What makes a Good writer?

Throughout my life, I had a preconceived notion that I was a bad writer. It all started with my handwriting (which to this day is not the prettiest sight), but I recall that none of my papers in high school or college were particularly award-winning or received amazing scores. This, in turn, always discouraged me to not write. However, after beginning to read “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser, I realized that my perception of what a writer actually is was inadequate. I always thought that writing fluently meant that I was writing well. But contrary to the fact, writing takes time and tons of revisions. While there is no right or wrong way during the writing process, there are steps that writers can take to make their writing as clear and readable as possible.

Although the book was originally published in 1976, its teachings have remained strong and is even now on its 30th edition! As technology advances, the way in which we interpret text has changed dramatically. Reading text on a screen is significantly quicker than on paper and people rarely read an online article word for word anymore. Professor Jakob Nielsen explains this exact concept in his article “How Users Read on the Web”, where he found that 79 percent of his test users always scanned any new page they came across; while only 16 percent read word-by-word. After reading his article, I took a brief moment to reflect on the way I’ve been reading and consuming content. The realization was alarming. I felt my eyes dart from bolded lettering to images and back to the next bolded word again. I came across this issue of scanning too fast again when reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. To combat the urge to scan, I found that my best way to process information from a book was to simultaneously listen to the audiobook version while reading the text, almost as if the author was reading the book to me, live and in-person. 

As I thought about the process of writing a bit, I imagined that writing is a similar process to running. The more we run, the more accustomed we become to it and the easier it gets. Suddenly, that tricky first mile becomes a warm up and breathing becomes much more fluid. Just like running, writing is not always going to be easy. It is inherently a hard process where we are pushing our minds to formulate thoughts into paper while also trying to convey our ideas fluently and as coherently as possible. The next time you read something you enjoy, just remember: a clear sentence was intentionally written there.