“I write not because I know but because I want to know.”
Julio Serrano- Guatemalan Writer
Julio Serrano is a Guatemalan writer I met in a course about poetry. These words lingered in my mind for quite some time. After a while, I understood what it meant to me, and the reflection surprised me. I started writing articles to practice my written English. My initial thought was to get better by doing: the best way was to write about something I already knew. Thus, I started writing about my experiences at work. I thought the outcome would be about the writing, not the content. But something happened during the process. The ideas were there but needed order, structure, purpose, and a message. First, I had to think about the message: What am I trying to convey? Then the second question came up: What is the message? Is there even a message? I decided to tell stories, like when you find a friend you have not seen in a long time and tell them about what happened to you. That would be my tone, a friendly conversation with a dear friend. So there it was my first decision: who would be my audience.
Then, I thought I must be thorough about what I was saying or writing. Although I would treat my writing as a conversation, this conversation needed to be explained with facts. So every sentence I wrote needed to be a fact of my experience, shared knowledge, or verifiable information. The last statement was the most challenging because if I wanted to write about a topic, I had to review all my concepts to avoid saying something wrong. Thus, every piece of writing became a research subject: I was in trouble now. I told stories and backed them with what I had learned or researched. By researching and comparing my actions with actual concepts, I could compare what I have done wrong and right and make conclusions, assessments, and commitments to improve the outcomes.
The realization
After three or four articles, I realized that I was learning from my own experiences by writing and telling my stories. Julio compellingly explained this process: “Words are powerful; they give order to the Universe.” Oscar Wilde showed the same way of thinking when he wrote about words in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray: “They seem to be able to give a plastic form to formless things… Was there anything so real as words?” When you put your ideas into words and try to explain to others what you feel, what you have lived, and what you have learned: you create certainty. A notion becomes a concept that others can understand, explain, and even translate into actions that deliver some result. Words are magic wands; they can convert ideas and thoughts into tangible results.
In the article “Three Observations on Leading Through Writing” by Gene Kim, author of The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project, he describes how leaders like Admiral John Richardson and Jeff Bezos rely on writing to deliver their message to their peers. However, this message is not a long report but a conscious process of providing ideas in the proper format. Kim also says that writing “clarifies thinking you need to reason about complex decisions.” That seems quite logical. Suppose you can translate a concept into words with sentences that everybody understands. In that case, you can deliver a well-constructed message. Then you can also deliver these words in the form of speaking. You use words in meaningful sentences that can reach most of your audience.
Learning to write
However, this process has been a five-year journey for me. English is not my first language, and the process of communicating ideas varies from culture to culture. The culture influences how sentences are constructed and how words are delivered. In Spanish, my mother language, we prefer longer sentences and more elaborate paragraphs, whereas English is more to the facts. The ideas are abstract concepts, and they translate differently in various languages. Thus, language is not easy to master, and even then, the writing process has a set of rules that a writer has to master: the audience, the tone, the style, the rhetoric, grammar, and so on.
Writing is a craft that needs practice but requires some practical knowledge. This knowledge needs to be acquired in some form. I have a technical background, so I usually use tutorials and self-paced classes to obtain new material, but writing has been a real challenge. The process is not logical as in a technical field. Language results from rules and conventions that groups of people create in a living environment. New words are formed on the fly due to new technology or other facts of life. New terms like “teleworking,” “emojis,” and “internet,” for example, have been created in the last few years. The rules of communicating are different between informal environments and business settings. Thus, we as professionals should acquire this craft through formal learning and commitment.
After five years, I can say that It has paid off. The time involved has been a real commitment, much more than the monetary investment, but I see the difference. I needed to make this investment for my personal and professional needs, but I recommend getting involved in writing. When we communicate better, we perform better and get better results. And by translating our thoughts, ideas, and stories, we can make sense of our experiences, understand better who we are, and then plan better and learn from the past to have a better future.
Words Have Power
Winston Churchill is an excellent example of what writing can accomplish; he made words an essential part of history. President Kennedy said, “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle. The incandescent quality of his words illuminated the courage of his countrymen.” He is widely known for his memorable speeches in the House of Commons and to the British people in one of the darkest times in human history. However, I did not realize that before Churchill became Prime Minister, he made a living by writing about war and continued to do so after his tenure.
Churchill wrote more than forty books during his life. Most of his writings are about historical war events. He also was a journalist who reported war events for The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Graphic while serving in India. Thus, he was knowledgeable about war themes before even the Great War had begun. His first book was published in 1898, and it was “The Story of Malakand Field Force,” a recount of war events in India.
Churchill made a living out of describing war to the British citizens, and by explaining these events to others, by observing, analyzing, and translating these events to the ordinary people of the British empire, he became a master of words that moved a nation to hope and to fight for its values. Long before World War II started, he made sense of war events and the effects on people; as a journalist and book writer, he had to put some order and make sentences readable to all about what he taught, what he saw, what he understood about war.
Many quotes from this man are well known, but this one describes a moment in which the British had lost a lot, and the Japanese had won a lot:
The whole future of mankind may depend upon our action and upon our conduct…We shall not fail now. Let us move forward steadfastly together into the storm and through the storm.”
From his speech to the British called Tonight the Japanese are triumphant, February 15, 1942, upon the fall of Singapore to the Japanese forces.
What I like about this speech is that Churchill spoke the hard truth to his fellow citizens, but also he spoke about hope, the alliance with the United States, the hardship to come, about the place in history that the British people had. He moved all those people with powerful words that speak to the core of the human heart. So, how could he give hope in such dark times? Let us remember that the British fought almost alone from the fall of France in 1939 until Pearl Harbor in 1941. The German forces bombarded London, and still, the British fought with everything they had. The citizens in London sent their children far away; the hardships were enormous. But, he inspired hope with words because he knew how to deliver a message, how people reacted to these messages, how to say the bad and the good when to say it, and let’s say that he mainly spoke the truth.
Words are powerful indeed if they can convey a message that is understood. Some can deliver these messages to the masses, but most people can speak with meaningful words to those close to them. If they take the time to prepare, if people work on this unique skill, they could accomplish a great deal if people commit to the idea that it is essential to be understood. Indeed, together people can achieve big things if they understand each other. That is what Churchill did with his words. He united his country against a threat. This accomplishment was a humongous one.
There is a lot more that I can say about Churchill’s words, but I would take pages and pages, so I recommend reading “Churchill: The power of words” by Martin Gilbert. It is an excellent book that depicts some of the most memorable Churchill speeches. It is a must-read book if you are interested in history, words, and this man’s extraordinary life. Winston Churchill was bestowed with the Nobel prize in literature in 1953. According to the Academy, this honor was given “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.”
The End
Winston Churchill is a unique man; most people are here to live their lives relevant to a much smaller circle of action. But, we can learn from this powerful example how a craft like writing can help us to reach our goals and to invest in communicating better. Maybe not everybody can be enrolled in a writing program, but we can all invest time now and then and get more involved in crafting an excellent story to tell. In the end, maybe we will discover a hidden talent that had not been seen before because we were not looking enough into our personal history.
I started with a quote, so it is fair that I finish with one to make us think about how putting order into the past can help us lead our future, and writing can help us to do so.
It is my earnest hope that pondering upon the past may give guidance in days to come, enable a new generation to repair some of the errors of former years and thus govern, in accordance with the needs and glory of man.
Wiston Churchill, 1948, The Gathering Storm