Kinds of Writing
Transcript
Susan Black: My writing is varied. That actually, really, makes it very exciting for me. I do databases, trying to show who were the people that Joseph Smith knew and loved: whether it was who they were, kind of vital statistics, their land, where they attended school in Nauvoo, baptisms for the dead, who became RLDS. So you would say a great deal of what I do is compilation. The compilations that I have done have been very helpful in telling a story that eventually gets into an authored book or that becomes an edited book. I also enjoy authoring. The authoring part of my writing actually brings me great joy, especially when I do that part alone. Authoring is when I make sentences of everything. I write the whole thing out. So you’d say: what types of books have I authored? I have done several books on the prophet Joseph Smith, a book on Brigham Young, on Wilford Woodruff, several biography books on Jesus Christ. I wrote the official Olympic book for 2002 winter Olympics here in Utah.
The Church has called on me to do quite a bit of writing in manuals. It actually has blessed my life in the Church. At one point, my husband and I had a two year writing assignment to write church historical sites, the scripts better at the sites and to research what is everything at that site. I have seen my writing be a blessing. I hope [a blessing] to the Church.
Fidel Montero: The type of documents I write vary from short emails to colleagues to log entries about students and behavior plans that we make with them to letters to the community where we explain programs that we are implementing- so they can be anything from a sentence to a 3 page, 4 page document that we have to write.
Geoffrey Germane: I write a variety of things. I write emails. I write technical publications that are disseminated through engineering outlets. I also write reports for my clients that are filed with various organizations, specifically courts throughout the country.
We are asked to analyze motor vehicle accidents and, in connection with that, we are asked to write reports often. Those reports then summarize our work [and] provide our opinions. That document becomes something that is required by a court, often, in the work that we do as a part of the litigation process that is occurring.
James Christensen: Well, I became a painter because I didn’t really like to write, and I like to tell stories but I have kind of a fear of the blank page, much more of a fear than I do of a blank canvas and so I generally try to have pictures tell the stories. But it is inevitable that you have to explain some things to your audience and if the audience is beyond your family you probably have to write it down. So I discovered very early in my career that writing was going to be an important aspect of what I did if I was going to be a professional.
I think of myself as a visual person who occasionally has to write words down. Then I painted for probably 15 years before I allowed myself to be titled an artist. I was just a painter. And I think being a writer means you have achieved something, which I don’t claim. But I think just in communicating with people, you, first of all you have to be able to write instructions and you have to be able to communicate your desires of what you want to have happen with your work. You have descriptions of your work, you have background, you have research that you do, and then this ultimately will find itself in a printed page somewhere. So I think writing becomes an integral part of what anybody does in any profession.
Susan Meyer: I do research. That means I write grants, I get money, I hire people to help me, I carry out research designs, I write up a lot of results for publications, I write lots of reports. Basically, I do the full cycle of research plus transferring the information to non-technical user types like the land managers.
I solicit grants from the USDA. As a federal research scientist, I am not eligible to get money from the national science foundation. Plus I get a lot of what we call “soft money support” from other agencies who hire our lab to do research that is mission oriented for them like the bureau of land management and the park services.
Claudia Laycock: A lot of the things that I write are very short. We may do a little ruling that is about a paragraph long. I have written most recently several rulings; one 60 pages long, one 50 pages long. Generally, my rulings run between 10-20 pages or even shorter than that, but I issue opinions or rulings in two ways: (1) from the bench during the hearing and (2) in writing. And if it’s anything that is complex or requires a lot factual findings, I’ll do it in writing.
I do my own typing, I compose at the computer and I do everything myself. The problems come to me to solve in making a ruling, as stated in the writings of the attorneys. The attorney for the moving party, files a document—a pleading of some sort. The other side responds and then the moving party gets one last shot at it and then I make the decision either with or without a hearing. If the attorneys cannot write well enough for me to figure out what the problem is, what the issue is and what they want me to solve, then they’ve failed.
Shanna Butler: When I worked for the church they either assigned me a topic, or I’d come up with a topic and I say, “well this is what I would like to do” or they would call me up and say, “we need help- can you do something on drugs or can you do something on pornography?” Sometimes I do photography with it as well. It just depends on what they ask for. And if I come up with my own stories, I generally send in a query letter or I call somebody and say “would you like this?” They’ll say yes or no. And then I’ll do the work and I’ll send it in to them. When I come up with my own topic I usually try to pick something that is interesting to me. I figure if I’m interested in it than somebody else is going to be as well. Or I try and pick a topic that is timely at the time. For instance, I am trying to work on something now about the secret life of pirates just because pirates are huge and kids love them right now.
Usually, I will just say “oh I would love to do a story on this” and generally I have more ideas than I could ever possibly write in the time that I have. That’s why I became a journalist, because I’m nosy and I like to ask questions.
Abe Mills: A lot more; I used to write for the website a lot more but every once in a while I end up doing it. We have a blog and a Myspace page and all that kind of stuff, so it’s kind of like anyway that we can get out in front of people and market the group.
Anything in the music industry is kind of sporadic so if we’re doing a CD then I’ll spend a lot of time writing songs and writing down ideas. Every once in a while if I’m not in the writing mode because we have a CD coming up, every once in a while I’ll just write down ideas that I have or come up with some kind of a tune and start to write an idea of music that goes with it.
Terry Olson: I’m writing, mostly, recently, in conceptual terms. That is, I am looking at ideas and unraveling their implications, seeking to help people to understand why a certain idea may matter in the real world. I’ve also, of course, written empirically; that is, I have reported research results, which is common in the field. Then there is also research that is directly addressed to answering the “so what” question—why does this idea matter, why is this research meaningful? I like writing both philosophy, conceptually that is, and I like writing the “so what” material, which helps people say, “Oh, I see that. I could do that. I can use that. This would make a difference.” That’s where I like to go with my writing.