99: Five Reasons You’re Not a Bad Writer

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Hi everyone. Today I have a quick episode on five reasons you are not a bad writer. I decided to talk about writing and some of the issues and concerns and limiting beliefs that come up when it comes to doing our own writing because I recently launched my blog. If you go to gradschoolfemtoring.com/blog, you'll see that I published my first blog post. This one is on how to write a personal statement for grad school. That's one of the topics that I receive requests for advice on all the time, especially right now. It's grad school application season. Lots of folks are hitting me up in my DM, in my email inbox, asking me- do you have any tips for how to write a personal statement? How to write a personal statement to apply to McNair, how to write a personal statement to apply to grad programs, and so on.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So I figured, aside from the podcast, I want to be able to put something in writing to be able to share with others. And I published it. It went up this week, and I was thinking about how I have been wanting to have a blog for so long. I never quite did it because of so many fears and concerns and limiting beliefs. I kept thinking, well, who am I to write a blog? Who's gonna want to read what I have to say? I'm not a good writer compared to x person. I'm comparing myself to other people. Or imposter syndrome, or imposter phenomenon, kicks in. Someone's going to think that everything I'm saying is wrong. My worst critic is going to come in in the form of a troll and attack me.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Just all of my fears and concerns when it comes to my own writing and my own insecurities would come up. And it reminded me how I haven't been writing that much ever since I got my PhD in 2016. I hadn't been writing consistently. And I think a lot of it had to do with being trained to write in such a rigid academic way that I lost my creativity- the creativity that I had growing up as a child, as a theater kid who loved to write and express herself. I wrote poetry. I wrote short stories. I wrote plays. Recently, I've been going through some of my old documents, because I'm getting ready for my move abroad and trying to condense and sort through old materials. And I found some old plays, some old poems, some old pictures of me doing theater, and it just brought to mind how I've lost some of that.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I'm trying to decolonize myself, unlearn some of the things- basically, I was taught the rules so that now I'm in the position where I can break them. I can write from a place of power, from a place of knowing that my voice is valid, and hopefully, being able to share that with others and to motivate others to also pursue their own writing if they've had similar concerns. Right now, since this is a short episode, I was trying to think of five quick things I could mention, reasons to tell you why you are not a bad writer. Because trust me, most people think that they are bad writers. But it's actually not that. There's a lot of other things underneath those thoughts.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

The first reason I would say you're not a bad writer is you're not a bad writer, because you haven't necessarily gone through the writing process. Maybe you were never a top of writing as a multi step process. Perhaps you've only really written papers for your courses, and that was a last minute draft that you wrote the night before it was due. You submitted it and you received feedback, and you thought, wow. My writing is terrible. But if you had considered that as a process, as this is just my first draft, or my zero draft- what's a zero draft? I call something a zero draft when I'm just putting words on a page and it's not necessarily even coherent. It's messy. There's no real paragraphs. It's just ideas on a page. That's my zero draft.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

The first draft is the first time you're starting to put ideas together into paragraphs. It's readable, but it still needs work. It still needs revisions. So there's multiple steps involved in writing. The first step is again, putting ideas on a page. It's the prewriting, the free writing, the brainstorming. After that - getting a first draft- after the first step, receiving feedback from people and working on the revision stage. Then the revision stage may take a couple of drafts before you get to the editing stage. And the editing stage is where you are looking for grammar concerns, syntax, any errors of any kind. You're trying to clean it up, get it ready for publishing, or for sharing widely.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

But I remember as an undergrad, not necessarily being taught writing as a multi step process- only submitting first drafts stress or even zero drafts- and feeling self conscious about my writing. It wasn't until I started thinking about it as a multi step process, and seeing how my writing could develop when I allowed myself to go through the multiple revisions. Even when I went through revisions and saw the final drafts, I was like, oh, this is not me. This is not my writing. It's just because so and so helped me. But in actuality, it was my writing. It was my words. It was my revisions. I just want to remind you of that. If you're struggling with thinking your writing isn't good enough, consider the multi step process. Allow yourself to go through that process and see where your writing goes from point A to B to C to D. From step one- zero draft, brainstorming, free writing, step two- first draft, going through revisions, step three- more revisions, step four-editing, and so on. The cycle continues. So that's your first reason why you're not a bad writer, is that you weren't necessarily taught the multi step writing process.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Reason number two. You're not a bad writer, because have you ever actually seen people's first draft? Maybe you are not accustomed to seeing other people's first drafts. How many of us actually share our messy drafts with other people? I remember this happened to me in grad school. I was taking coursework. My professor for a class that I was taking- I don't know if it was intentional or what. But they decided to assign one of their articles, and instead of giving us the published article from the journal, they sent us the draft, the early stages of the draft of that article. I remember reading- I was already accustomed to reading this person's work that had been published. And I thought, I could never write like this. This is just so academic, and theoretical, and advanced. I could never do this. But when I read the draft that they sent us for coursework, my jaw dropped. Because it was so different. and it clearly was the first draft. I found errors, some things didn't necessarily make sense. I was like, wait. This is the same person writing this? That blew my mind. That exercise of reading someone else's first draft blew my mind. It made me realize- maybe I'm not that bad at writing after all. Maybe I just need to do whatever they did to get their writing from this stage to the published version of it. That's reason number two Maybe you're just not used to seeing other people's first drafts.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Reason number three, you probably don't have access to an editor. Here I want to talk about academic writing and editing and even editing in creative writing. There are editors for all kinds of things. And what do editors do? A variety of different things. They may be reviewing your writing and giving you feedback in terms of the development of the writing- so developmental editing. What does that mean? They're going through your writing and giving you feedback for revisions- the content, substantial revisions. Then there are editors that review it for line editing. This is when something is closer to an end stage, closer to publication. And they're just going over it to make sure, to clean it up, that there are no errors, no typos, no anything. Fixing some maybe common issues that you have in your writing.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

We all have things that we know that maybe we struggle with. Some of us struggle with spelling. Some of us struggle with commas and punctuation of some kind. Some of us struggle with syntax. Some of us struggle with everything, and that's okay. That doesn't make you a bad writer. You just need that support from an editor. And a lot of professional writers- creative writers, academics- they have editors that they hire to help them. When they're publishing a book, for instance, they will hire an editor to review the book for these types of issues, or to help clean up the writing.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Reason number four you're not a bad writer is maybe you've never gone through the peer review process. So you haven't gone through the peer review process. You haven't received input and feedback from experts in the subject that you're writing in. Why is this a reason for you not being a bad writer? Think about how your writing would develop further if you did have access to that, if you did allow yourself to go through that process, if you did get feedback from folks who know what you're talking about. And then you applied their feedback. You went through their comments. You made the revisions. You reviewed whatever suggestions of readings to incorporate. Your ideas, everything that they are offering you would help you further develop your writing. If you haven't gone through the peer review process, you haven't received that type of input and feedback, you don't even know where your writing could potentially go.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Last reason you're not a bad writer is you might not have been taught to embrace your own voice. Instead, maybe you've only been taught academic writing, rather than creative writing. For so many of us, we think we're bad writers, because- let's say in my case, I grew up with English as my second language. So I've always had that voice inside of my head telling me that I don't know how to read and write English properly, and because of that, I'm not a good writer. And I know that's not true. That's not valid. But I hadn't had anybody in my life who taught me to embrace my voice as it is. it's not like my friends' voice. It's not like my colleagues' voice. Some folks have very different voices, and I love them and I love reading their work. Maybe I don't always love what I write and how I write it. But that's my voice, and I'm learning to embrace it now.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

That's one thing I want you to consider. In what ways have the ways that you naturally speak and write been perhaps discouraged or censored in some way, shape, or form by academic writing. Maybe you're more of a creative writer. Maybe there's a different type of writing style that that suits you best, and you haven't yet discovered it, or you haven't yet been given opportunities to pursue it. If you are able to embrace your own voice, to learn the rules- like I did- to break them, it would be an opportunity for you to learn that maybe you're not a bad writer after all.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

If you're interested in getting more writing done, if you're getting a little bit stuck, or dealing with writer's block, think about these reasons. Consider what things you can do to strengthen your writing and your voice. Then go ahead and do it. Put it out there. You may get constructive feedback, and if it's useful, go ahead and apply it. If it's not useful, then you can go on about your day. But don't let anyone or anything make you feel like you're a bad writer and like you don't deserve to put your voice out there. That's it for today's episode, and I will talk to you all next time.