The joy in knowing everything

I have sat in a lot of job interviews over the last year. In each of them is someone in charge of hiring a writer. Usually, this person has no idea what they are looking for.

It’s OK. Most writers aren’t entirely sure what they’re after either.

I see ads and requests for writers who have extensive experience writing in a certain field, research on a certain topic. What a waste. For to hire those writers would be to hire soemone who has already written about it. Chances are, they would rather be writing about something else.

I write for discovery. Personal, professional, and otherwise. Most of the reason I lay my pen to the page is to understand something I don’t know. I have never taken a class on medicine in my life, but I have assisted in the authoring of a medical textbook. I know not the lives of my characters until I explore with the writing.

How do we teach students about developing arguments and learning new concepts? Through the process of writing, which always has some element of research.

No one writes to showcase what they already know. We write to show what we have discovered, to express the new ideas we have tied together, to show the research in a whole new light.

To write about something which you’ve already written about? How long until that dead horse starts to stink?

As a writer, I really can’t write about writing. It’s weirdly meta. A writer who writes about the craft of writing is no the same as a mechanic who writes about the art of cars. Eventually you find yourself so close to the subject. The topics are so familiar that you can’t explain them. Like trying to give someone directions to a place you have driven to a million times before – you might forget to explain the crucial point where they need to keep left versus turn left.

Frankly, I would only want to hire the writer who doesn’t know anything about your industry or business. Chances are, you’re hiring that writer to write content for people who are also not as knowledgeable about the topic. What better person to write to the less-informed audience? Why not hire someone who will process the new information into an analogy that your new audience can easily digest?

Then, yeah, hire a writer far outside your industry. In a matter of no time, they’ll probably know more about your industry than you do.