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Some of you might have heard of analytical writing in academia. If your major was anywhere near the humanities or social sciences, chances are that writing analytically was instilled in you through countless edits and thorough comments from your instructors. Maybe you even took a writing class. However, when the memories of your alma mater start to fade, so do the analytical skills you thought were instilled in you.

If there is one valuable writing tip I picked up in school, it’s that your mind has the unique capacity to interpret facts, merge ideas, and uncover patterns that can make your voice– channeled through writing – authentic. Whether you dabble in fiction writing, work in communications, or wordsmith for pleasure, an analytical text will help you and your reader get more meaning out of words, nurturing a better understanding of the reality around us.

Writing analytically involves peering at the world and asking questions. It’s about connecting the dots, capturing diversity, and challenging biases. The highly-coveted skill of making sense of information and facts will always rank above other communication skills. As we’re getting bombarded with terabytes of data, our brains need to interpret it before sending calls to action. An analytical piece takes you on a journey towards deeper understanding of a topic that goes beyond mere facts.

Analytical writing is a symphony. Let your writing be a platform where ideas collide and coalesce. Collect data, voices, and opinions to fill in the gaps and capture a full picture. Don’t slip into judgement as your learn about new traditions, people, and cultures.

Analytical writing is revealing. Look for the intricate, minute details, compare facts, dates, and numbers to uncover implicit connections. Oftentimes, single numbers and dates don’t say much to the reader. But they might speak volumes when compared or contrasted with a larger corpus of data.

An analytical text asks questions. Why is the topic you’re developing important? How does it fit into the bigger picture? How does it impact our lives? Why should the reader care?

Analytical writing is critical. Challenge your thought to shy away from biases and assumptions. Keep your heart, mind, and writing open.

Analytical writing is a muscle that you can flex and stretch. Follow these tips before your tackle a new writing project:

  • Think of the sources you’re interviewing or researching – do they offer diversity? Are they reliable? How far from your set of beliefs are they placed?
  • Wrap your factual information in a context. Bare facts alone might not always make the most sense to the reader. Gather context, compare and contrast your numbers and dates to offer possible interpretations.
  • Tame your judgement as much as you can for as long as you can. Walk the reader through your thought process before making any conclusions. Remaining completely subjective might not be realistic; equally covering diverse opinions and approaches before stating your opinion is.

Your unique way of making sense of facts, information, ideas – topped off with a firm grasp of the English language – makes your writing stand out. And this will never go out of style because a riveting story and quality writing will always be in demand, no matter what audience you’re serving.

Screenshot_20181023-160649Olga Ivanova is an Edmonton-based communications professional and writer with a knack for storytelling.

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The notion of “inspiration” is exciting, romantic and, well, inspiring. Our mythologies of creativity tell us that the right synchronicity of circumstances will spark not only The Idea that will change everything, but the will and ability to execute it. In reality, sitting around waiting for inspiration to “strike” is about as effective as waiting for actual lightning to strike and start your campfire. Inspiration can be cultivated and sought out, though.

Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum, no matter how much consistent work and practice one puts in. It is the encounters and experiences that excite, intrigue and teach us that generate and motivate creativity. Sudden, striking ideas do happen – but they don’t come out of nowhere, they are the result of a long-simmering idea suddenly coalescing as the last piece falls into place. To be creative, go out into the world and seek out inspiration. This can take any form you like, from getting back to the land and nature, to delving into works of philosophy for new ideas. Inspiration is all the little pieces of life that keep you motivated and keep you thinking until The Idea finally coalesces (or, more likely, is finally forced into being like molding a stiff piece clay.)

Do not shy away from engaging with others’ works of creativity as a source of inspiration. Far from tainting the authenticity of your creative expression with influence, others’ art can be a great source of inspiration. Most peoples’ original inspiration to become a writer, artist or any other creative was probably someone else’s work. Don’t be afraid to revisit that original inspiration in times of low motivation.

Art exists to provoke emotional and intellectual responses and to expose new ideas and perspectives, all of which are the essence of inspiration. In a sense, art is a short cut to inspiration! Whatever kind of creative you are, try to be open to what all kinds of creativity can teach you – visual art, performance, music, literature, digital arts….

A risk of relying on others’ art to inspire you in periods of low motivation and inspiration is that witnessing the peak of others’ creative process may stir up insecurity and fear. The doubting voice inside might just say “Well I can’t do that, so why bother…” The gulf between where you see yourself and where you want to be may become stark and intimidating. Remember that inspiration is also about learning. Look at work that you admire, or consider “better” than yours, as something to learn from rather than envy. What is it that you see in that work that seems to be missing from your work and how can you develop that missing piece? What technique and craft does that artist use that you can learn? If inadequacy and fear clouds inspiration, focus on learning and honing your craft.

Creativity requires consistent work, but it also needs to be nurtured with inspiration. Fortunately, creatives do not need to passively await inspiration: they can go out and find it. Part of the work of creativity is spending time immersed in others’ creativity, looking for the little pieces that will build and motivate your own.

 

IMG_20180718_115103_621Elisabeth Hill is an Edmonton-based writer and researcher who currently works as a Programming and Engagement Coordinator at the Art Gallery of Alberta.

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So often I see writing advice along the lines of “try to write for fifteen minutes each day.” Fifteen minutes?! I can barely write a haiku in fifteen minutes. Leaving alone the fact that any commitment as flippant as “fifteen minutes each day” is bound to get bumped in favour of other priorities, it is not, in my experience, possible to have satisfactorily brilliant writing without accompanying torturous obsession.

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We live in a non-linear world full of countless interconnections and complexities. There is overlap. There are gray areas. There are exceptions. There are deeply rooted issues and finely made distinctions. And we, as writers, ask ourselves to look at this convoluted mess and produce provocative, astute work. How do we create a flowing, sensical, accessible, funny, interesting narrative exploring such chaos? Creative, original writing cannot and should not be so undervalued as for it to become a reasonable expectation that it be produced in the minutes between the end of dinner and the start of a favourite television show. It can and does only come out of many, many hours of dedicated, involved labour.

I am passionate on this issue not because I think it is a bad idea to try to write for fifteen minutes each day, but because I believe there is a link between impractical, unrealistic writing advice and the perpetual belittling of writing in our culture. Writing is often seen not as a practiced, useful, difficult skill but as something that anyone could do if they just put aside the time to do it. There is nothing further from the truth.

There is a reason why so many great artists, novelists, academics, and poets ended up struggling with mental illness, had difficulty with relationships, and lived in perpetual poverty. Passionate creation does not fit nicely within a balanced lifestyle. It is not something that you can expect to sit down, complete, and then leave when your shift is done. It is a demanding experience that can bring such extreme highs and lows that it can sometimes feel as if you are living on a different plane of existence. It can keep you up all night and then evade you for the entirety of your scheduled work day. Thoughts may arrive so urgently they drive away such staples of regular human existence as showering, eating, and catching the bus on time.

It is imperative that we, as a culture, recognize the difficulty intrinsic in producing good writing. Without a collective understanding of writing as a turbulent experience, it is only reasonable to expect writers everywhere to feel there is something wrong with them if they do not function within their scheduled 35-hour work week. We also risk ignorance of one of the experience’s greatest benefits: that nothing will challenge you so much as your own writing. We, as writers, must remember that to experience difficulty in our craft is not to be failing but rather the opposite. We only succeed by struggling.

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We are constantly engaged with technology, and, sometimes, it can be difficult to justify buying or bringing a notebook when we know that we can just type our work on our laptop, phone, or tablet. Technology affords us many great luxuries, but especially in the initial, frenzied, creative stages of writing, it can be best to go back to basics and pull out a pen and paper. The artistic freedom that a blank page affords can be liberating. While I may find myself frozen and frustrated before a computer screen, there is a special joy that accompanies writing with pen and paper. Below, I have compiled a list of my favourite reasons for going back to basics when I write.

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Automatic illustrations. Drawing, doodling, scribbling: whatever you call it, being able to add artwork instantly to whatever piece of writing you are working on can help to keep your creative juices flowing. Doodling can help you come up with new ideas, see things in different ways, and can even alleviate anxiety. For readers, illustrations (no matter how crude) can catch the eye, add to the tone, increase dimensionality, and make the piece feel more personal. Difficult to accomplish on the computer, but so automatic with a pen in hand, doodling has some major upsides for creative minds of all varieties.

Change the shape of words. Sometimes words need to be big, or zigzagged, or adorned with curlicues. They may need to be in seven different colours, or dripping with slime, or be spread out all over the page. Maybe you want to insert a word that requires a different alphabet, like Arabic or Ukrainian, right in the middle of your English poem. Something that can be difficult and frustrating to accomplish on the computer can become a fun and invigorating project on paper. Easily being able to make your words look how you want helps to maintain the flow of creativity and can lead to greater satisfaction at the end of your work period.

Spell however you want! Trying to write a short story from the perspective of a child? Are you looking to stretch out or compress words in the song you’re writing? Have you coined a new term? Are you perpetually distracted by your spelling mistakes when all you want is to quickly get an idea down? It can be infuriating to have to go back again and again to change what autocorrect has “fixed” for you, or try to continue on bravely writing amongst the many red underlined words in your document. Writing on paper will never pose this problem.

Format the words on the page easily and quickly. Whether you want words in all four corners of the page but nowhere in between, or spaced out like bricks, or placed in the shape of a dress, writing on paper will always allow you this luxury with the least amount of fuss.

Piece together pieces of different drafts. Have you ever found yourself writing draft after draft of the same idea, sentence, or poem? Well, there’s no easy backspace or delete function when you’re working with paper, and, if you’re like me, even if something was crossed out in a crazed bout of frustration, I can usually still read it. After I have written all my drafts, I can take all the pieces of my brainstorming, take the best from each, and weave them together. On a computer, my ideas are so easily deleted; on paper, they remain traceable.

rachaelRachael Heffernan has recently completed a Master’s Degree in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta. In the course of her academic career, she has received the Harrison Prize in Religion and The Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship. During her undergraduate degree, Rachael was published twice in The Codex: Bishop University’s Journal of Philosophy, Religion, Classics, and Liberal Arts for her work on Hittite divination and magic and philosophy of religion. Rachael has also had the opportunity to participate in an archaeological dig in Israel, and has spoken at a conference on Secularism at the University of Alberta on the Christian nature of contemporary Western healthcare. Her wide-ranging interests in scholarship are complemented by her eclectic extra-curricular interests: she is a personal safety instructor and lifelong martial artist who has been recognized for her leadership with a Nepean Community Sports Hero Award. She is an enthusiastic reader, writer, and learner of all things, a tireless athlete, and a passionate teacher.

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tumblr_inline_n9xt2hsUWZ1s6nw8rThe classic stereotype of a writer penning the next great novel in their moleskin notebook is a bit dated, particularly when technology has grown leaps and bounds to help facilitate your writing, whether in the form of editing apps, inspiration tools or time-management programs. Abhorring the modern writing world and all that is available to a writer seems to me to be a bit of status thing, invoking the classic artist martyrology – that if you don’t suffer for your art, it’s not art. Let me tell you: this is 19th Century trope that just. Will. Not. Die. Writers are usually artists but they are also craftspeople in a skilled trade. They have to work really hard to do what they do and they produce thousands of pages before they ever write a paragraph of magic. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or has a magic genie lamp stashed away somewhere.

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Technology is all about making our lives easier and even though it sometimes seems like the easier things get, the more time we waste, I have to say that the following tools for writers seem to be excellent for increasing productivity, efficiency and overall inspiration to get you back to doing what you do best: writing!

  1. creativityImagination Prompt is a great tool for someone who just doesn’t know how to get started. Whether you are a serial blogger or are working on a short story for publication, the simple push of the button on this site can really help get the wheels a-turnin’ and the words a-spinnin’. With writers, it is often just a tiny push we need to get past a block and then a cascade of ideas can come tumbling down to us.
  2. zenwriterZenWriter is a downloadable app for PCs that is meant to minimize distractions that can take away from your writing productivity – provided you are doing your writing on a computer, which is likely these days. Journalling might seem romantic but it can be a bit of a time waster as few people will take the time to transcribe what they have written in a notebook into something on the typed page. Additionally, things can look really different when written by the hand and just might not have the same punch when they are put into more conventional printed formats. Either way, something like ZenWriter is good for keeping you focused on your writing and includes therapeutic music and natural scenery in the background to help you relax and get your work done.
  3. stayfocusdStayfocusd is a similar idea to ZenWriter, except that it is a Google Chrome app that limits the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites. It is completely customizable and can block entire websites, because who’s kidding? We all have a secret love of Buzzfeed or Distractify or some other evil click-bait webpage that is just so interesting you can’t help yourself. This is how the internet can destroy lives people. Put a timer on it and stop wasting time. Get ‘er done, as we say in Alberta.
  4. clichefinderCliché Finder is helpful if you don’t want to suck as a writer. Cliches might seem like the best thing since Betty White but, trust me, they do worse for your writing than a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters. At least the monkeys might show a shred of ingenuity because it is unlikely that they have cultural memes that can penetrate their writing the way clichés can. But enough about monkeys, just use this app to seek out those sneaky stereotypical similes and destroy them.
  5. meetupsMeetup.com is a website that might help you find writing groups in your neighbourhood. Check it out or post there to find like-minded people who are interested in working on their craft as much as you are. It will get you into the habit of writing for your group, editing and proofreading the work of other people, and might even throw in a healthy dose of competitiveness that will get your creative juices flowing. Cliché alert! Should’ve ran that one through number 4! See? Even the most practiced writers fall prey to classic failings now and again. Get on the technology train and get moving.

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Being a writer is a life-long journey that comes with its own unique challenges and opportunities. There is a large corpus of myths surrounding the life of a writer that many great writers try to debunk but somehow they persist. On the other hand, there are a few key characteristics and lifestyle choices that aid in being writer that aren’t talked about enough. I am all about breaking down the mystification of writing as a vocation and the sacralization of the writer as an individual, so why not start with this handy list?

  1. You don’t need to be depressed to be a writer. This myth continues to this day. It is true that some really great writers (see: Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath etc) were depressed and eventually committed suicide. This, however, is tragic and unfortunate. It didn’t make their writing any better or worse. I heard once that suffering is a necessary precondition of all great artists and while I understand that heartache and social alienation and culture clash might constitute as ‘suffering’ to some, I also think that these kind of quotes glorify clinical suffering that people actually need to get help for. Sure there are studies that show that depressed people might tend to have different outlooks on life that may or may not help them to be more creative; however, being dead is pretty much the end of all creativity. Get help. And then keep writing.
  2. Writing does not need to be your only job. There are plenty of writers who worked real day jobs (see: Herman Melville, John Steinbeck, Nathaniel Hawthorne) and even though writing was their real passion in life, they didn’t sacrifice everything for the craft. In fact, some of the best writers will tell you that sitting at home all day, worrying about the bills and procrastinating by binge-watching Netflix is the worst writing inspiration they could possibly imagine. Just ask anyone working on a doctorate dissertation and you know why it is critical to have social contact and some other work besides writing to keep you going. Plus, it offers the possibility of expanding your knowledge base and allows for your financial freedom to focus on your writing.
  3. You should write AND read every day. Every single published author who is worth listening to will tell you this. You must write something every single day. It doesn’t have to be the big project you’re working on; it doesn’t have to be a complete poem in its entirety. It just shouldn’t be an email response or catching up on Facebook comments. To qualify, you should be writing to hone your craft every day. Set a word limit or a time limit and watch how easy they are to achieve and surpass. A lot of writers work best if their time for writing is the same time every day, particularly if they set a time limit (like starting with 15 minutes per day and working your way up to an hour or two). The other important thing is that you MUST read every single day. It doesn’t have to be much but if you are working in a particular genre and you want to keep things fresh and exciting, you should be reading at least one thing per day. Set a time or a page limit and you are gold. Most authors have several books on the go so this is a no-brainer.
  4. Read outside your genre. Expand your knowledge base – I cannot emphasize how important this is. It is very easy to spot an author who sticks to stereotypical similes, tropes and metaphors of their genre. The more you know, the more you add to your writing toolkit – information and ideas that you access at a moment’s notice while you are typing or scrawling away.
  5. Really study your favourite authors’ craft. How many times have you sat down with your favourite book and studied how the author described people? How many times have you highlighted transition passages between chapters? Are there margin notes in your books? If the answers are never, never and no, you will be very limited in what you can accomplish in your writing. De-mystify what makes a good book a good book. Figure out exactly how descriptions of people and places happen. Underline and jot down the key elements of good dialogue and keep these things in mind for your own writing. When you get stuck, it can offer a simple solution to getting unstuck. Emulating the greats brings no shame with it either! The best learn from the best!
  6. Not all of your writing has to be good. Destroy your Messiah-complex. Not everything you write is going to be the lost gospel. In fact, most of it will be destined for the wastebasket. The pressure to always perform can lead to serious (surprise, surprise) performance anxiety – just like any other vocation. Realize that in every piece of drivel, you might be fortunate enough to find something salvageable and transformable for later. Keep at it. I had a brilliant writing instructor who used to force us to take our favourite sentences and black them out with a sharpie. “Kill your babies!” another writing instructor would shout, at our pouty, ego-bruised faces. Liberate yourself and keep writing.
  7. Not everything you write has to be the next great novel. Same idea as number 6. You don’t always need to be working on projects that are going to be published to be considered a writer. Write for the sake of writing. Figure out interesting writing exercises you can do (write in vignettes, write on a specific memory, write like it’s a different genre or era) that will help you expand your horizons and (no surprise here) will. Get. You. Writing.
  8. Writers are constantly learning. If you are not learning, you are not writing. Writing doesn’t just come out of nowhere. You are not a divine hierophany through which the writing muse speaks. You have to be on top of your learning. This doesn’t mean sitting in a library all day either. Learning means reflecting on things – whether this be people-watching, travelling, psychoanalysis, reading a book, learning a new hobby, attending a social group etc.
  9. Good researchers make good writers. This goes hand-in-hand with number 8. The best writers also do the best research. They are not lazy with their research and will often seek out multiple sources to find the same information. Absolutely nothing is worse than reading a book or short story that is riddled with historical mistakes, the wrong dates or things that are totally implausible. It tears your reader out of the magical reading-space and starts their brain questioning immediately – a writer’s worst nightmare.
  10. When you fail, try again. A lot of what you do will suck. You will get a lot of rejection letters. Some people will tell you that you aren’t meant to write. Just keep reading, researching and, above all, writing. You will improve. You will find your genre, your audience and your stride. If you stop trying, the only thing you’ve found is defeat.