I enjoy the exercise of writing
By Christina Easter
Growing up, I watched a lot of news and read a variety of books and magazines. This was before the news became the news, excessively opinionated, and a primary driver of commerce. Or maybe the news has always been these things, I just didn’t realize it because I was so young. Any hoot, I guess I enjoyed learning how persons, places, and things come to be what they were.
The first time writing became an exercise for me was when I went to law school. IRAC or issue, rule, analysis, and conclusion was the method used to demonstrate law students’ ability to arrive at a sound, rational, and/or reasonable disposition of a case. I still have each of my law school books and the chapters of each have IRAC notes throughout.
My second experience with writing as an exercise came when I called the Cleveland Improv and asked what I needed to do to be on amateur night. Five minutes of comedy, I was told. That was easy I thought and sat down and began to write my thoughts about … what else but the news. I wrote pages of my thoughts and comments on the shameless politicians who stand the test of time for comedic material.
Premise, set-up, set-up, BANG was my chosen method to make people laugh. I only had five minutes and five minutes feels like five hours if you’re not funny or you don’t have a plan to get off the stage in five minutes.
Currently, I writing a lot of news articles. The biggest challenge is picking the research and information from interviews to include in the article. To keep it simple, I do an outline with the 5Ws (what, who, when, where, and why) and fill in sentences for each.
Each time I add a few sentences, I read what I have to check how the article sounds and feels while also looking for spots to add quotes from the primary interviewee. Once I feel the article has good structure and flow, I incorporate quotes from people who have knowledge about the “what” and “who” of the event.
Although I have been writing for a while, I consider myself a new writer primarily because I continue to write for different audiences which requires a different style. One thing is for sure, I enjoy the exercise of writing and see myself writing for a very long time.
