Why We Can't Write Conversationally

I can’t write. I’ve told myself this the first time a friend and I attempted to write a book series. My first attempts at storytelling and essay writing were difficult because og my inability to analyze texts. This became clearer in college especially when writing research papers.

I gave up writing for a while due to frustration. My fingers wouldn’t function, my brain shut down and I couldn’t do anything.  

Thinking about my past and present makes me wonder. I’ve transformed more as a writer the end of my junior year to my senior year. I can glance at stuff I’ve written a week ago and and beam with pride. Before I'd cringe hard and delete my first drafts. As I got older I started thinking about areas of writing that interested me, particularly journalism and content writing and started reading about them. For fun, I also watched YouTube videos about college essays.

Books and videos helped me realize that the way we’re taught writing in high school and middle school are unhelpful and unproductive. 

When writing essays, we are taught proper formatting, citations and word choice, which isn't bad.  Research papers and articles need citations. If you are writing a sociology or psychology paper, you must use ASA (American Sociological Association) and APA (American Psychological Association.) When writing a history paper, you should use the Chicago Manual of Style; some professors might use MLA (Modern Language Association). English papers use MLA. 

We're taught to write mostly for teachers and not for common people; restate your thesis statement and refrain from using "I". Yet my first semester in college, it didn't matter whether I used "I" and didn't need to restate my thesis.

When taking a PR class and started writing articles for my university’s relations department, writing conversationally was difficult. It became easier with time. . Overall readers want content that is easier to read and digest. Most real-world writing is for ordinary people, and our writing should reflect that. 

Writing is having a conversation with your reader and building trust. It’s not about getting points for how well you write, even though it is important to write well.