NickVenturella.com 4-23-17

The Importance of Writing

April 23, 2017

You know, I spent most of my formidable years as a creative person involved in visual art and music, which included my own rudimentary form of poetry involved in it.

My art and music abilities evolved over time toward graphic design and more mature songwriting and then later to storytelling specifically in written form. 

My writing was applied to all sorts of situations, projects and employment positions.

My whole life I've been trying to simply communicate stories or concepts/ideas. As I look at the evolution of my own storytelling it seems to have progressed rather logically.

If you think about it, early on as kids we tend to draw and color pictures offering a visual form of communication because our speech and ability to read and write is not yet developed or as strong yet.

As we grow and develop our reading and writing abilities we have more tools to articulate our thoughts differently, and perhaps more precisely.

However, like anything, to get good at articulating your thoughts and ideas takes practice over time, which is why those who are serious about their interests (for work or for pleasure) should consider writing about it on a regular basis. This type of writing practice helps one to fully immerse themselves in their craft and become more professional.

Every good idea starts with a story or an explanation -- a clear thought of your intention.Stories of all sorts can obviously be depicted in many ways --  visually, in written form, even in a musical form -- but there's something magical about writing to explain your thoughts that helps your brain troubleshoot the best way to articulate more clearly what you're trying to convey.

For example, this is why marketing agencies tend to use copywriters to outline the copy of an ad or a marketing campaign and then those words help inform the designers to create visual images to help advance the message of that marketing campaign or advertisement.

In that scenario, writing creates a way to quickly and easily edit thoughts to refine them. A clear roadmap emerges as a result, informing the other aspects of the creative process (adding visuals/video or music) on its journey toward the finished product.

If you think about it, most ideas in the world exist because they were thought through somehow and writing is often the genesis of those ideas.And more specifically, it's less about the actual act of writing and more about the ability to clearly articulate ideas to explain something (sometimes in a creative way).In other words any good idea that you want to share has to be explained to someone else. So whether you're talking to one person explaining your good idea, or you are sharing a good idea online with many people at once, you still have to have the ability to articulate and get across your ideas in a way that others can easily understand what you're after.

Writing becomes a way to document that kind of explanation and allows you to self edit along the way to get to a clearly articulated point.However, writing does not have to be the only form of documentation. For example, speaking to an audience and recording what you've said on video, or music that's recorded  can be a form documenting your thoughts and ideas. In that way, "writing" becomes a way of documenting your thoughts.

The point again, is that taking the time to express your thoughts and ideas and then refining them to ensure the point you want to get across to another person, another audience, your boss, your coworker, or whomever, is being received by them in the way you intended.

Have a great week!