DARK SHADOWS: THE GHOSTS HAUNTING YOUR WRITING PROCESS

You go to a friend’s swimming pool. You swim a few laps, lie in the sun, eat a burger. The experience is enjoyable and relaxing. You have some associations connected with this event, all generally positive. Now, compare this to writing. You go to your office, sit at the computer, start to write, and BAM! A barrage of ghosts wearing combat boots and carrying clubs surface from your subconscious.

Perhaps you don’t feel these sensations on a conscious level. But be assured, most people carry more writing-related baggage than a mail carrier does letters. That’s because writing speaks a great deal about the person you are, in addition to the thoughts you are trying to project.

Take intelligence. People have always had prejudices about the intelligence and overall sophistication of others based on their word use-whether spoken, written, or tapped in Morse code. Movies, books, and television shows from Saturday morning cartoons to Martin Scorsese movies depict people with poor grammar as crude, dim-witted thugs, inbred hillbillies, or general lowlifes. These people say things such as:

I don’t got no job so I ain’t got no money.

instead of the more grammatical:

I don’t have a job, so I don’t have any money.

In high school, the smart people received A’s on history and social science essays, soaring on the academic crest with their finessed English papers. You may have been one of these expert writers, or you may have been intelligent in different ways. Perhaps you excelled in theater classes, acting out Shakespeare with unflinching ease. Perhaps you tore apart a car engine and reassembled it in moments flat. Inadvertently or not, the powers that be determined that so-so writers had only so-so intelligence.