Writing, Creating, and Personal Perspective

This morning while sitting at a coffee shop reading a bit of His Whole Life by Elizabeth Hay. I’ve had it on my shelf for a while now and slowly getting through it. Not because I don’t enjoy it, I just haven’t made the time to read lately. This is the second book by the author I have read. I found the first, Alone in the Classroom, on clearance table at a book store and bought it based on a review on the back of the book saying it reminded the reviewer of Annie Proulx. She authored the book The Shipping News which I very much enjoy.

Anyway, this paragraph really hit me for this morning.

If you like different points of view, and Jim did, then you like old magazines. They open doors into other worlds and you slip in so easily. He used the typewriter too. Typing with two fingers THE SKY IS BLUE, he discovered he had made it so, even though it was raining outside and was supposed to rain all day.

Writing is a big part of my job and I’ve been working at improving it, I want to be a better writer. To be able to create new worlds people can feel a part of, or that I could get lost in myself, is a remarkable thing to be able to accomplish. While I believe I can and will improve the technical aspects of my writing, I don’t believe I have the creativity needed to imagine characters and their surroundings out of my own mind. Maybe some of that could come with practise and by reading more, but I’m not convinced I’d ever get there.

For a brief while I thought about writing some short stories loosely based on some past adventures I found myself in as a child and teenager. At least I wouldn’t have to completely make up the people and have a place to start from. Even as I reminisce and type out the facts for myself I can’t describe the details enough to really draw people in or allow them to slip into the story.

Writing probably isn’t the outlet for me. Maybe it is more about creating something in general. Previously I built digital things. Programming web applications, or little tools to make things easier. That was creating something new, but I don’t do it very often anymore. Is that what I’m missing? Maybe there’s a personal side project I can come up with and find time to work on to create something new again. Even better can I find away to incorporate this to my work?

There has been lots written about moving from an individual contributor role to a leadership or management one. When most of my day was spent directly with customers and helping them I was Engineering Happiness and problem solving. Most of the time these were short term problems where were resolved while talking with the customer or shortly afterwards. There was that instant gratification of completing that. While self employed and building things for clients there was something tangible at the end and clear progress along the way. These were usually smaller projects not big complex systems. There were tests I could run and in short time see if changes I made were working. In my current role there isn’t typically that instant gratification anymore. Challenges being worked on are longer and not always as easy to see and measure the results.

Perhaps this, like many things, is all about perspective and I need to find a new one or adjust mine again. Find those gratifications and better see things I can help create in a different way. As an example I’m struggling through now, instead of getting the specifications for a new tool or project and creating it, I need to put the thought into what the specifications are and communicate them in a way that it can be built. There is obviously so much more for me to learn, work on, and grow.