I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that writing is hard. Like, really hard. And not just writing a novel or an essay for class, but sometimes something as simple as writing a journal entry can be a monumental task. Our minds go 500 words a minute while our hands can only go 50, and more often than not what ends up on the paper sounds like we took what we meant to say in our heads and then ran it through a blender 10 times.
That being said, I have some trouble coming up with an article to write every week. I want to write stories that I’m proud to share, that allow my voice and my thoughts to jump off the page. I don’t want to write what everyone else is writing, I want to share content that is 100 percent me.
And let mee tell you, it’s not easy.
The temptation to write something simple, something that’s been said a thousand times before, is almost irresistible. I’ll have three exams in one week and by the end of it all I want to do is write an article about why college is hard or why procrastination blows. But I can’t let myself do that. In my mind, I have a little fictional group of dedicated readers who would be severely disappointed if I stooped so low as to write “10 Reasons Why Donald Trump Is a Doo-Doo Head.”
Oh. There it is. “10 Reasons Why Sororities Are Great,” “15 Reasons I Love My Best Friend,” “The 9 Stages of Finals Week” – sound familiar? Those are examples of the dreaded listicle, a form of “writing” popularized by BuzzFeed that has managed to spread to every corner of the Internet, including Odyssey.
Ah, how simple it would be to write down nine quick sentences about my freshman experience, throw in some vaguely related GIFs to spice it up, and submit it as my article for the week. How nice it would be to do that every week. And hey, people like them, right? Obviously there wouldn’t be such a proliferation of them if there wasn’t an established audience.
Listicles are just another product of a culture that is moving increasingly toward bite-sized chunks of content. Twitter has a word limit, Instagram relies almost entirely on visual content, and shared content on Facebook has moved from text to videos averaging less than a minute long. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this kind of content (in fact, crafting an amazing tweet in 140 characters should be an art form in itself), as long as it doesn’t displace actual word craft. Websites are rendering newspapers obsolete, eReaders make printed books a luxury – don’t let listicles turn a thoughtfully written article into something that fails to hold our attention.
Yes, I realize that as long as there’s an audience there are always going to be listicles. Nothing I can do about it. I’m not here to argue that listicles should be banished to the darkest depths of Hell, only that if you’ve established yourself as a writer that’s able to string 500 words together – stick with it. And if you’re a fan of listicles, great! Just take some time to do a little bit of reading and writing on the side, too.
I know, writing is one of the hardest things to do. And writing something original and compelling every time is even harder – but it is so worth it. And the amazing thing about writing is the more you do it, the better you get. Your voice is stronger, your vocabulary is increased, and your mind is grown.
Being able to write will never be a wasted skill, so long as there are still people out there willing to read.
