In the 1940s, George Orwell wrote an essay entitled “Why I Write.” He stated that he knew he wanted to be a writer by the time he was six years old. He experimented with words throughout his childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. He tried poetry, as well as stories. We write for many reasons. He argued that we write out of sheer egoism—i.e. we want to be seen as wise or clever. Second, we write because of the excitement of our language or to see our words on a page for posterity. We also write to create an historical record of our times. Finally, we write to make a political statement. A political purpose often enriches our writing by tying it to reality. Despite the political purpose of writing, Orwell in his 1946 essay on “Politics and the English Language” believed that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
In my blog posting for November 2009, I discussed my need to learn and my personal commitment to lifelong learning. All leaders need to make this commitment to themselves personally and to the people that they lead. Not only do I need to learn, I also need to write. Like Orwell, I have loved seeing my words throughout my life on paper and now in my books, articles, and on this blog. I wrote adolescent poetry during my teens, explored language in all those papers I wrote in college and in graduate school. Writing articles and books has been self-fulfilling for me. I feel that I am leaving a stamp on my professional culture and perhaps on my legacy. Writing allows me to explore the ideas of others as well as myself. Learning and writing have become part of who I am. Writing and learning help me to be a better teacher and coach to others. As a synergistic leader, I have been able to tie my own thinking to the thinking of others to hopefully create more than I started with. My students and my academic professional colleagues also enrich my thinking. In my practice work as a meta-leader, I learn and share with my professional and community partners.
The important message of this article is that I want to encourage others and especially other leaders to write as well. In public health, we do wonderful and important work. However, it is important for us to stop and smell the roses and take the time to document our good work. So many good ideas and programs are lost because we do not write about them. We often find that we constantly reinvent our best practices over and over again because of our lack of documentation through technical reports, articles, and books. Our writing is about politics, practice, and evidence-based inquiry. Here are a few guidelines for beginning the practice of writing:
- Keep a leadership journal in which you jot down your ideas and thoughts about activities in which you are engaged
- Set aside a designated time for writing. Begin with one hour a week and increase it to at least one hour a day if possible usually at the start or end of your workday
- Write a first draft for ideas without a concern for spelling and grammar
- Rewrite to improve style about once a week.
- If needed, find a friend or colleague to read your work and make suggestions
- Use social networks and other Web 2.0 tools to test and expand on your ideas with others
Rowitz On Leadership 