Write Your Way Out
All I need to do is reach one kid.
In fifth grade, my friends and I conspired to play a prank on our homeroom teacher that directly led to him quitting the profession entirely. Mr. Stoops, if you’re reading this, I’m really sorry that we all set alarms on our LCD handheld games to go off at varying times throughout the day, as you confiscated them from us. Our reverse heist payback for giving us detentions was childish and wrong.
So, 30-some-odd years later, I’m out to make it up to you by saving the sanity of an entire school of fifth-grade teachers for one day by giving this talk to all of their classes.
By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be in the classroom going through my second iteration of this presentation. If karma is real, I’ll be bombing horribly and getting booed by a cadre of fifth-grade boys in the back of the class as I crash out.
We’re kicking this off with an introduction. Nothing too crazy, but for full transparency, I did not write these for three slides because I don’t speak Gen Alpha. As usual, my contribution is just the flashy title.
Nailed it. Kids love ice cream.
Let’s go.
Honestly…it is awesome. Writing up these parts of my job made me appreciate it for the first time in a long time. That first picture on the left is me at the 2017 MLL draft. I stayed and broke down every pick for every round. I was the last one to leave. It was one of the last times I felt like I was really in the pocket for pro lacrosse content. Those were good times.
The second photo is from this past May when Cornell won the NCAA championship at Gillette. I sent this picture to my captains from the catwalk above the stadium on the way to the press box. Every time I look at this photo, I smile.
Wow, ironically, the grammar is off in this one, but that’s why I never edit my own clips. Turn a mistake into a lesson. That magazine with Pauly Rabes on the cover was my first cover feature, ever. It’s from 2011. I have roughly 50 copies of it. It’s actually a really weird article where I make multiple allusions to the Beatles. But the first time I saw it, I cried. Just held it to my chest, softly weeping at a Barnes and Noble.
Now I get mad when someone changes one of my article titles. Settle down, Devitte.
Here’s the real crux of this presentation.
I’m not going to say this to the kids, but I’m going to say it to you:
If you just let AI do all of those things for you, you will have no skills whatsoever. You will be autonomous. A robot person. Maybe that’s what you want to be. I don’t.
What I am going to say to the kids is this:
You need to know the rules before you can break the rules. And right now, in fifth grade, you’re learning a lot of rules. It’s boring. You hate it. Reading sucks. Writing sucks. Learning sucks. We all have to do things we don’t like in our jobs. Even this job that I have, that you may or may not think is super cool, I have to do a lot of things I don’t want to do. This is not even the hardest part. Getting over yourself is the hardest part, and this is the first time a lot of you have had to do that. But you can all do hard things. Learning how to write and edit can help you get through a lot of them.
Speaking of editing…
Is this a trite example? Yes. Will it make fifth graders laugh? No, but I am planning a 6-7 joke in here somewhere, and that’s a guaranteed banger.
These are all things teachers or professional editors have said to me, just distilled into more palatable points. I used to rage against them. In fact, if an editor took something out that I thought they shouldn’t, I would sneak into the back end and put it back in. Because I was an arrogant child.
Now, I advocate for myself. I fight for the silly joke because I want this to be fun. A lot of the time…it’s lonely. And dark. So when I really get a bit of levity to fit - it matters. The trick is to do that while you’re doing those three points of intention: speed, clarity, and readability. That last one I struggle with because I love using a ten-dollar word when a ten-cent word would mean the same thing. You’re flourishing if you add flourish.
This is a real set of tips that I give writers to help their work improve. Reading your own article out loud to yourself will teach you a lot about where you are and where the article is. If the distance is too far apart, then you need to rethink your entire approach.
“Rule of threes” is exactly what it sounds like. Three adjectives, three points, three pieces of information. Three is always better than two; four is too much. Your brain collates and understands three of anything with ease.
Aliteration. Always an amazing approach. Be better, bros.
Flow is different for everyone. Some people just look at a lengthy paragraph and go, “Nope, I’m gonna skim that.” Some people see the same paragraph and gain momentum as they read it like a cannonball rocketing down a steep hill. They jump from the final punctuation to the beginning of the next paragraph like they’re hopping a stray long on the path.
However, most people are the former and not the latter. So, as much as you want to be hammering information and style into the reader’s face the entire time, you have to know when to pull back. Flow is not a state; it’s a struggle. But it’s the writer’s struggle, not the reader’s.
I think flow is really about making the words entertaining, but clear. Some people rely a lot on rhythm; they count consonants and vowels and make sounds bounce off one another. Other people like to mirror terms and then reshape their meaning with a different context.
Yup. You knew that title was a little too familiar. However, the message of that song in the play is the same one that I responded to so strongly. All it took was one teacher to tell me how much they liked my paper. How I made them laugh. How I made them cry. How it made their day.
That’s what writing is. It’s emotional. It’s powerful. It’s integral.
If I can get one kid to believe that, then we all win.
Thanks for reading.
