[fr] Mon écriture souffre généralement de trop de parenthèses, de tirets, de phrases trop longues et... de mots, simplement. Ça m'ennuie mais j'avoue que je suis paresseuse lorsque j'écris: pas de relecture, pas de réécriture, j'écris et je publie, voilà c'est fait.
After reading Bird by Bird, I am now reading On Writing by Stephen King. And it’s making me think about my writing.
I’m a lazy writer. I don’t proofread, I don’t edit, I don’t even plan much outside my head. I just write. It’s never been a problem for me.
Reading King (and in parallel, Anne Lamott’s Rosie, which is so beautifully written it makes me want to drop everything and write my life away) is making me think about my style. There are a certain number of things I do that bother me, and that I don’t seem to manage to do differently. (Though, as I said, I’m a lazy writer — if I actually put a little effort into changing things, maybe I would.)
As you’ve certainly noticed if you read this blog, I overuse dashes and parentheses. I always have. I think it’s because my way of thinking is digressive. I start on something, and have to add some little explanative digression before going on. I do that when I talk, too. I start a sentence or an explanation, stop mid-way through, and add some extra background information that’s needed to understand what’s left of the sentence or explanation.
Anyway, I’m not trying to find excuses. It annoys me that I do that, and I think it probably makes what I write more cumbersome to read than it could be.
Another thing I’m guilty of is long sentences. Sometimes I feel they just want to go on and on and on and on and then I catch myself and chop them in half. I also think I use too many words. I’m not a very concise writer. I ramble. Like I’m doing now.
So I’ll let you go and read something else while I go and write a shitty first draft of something that I’ll never show anybody.
Are there any of my bad writing habits which bug you when you read me?
Your perception of your own writing does not concur with my perception of your writing: I find it clear, to the point, and easy to follow. Even if English is not my mother tongue, I find it smooth and not cumbersome.
And to find a summary in my native language that is a real good synthesis of your blogpost is a testament to your witty capacities, in my humble opinion.
Thanks for your kind words! I don’t think my writing is outright bad — I mean, I know I write well, but I do have the feeling that I could do better if I got rid of a few annoying habits… 😉