Why I write the way I do

I haven’t blogged recently because I haven’t felt passionately about much of anything lately. I need passion to write well. Not the hot, sweaty, romance novel sort of passion, but the feeling-so-strongly-about-something-that-I-am-compelled-to-write-about-it passion.

Sure, I can put words together and make sentences without feeling passion. We call those news releases and any hack can write them. This blog, however, is my own personal statement about the world… about me…and it needs to be written well, and with my own style and flair.

I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about my writing and how I came to make a living stringing words together. Writing has always been easy for me. As a kid, I was one of those unconventional students who craved essay questions on exams; after all, they were much easier than second guessing myself on multiple choice questions. In junior high – back when it was still socially acceptable to call it “junior high” – I signed up for the publications class. In high school, I took as many English classes that pertained to writing as I could. I also took journalism classes and eventually became co-editor of the student newspaper. In college, I worked in various capacities on the student publications staffs and earned a bachelor’s degree with a journalism emphasis.

Over the years, I have found some of the old papers and stories that I wrote in my youth. I cringe when I read them. Youthful lack of experience aside, they are horrid. I used lots of words, but collectively, the stories and papers lacked the oomph, the pizzazz, the passion that good writing requires.

God has blessed me with a number of factors that have gone into my ability to write. Most notably was one of my journalism instructors: Jeanne Lambert. Jeanne was a wise and weathered writing veteran. She had honed her writing and editing skills in both journalism and its cousin on the dark side, public relations. If there was a better way to write a sentence or turn a phrase, Jeanne would know it.

“This is flat,” she would say of a piece I had written for Feature Writing Class. “If you don’t find the passion in the story and convey it to the reader, you won’t compel anyone to read what you’ve written.”

At first, I struggled with the whole write-with-passion issue. With time – and a lot of practice – it became a part of who I am, so much so that I now cannot write well without it.

Jeanne Lambert died earlier this month at the age of 82. She may be gone, but the lessons she taught will live on. Thank you, Jeanne, for teaching me to write with passion!

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