm much more aware of genre and of the conventions and 
concerns of each type of writing that I do. I find now that, as I start 
to tackle a particular type of writing, I'm aware of switching to a 
different set of concerns.

Second, because I write regularly, I'm always in practice. That means 
that starting a writing task is much less momenteous than it used to be. 
I don't need to psych up, and I don't need much warm up as I start to 
write. I've noticed the same thing with running; because I've been 
running 40 to 70 miles a week since I was 12, I almost never have to 
warm up as much as other runners do.

This feeling of always being in practice has another effect: I tend to 
write and finish more writing of all types than I ever did. Part of the 
reason may be that I write with less effort, and my drafts have 
improved; where I used to take five or six drafts for my best work, I 
can now manage in three or four. But another reason is that writing 
makes me want to do more writing. In this respect, I'm very different 
from those who say that writing all day makes them less willing to write 
when they get home. Despite some major personal upheavals, the years 
I've spent as a tech-writer have been the most productive in my life. 
Besides my work as a technical and marketing writer, I've not only taken 
on a profitable sideline as a journalist, but also regularly published 
poetry and made good progress on a novel that,among other things, will 
expose the dark and seamy side of tech-writing :-).

I suppose I could summarize by saying that doing tech-writing has made 
me more of a professional in all my writing. I still consider writing, 
as Isaac Asimov did, the most fun that I can have by myself, but I take 
a more hard-headed approach to the mechanics and business of writing.

--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

"All rights and all wrongs have long since blown away,
For causes are ashes where children lie slain."
- Stan Rogers, "The House of Orange"



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