Editor’s note: Brian shares with us how he gained confidence as a writer. It’s a moving piece, and I hope it inspires those of you who may have doubts about your own writing prowess. It’s hard to improve if you don’t actually write, after all. -Jason
Nine years ago, when I was 8 inches shorter, I received a paper from an imposing figure. This piece of paper — my first essay of the year — was on the transition from nomadic to agrarian societies. Despite my best efforts, I received a D on my 10th grade history paper. At the time, I thought my writing career was over.
I’d grown accustomed to receiving As before that point — in part because I went to a low-income middle school that didn’t value its students. At my school, we didn’t receive instruction in elementary grammar; we were left to fend for ourselves in a brutal world of paper and pens. Sadly, my math education wasn’t any better.
During the sixth grade, I was one of the four students in prealgebra because I excelled in arithmetic while in elementary school. The teachers didn’t have room for us, however, so we were left to study on our own in the hallway. As you can imagine, we got nothing done, but somehow we passed despite not knowing the fundamentals.
Unfortunately, this caused me to miss out on a number of important algebraic techniques, so I didn’t understand certain concepts in future classes. I went from being someone who was extremely confident with math to someone who absolutely hated it. The reason I mention this is because my writing experience was similar.
Due to missing out on grammar fundamentals during my education experience, writing was difficult for me during high school. After suffering through my 10th and 11th grade literature classes, I managed to improve enough to earn As and Bs in my college prep program. But I still felt that I was a horrible writer in comparison to other students.
I’d transferred to a different high school because I was tired of the poor education I was receiving and the bigotry at my previous school. Despite being placed in a number of high-level classes, I had a difficult time transitioning to a high school that was full of wealthy students who ended up getting perfect scores on their SATs and going to schools like Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.
By the end of high school, I was an OK writer. I received As in senior lit, history, and theory of knowledge, but I still didn’t feel as if I had a good grasp of writing.
Despite how much I loathed writing, requirements at college forced me to enroll in two standard writing composition courses. I expected they’d challenge me and perhaps even improve my writing skills, but they were basically a regurgitation of what I’d learned in 12th grade. As a result, I didn’t really improve, other than learning collegiate essentials such as how to integrate quotes into academic papers.
My A- and B+ obtained in these writing classes did nothing to prepare me for the research papers I’d have to write in history, literature, and political-science courses. This caused me to stumble now and then and forced me to learn from textbooks and the occasionally useful feedback given by my professors. I wasn’t satisfied with the Bs I was getting in these courses, so I tried to remedy this situation by gleaning additional knowledge from the courses I was doing well in.
Being a business (and later an accounting) major, I took a number of accounting, economics, and finance courses. Other than my economics courses, these didn’t require much writing, but they really developed my critical thinking and analytical skills. Reading the textbooks thoroughly (not just cramming at the last minute) not only helped me understand the subject matter — it also taught me with a number of writing mechanics. Where my writing really developed, however, was in my history and religious studies classes, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
Before embarking on my quest to improve my writing abilities, I conquered one of my greatest fears. Remember that math anecdote I mentioned earlier? It’s actually related to this topic, because I had to prove to myself that I could do something I thought I was incapable of before willingly picking up the pen.
My lousy grade-school math experiences had led me to believe that I could never excel in the subject. During my sophomore year of high school, I was enrolled in precalculus, which was doable — until the final few chapters of the textbook. As a result of not fully understanding the material, I received a B, so my teacher required me to take precalculus again. Her excuse: I was young.
Anyone who’s retaken a class before knows that it can be an incredibly boring, frustrating experience, and that was case for me. I did the same monotonous work a second time, and still didn’t fully understand it. So guess what I got: another B.
During my first year of college, I had to take the same course yet again, except this time it was called college algebra. Long story short, I got another B. I then went on to take two calculus courses for business and somehow pulled off two Bs without understanding Chain Rule. Still, I felt like I was inadequate when it came to any math beyond algebra. If I wasn’t doing anything math-related, this wouldn’t be a problem, but I decided to go into computer science after three years of accounting. Therefore, it was necessary to learn the fundamentals of algebra.
Toward the beginning of the summer preceding my fourth year of college, I discovered a website that taught math ranging from basic arithmetic to calculus. By reading lessons and doing homework problems every night after a long day of painting, I managed to understand every type of problem I encountered.
During this grueling self-study, I realized that my past teachers had simply demonstrated problems instead of the logic behind the problems, which explained why I didn’t know what I was doing. This new approach made me a master of algebra, and it helped me obtain As in each of my later calculus and discrete math courses. I went from being someone who got by because of smart guesswork to someone people turned to for help. The lesson behind all this: I learned that I could do math.
Unfortunately, that computer science program didn’t work out for me, so I shifted to something I enjoyed studying: history. During my final year, I took numerous history, religious studies, and economics courses, and all played a major role in improving my writing ability. Through reading dozens of books, discussion sessions, and writing several research papers of 20 or more pages, I finally gained some confidence in my writing and became a top history student. I still didn’t know, however, if I could write creatively.
Writing creatively is something I hadn’t done previously, so I worried about how I’d be able to compete with game journalists with years of experience. I had written a few user reviews and newspaper articles prior to graduating, but not enough to make me feel confident. Knowing from my math experience that the impossible could be done, I decided to face my fears a second time.
I initiated this process by writing numerous user reviews and by following the game industry for several hours a day. During this period, my writing improved enormously, but I still wasn’t sure how to gain the attention of other writers. I was also going through a number of difficult situations at the time, so I began to think that I might not be cut out for this whole games writing thing. Just as I was about to give up, along came Bitmob.
I’d been a fan of EGM for years, but never felt that I had the talent to write for that prestigious publication, so I decided to change that attitude by writing for Bitmob. My life was in a hole, so the only thing I had left was to develop a new skill.
I began by writing a piece that was controversial in nature; it was about the treatment of Japanese role-playing games among the gaming press. This particular article wasn’t promoted to the front page, but at least it managed to gain the attention of an EGM veteran. That, combined with useful feedback on my reviews, made me feel like I was actually capable of writing something substantial.
Even with my life in disarray I continued to write, because I actually started to enjoy it. Previously, I was ashamed of my writing ability and would never even consider posting something that could potentially be mocked. But my experience with Bitmob changed that.
I’m someone who’s always in a heightened state of fear due to a certain medical affliction, so I’ve always been worried about posting my material online. But I decided to do it anyway. I realized that my career ambitions and life in general would never change unless I did something about it. Even if I got mocked publicly, I thought, “So what?” — after all, it’s just an anonymous nerd talking trash behind the safety of the Internet.
What I’ve learned from my experience with writing is that you can’t get better just by reading other people’s articles — you have to pretend you have an invincibility star and triple-jump into the action. Nearly everyone is worried about how others will perceive their ideas will be perceived (even if they don’t share my medical condition), so it’s important to get out there and express your ideas regardless of what other people think. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay attention to useful criticism, but it’s important to ignore put-downs and realize haters will always be out there.
Another tip to keep in mind is that it’s better to write a thoughtful piece with grammatical errors instead of something that’s generic but written perfectly. Sadly, a number of journalists don’t understand this concept, so expect to run into a few that care more about semicolon usage than your thoughts on racial stereotypes in games. I’ve never found this to be a problem at Bitmob, however, so it’s not a bad idea to start writing here or at an equivalent safe haven.
If you’ve been a regular reader and commenter at Bitmob for a few months, I highly recommend stepping foot in the Hyrulian Plains of writing. At first, you might get knocked off your horse and face the blade of a fearsome orc, but with enough practice, you’ll have the Triforce — and perhaps even the princess.
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