Not all writing is equal

I recently headed back to college on my way to a master's degree and a nurse practitioner's license. The next couple of years will consist mostly of nursing theory. Fascinating to learn, extremely boring to write about.

Creative writing is a pleasure and a delightful journey, even when it's grueling. Designing a finely tuned phrase, building a new world and questing towards a great ending with your characters make me happy.

Technical writing is the very opposite, at least with one of the classes I had this semester. Read a few research papers and write up my own, not too hard. Excitement abounded, at first, I have read many research papers and technical books that are not boring. Many of them take creative ways of writing and apply them as far as they can to their technical writing. Upon reading through the directions for the papers in this class I found that not only was I to write concisely, but creative phrases were frowned upon. This is not a work of fiction, but non-fiction and styles of fiction would not be tolerated.

Writing became a chore. Just another task to check off my list before fun times could commence. No wonder no one wants to voluntarily read technical material. Yes it needs to be informative in a short period of time, but it can be creative and interesting. Now that spring break is approaching I'm looking forward to more time for creative writing, and being able to use contractions again. On the other side of spring break looms another technical theory course: "Nursing Research."

I would sigh, but I've fooled them. I did use creative techniques in my technical writing. Just a little sprinkled here and there. Wonder if they'll notice?