A couple years ago I took a technical writing class. The first assignment was to interview someone who was working in the field that you wanted to work in. The questions all dealt with how that person used writing to do their job. It was an exercise in writing succinctly but also to drive home the agenda that we needed to take writing seriously.

I wasn’t too thrilled with the assignment. It had that fishy smell of throw-away busy work.

I did promise my wife that I would actually graduate some day so I felt duty bound to perform the work. Not exactly knowing what I want to be when I grow up I thought I would be lazy and clever at the same time—I would interview my advisor, Dr. Phil Windley . Lazy, since I could just walk down to his office and clever, that he’s an interesting fellow to talk to .

Most of the interview was interesting but not earth shattering, stuff like where he went to school and the like. I interviewed him not as a professor, but as a CTO. So there was some interesting things like how he needed to write frequently to a non-technical audience: the Board.

The most memorable part of the interview is what this post is about. The question was something to the effect of “what do you find difficult about writing?” The answer was: writing wasn’t difficult at all. If there is a topic he wants to understand better, he will write about it. The process of writing helps him organize his thoughts to really understand a topic.

OK, we’ll back up for a second. In high school some of our english teachers got together and decided that we would write a novel. True story. So we created a character and wrote each chapter in the third person by putting this character into whatever literature we were studying. At the end of the semester we’d have a novel, or at least something equivalent in length. We had an assignment every week, sometimes two. At first it was incredibly difficult to keep up the pace. I struggled to get the first chapter to two pages. By the end I can recall the writing coming much easier, a lot more volume and a heckuva lot better quality.

After that experience I have never been intimidated by “writing”. Problem is this: I have to know what I’m going to write about before I begin. Writing to me is just getting some already defined prose out of my head and onto paper. Writing to figure things out like Dr. Windley is absolutely something I am not good at. One thing that college has taught me is that there are more difficult and interesting things to work on that cannot possibly fit into my head at one time. Prognosis: learn to write like Dr. Windley.

His suggestion is to write frequently, and for someone going into technology: write a blog. I was on the fence if I should but Phil can be pretty convincing. So here we are.

So even though these fascinating tidbits didn’t actually make it into the assignment, it didn’t turn out to be a waste of time after all.

The moral of the story: Eat your veggies—they’re better for you more often than you think.