Useful Writing?

We all learned it in school, working very hard with fat crayons and pencils to make the letters; then also learning to type. Maybe you also learned cursive a bit later. But have you thought about writing recently? It is an amazing process; think about it – marks on a surface make it so that you and I can take a thought right out of our minds and pass it on to another. I’m doing that now, as I work on this. Writing is creativity, logic, emotion, technique, art, technicalities, boundaries, and freedom all in one craft.

Writing can persuade, educate, emote, describe. The crafting of words can be used to extol tradition and to subvert the establishment. It is the same – words to paper (or in modern times, to screen), but it’s always changing. The exact series of words in even a short essay like this has never occurred before.

Writing is both as familiar as a poem memorized for the sheer love of words, and as novel as crafting a whole new word to express a new technology, trend, or idea. It is frustrating and brilliant, constraining with the limits of language and grammar, and absolute freedom of though. It can be lonely to practice and it can connect you with such a large community that you are never on your own.

You can write with the most up to date computer, or with an old fountain pen, or simply with a pencil on an old envelope.

Well, That Was Poetic – So What?

Writing is, at its base, useful. There are all kinds of ways that writing can be useful for you.

You can use writing for personal pleasure and self expression, entirely for yourself in a journal; for sharing with loved ones on social media, email, and (old fashioned, but true expressions of love) letters; for selling a thing that you made; for convincing others of an idea, a need, or an emotion.

You use writing to help you keep organized, remember what groceries you need, and keep you from forgetting birthdays. It might be handwriting, in a daytimer, or it might be tapping in entries in your phone’s calendar – but it’s all writing.

You use writing to help you remember, taking notes in a class or a meeting.

When you want to learn something new, you look for books – writing – about it. Even if you look for videos or podcasts, those were written too; the screenplay, outline, or script were researched and written out before the recording was made.

 

Here at Write Useful, I make useful, helpful writing – books, editing, posts, printouts – available and easy to access for you.