The Arduous Process of Writing

Writing is an arduous process. How can it be easier, then?

In her Ten Ways to Think about Writing, E. Shelley Reid dishes out several amusing metaphors. All of these are in service of helping a college student think about writing. In a way, she synthesizes several existing ideas about writing in a single piece. For example, she asks readers to think about audience; not a new concept, and she admits that academic writing sees an instructor as “your audience”.

Reid’s Ten Ways are self-prophetic; sticking with audience, her casual mode of writing and relatable situations make it engaging for college students. I’ll concede that the amount of Gen Z college students that are familiar with The Far Side is low. Yet, Reid’s infectious dialect is enough that it succeeds at breaking down what really is an arduous process.

Keeping ten rules in mind is a tall order, in some respects. Make sure that you’re showing and not telling, but don’t detail too much. Know your audience, but don’t bore them – repeat your thesis sometimes and balance your words. Keep things structured, but not conformist. By the way, make sure you’re a good reader, too. By the way, sometimes just forget some of the rules entirely.

It doesn’t look tough on paper (on a screen), and there will be a point where it all comes to you. But Reid is right: writing is still hard. Even with every rule implemented into a piece of writing, there are a million ways it could turn out to be a piece of crap. That’s just how things go.

Really, the best way to make writing easier is to keep going until you’ve failed enough times to say you’ve been there, done that. Reid can certainly say that.

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