The Grasshopper #34, Generic Writing
Be a peeple, not a sheeple
Note: This was mistakenly sent out with a Sunday Edition title. It is actually my 34th issue! Corrected, not that anyone would notice…
Why would anyone become an independent content creator, then write the same crap everyone else is writing? It’s a question I ask myself every time I glance through one of my Medium feeds, the one that is stuck on self-help and side hustle crap. When I first started writing and reading there, years ago, I read and followed some motivational writers who were dishing out advice on how to get traction on the platform.
Now the algorithm that decides what to show me still thinks I read that crap, despite me unfollowing writers when I learned that their schtick was writing the same article over and over again. The first time you read their stuff it might have been useful, but after you see a new one every other day, it gets old real fast.
Generic writing is writing that leaves out personality and actual experience, substituting stuff the writer thinks will sell. It’s really the saddest place to find yourself as a creator, and can turn you off from the joys of the craft. Some of those writers who repeat their thing do well, but at what cost?
I’m not saying I don’t have a schtick. I do, but it is my schtick, perfected by me and there because it is my voice. It took me a little while to find it for that particular platform, just as I’m working my way towards it here with this newsletter. Though The Grasshopper is a different voice than my topical stuff over at Medium. That’s intentional.
One way to look at it is as a letter directly to the reader, a personal conversation. Like real world conversations, one’s personal level of writing is different than one you might have with a different person, but with a newsletter you can’t know who the reader is unless they comment and reveal themselves. So you just write the way you’re thinking at that moment.
It is a little strange that the writing you are sending out into the world needs to take the risk of revealing yourself to that world. But that is the risk all writers take unless they hide their work from readers. What would be the point of that?
I’m rambling a bit, but the point is, if you are jumping in and taking that risk, why not go all in and be who you are? Even if the persona you create is not really you. As a writer you can be almost anything. Just don’t be generic or derivative.
A tale for the time being
“Hi! My name is Nao and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.
A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and everyone of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”
The opening lines of Ruth Ozeki’s novel, A Tale for the Time Being
This is one of my favorite novels of recent years, utterly modern and original. The voice in those opening lines is an adolescent Japanese girl who has spent most of her life living a nice middle class life in California until her father, a software developer, loses his job and they are forced to return to Japan and live in poverty in Tokyo.
Nao is deep in culture shock but also deep in Japanese pop culture, both miserable and intrigued. She also has a 104 year old grandmother who is a Zen nun, very wise and very funny. Those opening words are in a journal found in a package by a writer, Ozeki as a character, washed up on a beach in the Pacific Northwest.
This is not a review and I’m not going to tell you more. Read the book. But it illustrates my point about finding a voice. In the book Ozeki finds not one, but three voices, all original. Think of them as leading actors in a film with a cast of supporting characters. Nao is the narrator of her tale and Ruth is the reader, a neat trick.
I know from interviews that Ozeki is a pantser (writes from the seat of her pants, not a plotter). But like many writers who do not plan their story, hers reveals a very original and complex plot, one that surprises her characters and us as readers.
That’s the opposite of generic writing.
A lot of writers you meet in person are shy people. But in their writing they are not shy. Shy might not be the right word. It may be that we are often on the sidelines observing the world and gathering material, even if we don’t know at the moment how we will or will not use it.
Personally I don’t take notes when something interesting happens. I have at times jotted something down but later when I read it, the interesting part has departed. So I have found that simply saving it in my head, and maybe later finding its use, is enough. Those notions find their way to the surface when you need them.
Here, our sunsets are stuck at 4:35pm until just before the Solstice, when they start to incrementally occur later. It’s shorttime for daylight and seems to hit everyone’s state of mind. But I take comfort in knowing that the Solstice is only a few weeks away and soon the days will wax instead of wane.
M
934 words
If this flips your switch, you can buy me a coffee. Always valued on a gray early winter day!
grey
I'm happy to hear unique voices