Colorless writing
1
WRITER’S BLOCK
When I think about my work, I think of myself as a writer, but my title is UX Content Designer, and that title encompasses the breadth of my job responsibilities, for though “content” is my primary focus, there’s a design element to my work. I consider how people interact with software, how they move within a product, find a task, start it, progress through it, accomplish it. And while writing is a big part of the guidance I provide in my designs, I also consider, for example, whether a wizard or a stepped, page-by-page process would suit an experience better, and therein lies the design thinking.
When considering writing as a profession, authors may come to mind—that’s what I think of, anyway. And when I think of authors, novelists especially, and specifically how challenging writing a novel seems to me (when I am very much not a novelist), I think of writer’s block.
At work, I can’t recall feeling that I’ve had writer’s block because I have colleagues right there with me—my immediate design team, with whom I design features for Microsoft products; my content design team of 35+ people who know how to write, who understand technology, who know the voice and style guidelines; and my product team, bigger than both my design and content design teams combined and brimming with knowledge.
When I come to an impasse (full disclosure: I spelled “impasse” wrong the first go-round, and am I ever grateful for spell-check today!)—impasse being my fancy way of saying “writer’s block”—I reach out to individuals within this massive support system and get clarity on the technical aspects of the feature from engineering, gain understanding of the purpose of the feature from my PM partners, collaborate on design solutions with my interaction partners, and run all the versions I’ve written past my content design peers. I don’t run out of ideas, and I don’t run into blocks because I’m not alone, and I don’t have to conceive of everything solely from within my own mind.
But what if you are a writer-writer (for this is what I call authors in my mind), and you are trapped in the corner of your mind, and all you see is the blank wall of your skull, blind to the breadth of your creativity, the juiciness of your ideas, which feel so far out of reach? (I have a really hard time typing (let alone publishing) the word “skull” because I have an irrational but very real fear of skeletons, but HERE WE ARE AND I AM DOING IT FOR THE POETRY OF IT ALL.)
Follow these tips because they will lead you into the light, they will bring you, once again, to the place where your creativity flows.
If you are a straight-up novelist (and if you are, please know I’m jealous as all heck because I too want to create worlds), grab yourself this writer emergency pack to get you through dark times.
2
AN EAR FOR GRAMMAR
I have a deep and abiding love for words, and that love extends to grammar. I’ve followed Grammar Girl for decades, it feels like. (I did a smidge of research, and it looks like Grammar Girl has been doing her thing for one and a half decades, so that aligns-ish to my memory.) Part of my GG love is that I admire people who hold grammar rules in their minds so clearly. I hear what’s correct and what’s not, but throw the term “past participle” at me, and I’ll look at you blankly. I can’t identify the object of a sentence, and it even takes me a good several seconds to differentiate between nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs used in the wild (though I can spot a gerund at 100 paces—brains are weird).
I tell you all this not to incriminate myself, for incriminating myself I am! I am a writer! Retaining these rules is my job! I should know these things. I’ve even hired tutors to teach me so I could easily identify adjective modifiers and such (are adjective modifiers even a real thing?), but slip away that knowledge does, for I still hear what is right, which makes it easy for me to forget why it’s right.
This long intro serves to let me tell you about my favorite grammar rule that doesn’t stick in my mind but which I can always access because of my aforementioned grammar-attuned hearing. When we English speakers want to add details to nouns, we use adjectives (descriptive words, for those of you with heads (sieves) for grammar rules like mine), and we use them in a particular order, though we don’t realize it. We “hear” what’s grammatically correct without knowing that a rule undergirds our word order.
But, like many grammar rules, this one is a bit squishy, so that could explain why sometimes you don’t know which word order to use when stringing together a series of descriptive noun modifiers (aka adjectives). Here are two variations:
Eight modifiers: Opinion–size–age–shape–color–origin–material–purpose
Ten modifiers: Opinion–size–physical quality–shape–age–color–origin–material–type–purpose
I’m going to try my hand at these:
Eight modifiers: Darling minuscule old circular red Dutch velvet shoulder-slung bag
Ten modifiers: Darling minuscule worn circular old red Dutch velvet money-toting shoulder-slung bag
Whew!
3
ACCESSING COLOR
As a child I pondered this deep question: Is the blue I see with my eyes the same as the blue you see with your eyes? I used to wonder if my blue was actually your green or purple or if you saw in ultraviolet like a butterfly. I’d blink one eye shut and observe the world, then switch to the other eye, and from my own optical input, I knew that people must see colors at least somewhat differently, for I have an eye that sees a warmer spectrum while the other sees a cooler spectrum. It’s subtle but noticeable.
Two people in my family have some level of red-green color blindness, which fascinates me. My spouse mixes up orange and purple—baffling, to this full-spectrumed writer-artist who sees those two colors as dramatically different, nearly as opposites on the color wheel.
When I worked on Power BI, a designer on my team developed a series of color palettes for color-blind report creators and readers, and I thought, not for the first time, that it must be challenging to navigate a full-color world when you can’t see the distinctions as clearly as the majority of the population. Both color-blind people in my life have trouble distinguishing between red and green lights at traffic stops. That’s a huge accessibility issue with literal life-and-death implications.
It’s gratifying, then, to see color blindness being tackled as part of accessibility improvements in software. This excellent post at Venngage lets you see life through various color-blind lenses and gives helpful tips for designing for everyone.
4
FIND OUT ABOUT BURNOUT
I love a good online test, don’t you? Is “burnout” the hottest word of 2021? Are these questions related? Yes! Take the burnout test to see where you fall on the spectrum. And treat yourself kindly. Life is hard sometimes, especially during a pandemic.
5
TRANSPARENT WRITING
Lately I’ve been loving the way the internet democratizes access to useful information. For example, Tim Herrara’s been gathering rates publications pay freelancers for articles, along with pay insight and negotiation tips to increase transparency. Then I stumbled on this collection of insider info and tips for writers by Lincoln Michel over on Substack. When I’ve considered freelancing in the past, I’ve gotten overwhelmed by the logistics of it all. My overwhelmed-at-work self is highly productive, but my overwhelmed personal self sometimes curls up in a ball and reads escapist novels, so I found Michel’s well-organized and informative missive calming and helpful. Thanks, internet.