Learning to Write Better Means Learning to Take an Interest in Writing

During the latter part of high school, I wasted away many of my days with the seemingly infamous massive multiplayer online role playing game World of Warcraft (WOW). Most of us are familiar with WOW these days, if only because of the hilarious albeit highly inaccurate South Park episode that parodies it. We are also aware that the game tends to get a bad rap (most often, I might add, from those who have no direct experience with it -- but this is usually the case with most things in this country, is it not?).

I myself have always liked WOW and spoken up for it despite my recognition that the game can be reasonably criticized on many grounds. For instance, it demands  much of one's time -- too much, perhaps, if one is not careful. It can take a while for some people to figure out the mechanics of the game, and it can take an especially long while for one to master a certain aspect of the game, whether the arena, the battlegrounds, or simply working through a dungeon. It can also be rather frustrating that the game never "ends," so to speak. Granted, one can set certain goals to accomplish, but the game is better described as an ongoing process with no definitive endpoint in sight. Much like real life.

When I started to take an interest in writing during my second semester at my university, I began to understand that it offers many of these same challenges for both students and professionals alike. It almost need not be said that writing, like WOW, tends to get a bad rap from many people, especially undergraduate students (a point that I'm confident all of my co-workers in the WAC Lab would attest to.) Good writing is exacting: it asks for endless trial and error, practice and more practice.

And writing, like WOW, never ends. This is partly what people mean when they say that "writing is a process." If one of my favorite authors, Don DeLillo, had quit writing after completing Underworld in 1997, not only his magnum opus but probably his most highly acclaimed work, it would have accomplished nothing for DeLillo as a writer (though, retrospectively speaking, it may have satisfied many of the critics who have been rather dissatisfied with his followup novels). Every writer should always be looking to refine his or her writing, both as a collective whole and in all of the individual parts that make it up (trust me, I've been trying to come up with a satisfactory formula for transitions for years). This is what happens every single time a writer picks up a pen or pencil or sits down at the keyboard or typewriter.

With all of this in mind, the question now before us is this: how does one overcome the obstacles that obstruct the path to good writing? For me, the solution was best stated, believe it or not, during my WOW days by friend of mine with whom I played the game. These were his words: I think more people would appreciate and enjoy WOW if they only allowed themselves to take an interest in it. Substitute "writing" for "WOW," and no one, to my mind, ever spoke truer words. Take an interest in writing, and you may just learn to enjoy it.

So, as you continue to ponder the mysteries of writing (as I have spent much of my undergraduate life doing), ask yourself: have I written off writing too soon, either because it is demanding, or because it is difficult, or for some other reason entirely? The solution to a judgment like this may lie in both allowing yourself to take an interest in writing and asking of yourself to follow up on this newfound interest. Who knows? You may even end up enjoying to write.