Kinds of Writing

The other day I decided to put in some time writing for my planned volleyball site. The writing will be instructive/educational rather than what I have been doing here and for fiction. It was interesting to try to make that switch. With fiction and blog/essay writing, I write in a way that is similar. I want my blogging to read like I am speaking it, and people who know me would ideally be able to hear my voice while reading it. I want it to have a rhythm and sound that is conversational. When working on fiction I try to capture a similar feel. The subject matter will vary, but otherwise I want them both to have that same feel.

When I sat down to write the volleyball article, I just couldn't get my head into the space it needed to be to get started. It was a dramatic enough block that I realized what was going on in the moment. I want the article to have more of an academic or encyclopedic feel. The conversational feel doesn't feel right for the subject matter. It isn't neutral enough.

I'm not sure how to get my head around this little hiccup. In other circumstances, I might try to write myself out of the problem; it isn't like I'm not sure about the material. I could, and probably should, spend a little more time mapping out what I want to include to bring it into better focus.

Something that I think will make a big difference is visuals. While I have been focused on putting down the text, I have been neglecting the figures that will be necessary to make it an easy read. Instead I have been working on potentially ambiguous walls of text describing what would be more efficiently demonstrated with a collection of straight lines with a line or two of explanation. So I have the ironic task of working on writing by collecting artwork.

In all fairness I should make the observation that my problem is a lack of pre-writing. That transfers to the other kinds of writing.