My friend Jordan - who rolls the Wonderwheel pretty much every day - recently put me up for a blog meme about "five strengths I have as a writer." Given that I write pretty much all day at work, and during a good chunk of my non-work time as well, this is a meme that I like a lot, notwithstanding my sloth in posting a reply. Forthwith, my litht (plus one):
2. Flexibility. I can switch back and forth between styles with ease, from the informal style of professional email messages to the straightforward but formally constrained style of grant proposals. In fact, I rather enjoy the challenge of shifting the mental gears - though not too frequently. It's good to let the motor hum for a while.
3. Reading skills. I am a good reader, equally able to subject a given piece of writing to everything from close reading to rapid scanning. In pulling out meaning and content, I can start to figure out how means to improve the writing: better word choices? restructuring the piece? cutting extraneous material? clarifying fuzzy ideas or sentences? beating the writer with an unsharpened #2?
4. Brevit. Excepting special cases (love letters, novels, dissertations), virtually all pieces of writing are better when half as long. In fact, in writing that sentence, I cut it down from over fifty words to twenty-eight and then to eighteen.
5. Appreciation for style. Though my style is probably no style, I love stylistically sophisticated writing, whether it's crystal-clear technical writing (a well-executed how-to is a thing of beauty), accomplished prose (David Foster Wallace, Gina Kolata, William Gibson, Sascha Frere-Jones), or expert genre writing (The Onion). I especially love funny stuff. Happiness is a warm pun.
6. A love for the tools. I love every way and means of writing - pens and pencils on paper, markers on whiteboards, fingertips on a laptop, talking out loud. If I could steal some of Julia's Play-Doh, I'd be all about the stylus and cuneiform.