#20. Writing style
In the weird quiet of recent-Twitter I’ve been trying to discover more voices by spending time in the “For You” section. This is where the algorithm suggests tweets from people that I don’t already follow who it thinks I’ll like.
Occasionally I find interesting stuff. Most of the time it’s trash.
One reason it’s trash is that the algo loves tweets from People With Opinions. My tolerance for tweets that start with “Unpopular opinion” or “Handy reminder” is low and falling further by the day. It’s probably time for muting these phrases.
I’m increasingly tired of listening to People With Opinions shouting loud certainties into the void. Don’t tell me what to think! But it also got me thinking about my own writing style. Because I used to do this too.
Looking back it’s clear that I wanted to be part of the People With Opinions crowd when I was younger. My early writing often reads like I was trying to instruct readers about the one true way of how to do things - from how to work with clients to ways of thinking about success and even down to what words to use.
Stylistically, these posts are full of what “you” should do and what “you” should think. Reading them back they sound way too certain and even veer into feeling aggressive at times. Any valid or interesting points get a bit lost in this over-confidence.
I was imitating the confident style of blog writers and conference speakers that I looked up to as an early career designer. I hadn’t worked in enough places or environments to understand that good advice is contextual and the quest for a universal truth is often futile. Most embarrassing I can catch an echo of the schoolboy who is eager to get top marks by sounding ‘right’ about things. Ouch.
A change in style
Sometime around 2017 my writing style started to change. I clearly still had Opinions (not sure that’ll ever change!) but stylistically these posts are now peppered with what “I” had done and what that made “me” think about things. Much less “you”.
This change in writing style happened through three conscious shifts.
First, I started to position blog posts as accounts of my own experiences rather than wider truths. My most-shared posts ever - user research is a team sport and three ways to run better discoveries - are both explicitly framed as personal stories in the introductions. I have John Waterworth to thank for this. He told me to stop writing “the manual” and instead to share personal stories from the ways I’d been working.
Secondly, I started to provide more personal context about who I was, what I was interested in, and what career experiences I’d had. This came from Caroline Jarrett the night before my first big conference talk about research heresies. Her simple feedback was to stick in a slide about personal context. Her rationale was that this helped people figure out whether they should be taking advice from me or not!
Finally, I learned to be more vulnerable in my public writing. Amber said that she’d learned the most from me when I talked about the (many) things I’d got wrong. I wrote I’ve made mistakes in response. Re-reading it still makes me shiver about some of the things I owned up to. The response convinced to be a little more open than I was comfortable with being in my writing. I think 40 lessons showed this new openness.
Easier to write
After these changes I found it easier to write. Not easy, but easier. For a few reasons.
I’m no longer grasping for out-of-reach universals. My writing is just about my own specific experiences. It’s easier to write about specifics! I’ve found that being more specific makes my writing resonate more widely too. Not every reader will match my specifics but it’s surprising how many of them strike a related chord.
I’m not trying to be ‘right’ any more. I don’t worry about making my writing ‘right’ for all situations and instead I leave it up to readers to decide for themselves. It’s easier to write like this! I’ve found this stance has helped me with my life’s work of moving from competitive schoolboy to humbler adult too. That road is long.
I don’t mind it being focused on ‘me’. I used to feel self-indulgent using “I” and “me” but I’m over it. It’s easier to write from the first person for me! I realised that using “you” was also a hangover from my writing-for-the-web days when I wrote copy as the voice of the organisation. I am not an organisation.
I’ve had a LOT of accidental practice writing in this style. I’ve written morning pages since 2012. Mine are full of specifics (not universals), reflections on what’s gone wrong (not right), and peppered with “I” and “me”. Bashing out 750 words each day - 1.1 million words and counting - has made me fluent at this style of writing. I didn’t start morning pages to evolve a writing style but maybe that’s what has happened?
So I find it easier to write these days. Never easy - as my hiatus shows! - but easier.
One final thing. I said the trash tweets from People With Opinions got me thinking about my writing. That was a half-truth. What actually started me on this rabbit hole was a touching piece of feedback I got from a friend after I restarted this newsletter:
Every writer wants to find their voice. Me included. I’m sure my voice will change and shift over the years. But I’m closer to finding my voice than I once was. And that feels like something worthy of reflection and - perhaps just a tiny little bit - of celebration.
Originally posted on Substack along with an intro/outro, Fabio and Grooverider, Happy Valley 2, The Status Game, DrinkAware. Say hello or ask questions on @myddelton.