Technical Writing, Who Knew?!

Most of my posts here will most likely be ideas I’ve picked up on while doing reading for my two literature classes, but today I’ve decided to share some things that stood out to me about my writing in my “other” writing class: Technical Writing. I thought most of what I would learn in this class would be only applicable to the world of writing that is outside of the creative writing realm. However last week’s readings made me think that maybe all of education is more interrelated that I had originally thought, especially for a writer.

Last week we were learning about writing policies and reducing wordiness. I’m not exactly sure how policy writing would apply to my creative writing (maybe I could write a story about a guy who wrote policies- sounds thrilling, eh?) but reducing wordiness is nothing new to me. Even though I hate the long, rambling, getting-nowhere portions of reading I tend myself to take the scenic route in when writing. My greatest downfall at solving this problem comes with the thought, “But it’s all important!”

So, taking cues from what I’m learning in Technical Writing, I am making a point to reduce unnecessary words by:

• Taking a break: this is something I desperately need to learn to do. When I set aside time to write I usually want to do it all right then and there. But giving some time between edits is key to seeing your words with fresh eyes.
• Marking difficult sections: according to one of the sites I read for class “if you had a hard time getting your ideas down on paper, chances are you included some "false starts" or filler phrases in your writing.” Knowing that my first efforts aren’t set in stone and marking those difficult sections will help when I edit later.
• Eliminating redundancy: essentially for this step, during the revision process I will need to keep an eye out for saying the same thing twice. For example when writing my flash fiction for class on Tuesday I was tempted to write, “The two waded through the tall grass that came up mid-thigh,” but tall and mid-thigh both describe the grass and therefore are not both necessary, so I cut tall as it was the least specific.
• Removing meaningless words & phrases: this includes very and really, two of the most pointless words in the English language. They are so vague that they have lost their meaning. I could see them being used for dialogue or to give the sense of a narrator’s voice but generally I intend to actively seek these kinds of words out and escort them off of the premises.

Obviously Creative Writing and Technical Writing are two different worlds, two vastly separate fields of writing, but hopefully taking these steps during my revision process will weed out the unwanted tangents, emphasizing the literary flower garden that remains. Gosh that's corny... sorry.

-Jessica