My Relationship to Writing

I've never been the writer, or the type of reader that leads to being the writer. That was my sister and in our social hierarchy there was only room for one writer. So I never wrote. I thought I couldn't write, so I never wrote. And when I did have to write a school assignment I wrote with my eyes closed as fast as possible right before a deadline hit. That was my formal writing style all through undergrad yet somehow there were a few professors who thought I wrote well and would give me feedback that reflected that feeling. I figured they were wrong or I was tricking them in some way. But when I got to grad school I tried a little bit. Like, I would reread a paper and make changes before turning it in. And somehow that got me through grad school.

Now, like, 85 percent of my job is writing and I've started working at writing better. It helps that I work with people who aren't good at writing and don't try so that the most minimalist of effort on my part makes me look so much better than them at clearly conveying ideas by using words strung together in sentences. I like writing and wish I wrote more fun stuff.