I’ll never forget the time my teenage daughter, Claire, announced she wanted to make a nosegay of Ferrero Rocher chocolates as a gift for a friend who was performing a violin solo at school.
How do you turn a bunch of foil-wrapped chocolates into flowers? Short of a Harry Potter-esque spell, I had no idea, but my daughter used this YouTube tutorial to bring me up to speed.
Trouble is, I am NOT a crafts person. I’m a good cook… Handy when it comes to English homework… Especially motivated in giving career advice… But let’s just say that, to me, the thought of using perfectly edible chocolate for a craft seemed like a tragic waste of time. Why slow down the speed with which one could pop a delicious confection into the mouth?
Nevertheless, I helped my daughter find skewers, ribbon, and tissue paper. She started promisingly enough on her own, but as concert time approached, she welcomed even my two left hands.
Then, a new problem loomed. How could we wrap the “flowers” so they looked anything like a bouquet? My daughter was starting to panic when I suddenly remembered that we had a chunk of florist’s foam in a cupboard. “Let’s just stick the skewers into the foam,” I suggested. And, then, at the very last moment, we decided we needed to prepare another six “blooms” to make the bouquet look suitably extravagant.
My final tip was perhaps the most useful. I suggested we wrap the base in a contrasting piece of tissue paper. The final verdict? Mom does know best:
I tell you this story not to brag about my craftiness but because it illustrates an important point about writing.
Perhaps you think of yourself as a bad writer, as I think of myself as a bad crafter. But there must be some aspect of writing that you enjoy or are good at. I don’t enjoy crafts, but I enjoy solving problems, and my daughter had presented me with a good one. Fixing it was fun!
Surely, if you really think about writing, you can find some part of the job that you enjoy. Here is a list you might want to consider:
- Are you good at explaining technical information in plain and simple English?
- Do you have an ear for quotes and a particular talent for extracting interesting ones from sources?
- Are you especially skilled at description?
- Do you have a sense of humour that allows you to find the funny in just about any situation?
- Were you born with the ability to create attention-getting headlines? (I’ll never forget the person who came up with a name for a recipe in a cookbook I edited. “Chop-Chop Cioppino” was his name for fast-to-make Italian fish stew.)
- Do you instinctively add “connectors” (e.g., but, on the other hand, meanwhile, as a result) to everything you write?
There are many different skills that go into writing. Focus on the one(s) you’re good at and fake the rest. With more practice, you will get better. ∞
Thanks for the image to Jill Wellington at Pixabay.
