On writing

English is my third language after French and Chinese, the latter of which I am a native speaker of. I remember in high school, English was my favorite yet, paradoxically, worse subject. I think it was the only subject I received a B in. In hindsight, it was probably because of the fact that I didn’t speak much English at home during my brain’s critical period of language development, or maybe the fact that I come from a family of engineers who didn’t really prioritize language as much as mathematics.

Nevertheless, I loved English, and in particular, I admired the writings of John Steinbeck. I recall reading a memoir of Steinbeck in which he described practicing his writing much like a musician would practice an instrument. Steinbeck paid attention to the melodies and rhythms of words. Reading his novels was like listening to music, and I could feel that viscerally. I remember thinking that I wanted to write like Steinbeck.

Writing is a tricky thing in and of itself. I’ve never been a great reader, but I’ve always been told that I wrote well. I never quite understood that logic. Writing is certainly a complex skill and I believe that it’s both something that one possesses innate talent in, but that can also be improved with practice. In my line of work as a scientist and researcher, writing is our bread and butter. It can literally make or break you. Writing, as I’ve read, is a reflection of one’s thought process, and for a scientist, that’s the whole job.

But then the question becomes: how does one improve one’s writing? Is it through other’s feedback, and is feedback necessary to improve the skill at all? I think I ask this question because I doubt that writing aimlessly–keeping a journal for instance–really helps hone the mechanical components of language. I think it does require someone who is a better writer than you giving you constant feedback such as in a supervisor-mentee graduate school relationship.

To conclude, writing is an art in the sense that there’s no objectively correct way to write. There are fundamental rules to writing for sure in the form of grammar, but even those rules are malleable. We’re adults after all.