Writing is Hard
Graphic design was deemed a scholarly pursuit rather than a trade only recently. When I graduated from OCAD in Toronto, Canada it was 1998 and I received a diploma not a degree. Our studies focused on the skills and precision of graphic design. It was intense and the critiques were brutal but writing was not a big part of studio education in those days. Even faculty teaching lecture courses, where an essay was an expected outcome, usually gave the option of doing a creative work project in place of the writing — and I, like most, chose the creative work. Deciding to shift my career after 15 years in the field to become a full-time professor meant I would have to go to university and get a master’s degree — this time a creative project would not take the place of the required essays and I was not prepared.
The first short essay that I wrote in graduate school was structured in the manner I was taught in high school: introduction stating hypothesis, followed by paragraph one — point number 1 in support of hypothesis, section 2 — point number 2, and section 3 — point number 3, then summarizing it all in the conclusion — clumsy and naive at best. The red lining that came back was traumatizing and humiliating. I felt stupid. It brought me back to when I was in design school and the stigma of being less than all those who went to University.
My master’s thesis paper was redlined in the same overwhelming fashion. I felt defeated and essentially… that I just had to get through it. I had no idea that the next phase of my life — the life of a studio design professor — would be so heavily weighted on writing.
Publishing written work is a mandatory part of my job and is essential for retention and promotion. I find myself writing constantly, whether it’s a book review, a committee report, a presentation, or a journal article. I would like to say something encouraging at this point in this article. Something to the effect that writing gets easier, but it didn’t, and it hasn’t.
My dilemma is that I have not figured out my process yet. Writing, like design, is a creative process. It takes time, requires reflection, revision, and refinement. I am used to my design process — it’s messy and ugly as I explore various opportunities. With writing, I don’t know how or where to begin. When I do begin, I tend to tangent, especially when conducting literature reviews, which wastes time and muddles the direction of my thinking and my thesis. I read and write in fits and starts — the maximum amount of time that I can write consecutively is 30 minutes after which my mind wanders and I lose focus — this makes it very hard to write cohesively and in an organized fashion. And then there is the constant mixing up its and it’s, as well as confounding my tenses — the most basic of mistakes and I still make them.
Giving myself pep talks before I start writing has become a ritual of mine — they sound very similar to the ones I give to students: “This is a new craft and I am still learning what it looks like to me.” “It’s never going to be perfect but it will get better with practice.” “Trust the process.” These little mantras are helpful but I will still find an excuse to clean the dishes rather than write.
The prompt by my writing group for this writing exercise was “Unborn Children” and evolved out of a conversation about all of our ideas and writings that never see the light of day. The other folks in my group struggle with finishing their writing and sending it out for publication. This really isn’t my problem. When I finally finish writing a paper, I am so thankful and proud of that accomplishment (that monumental feat) that I eagerly move on to sending it out for publication. That’s when the ceiling collapses as the peer review process is much like a studio critique. You put your work up on the wall and listen while people couch criticism in compliments — only with peer review the couching is minimal.
The first peer review that I got back was so bleak that it was not worth trying to rescue the article. The second attempt was accepted pending revision. The comments were daunting and it took me a month to be able to even start to tackle them.
By writing out this article it has allowed me to reflect on the brief personal history of my own writing. I believe that my distrust in my own abilities, my fear, and my feelings of being less than have shaped the tentative way I engage in the process. My need for external reassurance has crippled my ability to see the worth in my writing — to see that what I have to say and the research that I have done holds value. I have also failed in applying the hardest lesson I had to learn when becoming a designer to my writing practice; that peer review and redlining — the critique — is part of the process. It needs to be heard and read through the lens of support. It is meant to deepen and improve the writing, not trample it.
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Follow our Medium publication and join my colleagues, Saskia Van Kampen, Johnathon Strube, Karin Jager, Anne Galperin and I, as we work together to get through the difficulty of writing especially through the COVID-19 pandemic.
