The Nudnik and the Cookie

How Managers of Volunteers can be Writers, Too

By Marcia Golub

June 22^nd, 2005

I have a friend who is a wonderful storyteller. Intelligent, funny. Her descriptions are vivid, her anecdotes have punch. But as soon as she sits down at a keyboard she is possessed by the spirit of an eighteenth-century grammarian. Her language becomes stilted and antiquated, her sentence structure turns arcane. Any bit of life that might manage to appear on the page is squeezed and twisted til it gives up the ghost.

She is not alone. People who have no problem telling funny or moving stories, explaining their position on a variety of subjects, espousing political points of view find themselves wordless in the face of the blank page.

The problem is the pursuit of perfection. People want their thoughts to be born whole, like Minerva from the head of Zeus. So they put their fingers on the keys and then they wait. And wait. And after a few tries they decide it’s time for a cup of coffee.

It’s the reader over one’s shoulder that freezes most people. You need to get rid of her. You need to tell her to go get a cup of coffee. You want her to stay within calling distance because you know you’ll need her help later, after you’ve written. It’s just that right now, when you’re trying to write, you need to be alone. But how do you get rid of that snide snoop that laughs at everything you say except the jokes?

There are several ways to get rid of the premature reader. The first thing you must do is to get rid of your perfectionism. A Buddhist saying, I’ve been told, is that a perfectionist is one who sees imperfection everywhere. Sound like anyone you know? So give yourself permission to fail. Write the worst drivel. Misspell words. Have run-ons. Give analogies that don’t make sense. It doesn’t matter. Because what you are writing initially is not even a first draft. You are thinking on the page.

Forget your audience, for the time being. Forget who you need to write the article or letter or promotional material for. Just write for yourself. Jot down ideas as they pop into your brain. Write anything, no matter how dumb. The voice that finds your ideas dumb is that Reader Over Your Shoulder again, and you need to tell her to have another cup of coffee. And a piece of pie, this time.

A way to help you forget your audience is to make writing a race. Write as quickly as you can, without allowing yourself a moment to pause. Set aside a particular amount of time for this activity. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Some people call this brainstorming. Some call it freewriting. The essential elements are that you write for the full amount of time you say you will, and that you do not edit or censure as you go. You do not pause or reread or worry about punctuation. You continue to throw things out on the page, even if they don’t make sense. And when you are done, leave it alone.

Now you can go have your cup of coffee. Just don’t sit with the Reader, no matter how nice she’s acting, offering you a bite of her cookie if you just let her take a peek. She’s waving at you? Wave back, then look determinedly out the window. She is most assuredly not your best friend right now.

Give it a day, if you can. An hour, if you must. But give it a rest before you go back and look at what you wrote. Make a phone call. Go to the bathroom. Have lunch. Take a walk. Only when it is completely out of your mind so that you no longer remember what you scrawled do you take out the pages you’ve just written. It will not have turned magically into a perfect example of what you need. No, in fact it will probably be as awful as you feared it would be. But that’s not the point. The act of having written it takes the terror out of the job. And some good things will have gotten on the page.

Take out your pen and circle the things that please you. Maybe there’s a turn of phrase, an idea, an anecdote. Maybe you just like how you made the transition from one paragraph to another. Whatever they are, write the pleasers on a piece of paper. And get ready to do another writing session.

This time, focus your mind. Think about the reason for this letter, this pamphlet, this report. Look at the list of things you liked in your brainstorming session. And now forget about it. Pretend you are writing a letter to a friend – someone you like who does not know much about the subject you’re addressing. Try to think of a real person.

You may find that some of the ideas or phrases from your list naturally appear in this letter. That’s good, but don’t force it. If they belong they’ll find a place for themselves. What you want, most of all, is a natural flow to your writing. You want to explain something important to someone you like. When you’re done, have another cup of coffee. Or better yet, put the thing away and go home. Isn’t time to make dinner?

Give it a day or as much time as you can before you read over what you’ve written. Now you want to invite that nudnik Reader Over Your Shoulder to join you. Don’t worry that she may have gotten offended and not want to offer any advice. There’s nothing a nudnik likes to do better than advise.

Before you start reading think about your audience again. Who is the real reader of this article or letter or promotional material? What does he or she know about the subject? What doesn’t he or she know? In your letter to a friend you might have a first paragraph of newsy stuff – how are you, how’s the kids?

So in this “letter’s” first paragraph, you will also need an introduction. Is there an anecdote that might engage the interested stranger? Is there a personal revelation that may hook him or her into reading on? You’ve gotten a million of these solicitations in the mail? Read them for style, sometimes. They usually start with a grabber – a personal experience, a vivid vignette.

The real reader, a stranger, will need clarification. Plus, in order for you to have credibility you’ll need to fix those run-on sentences and fragments, spelling and grammar mistakes. Now’s the time to let your nudnik give you her editing ideas. Just remember it’s always easier to edit when you have something on the page. By using brainstorming, freewriting, and letter-to-a-friend writing, you should have enough material to shape into the form you need to reach your intended readership. And you and your nudnik can now relax and enjoy each other’s company.

Go ahead. Have a cookie.