Soft Skills: Writing

Writing. 

Like math in middle school, this is one of those subjects that we pushed back on, telling ourselves, “I’ll never have to use this…”, and then quite shockingly finding that it’s amazing how much writing we actually do. However, are we doing it well, given the particular circumstances of the writing? We “write” on social media, not being too overly concerned about things like grammar, spelling, or even word choice, falling back on the old, “…you know what I meant…”, or blaming auto-correct for the miscommunication.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not an “expert” at writing, nor am I “the best”. But I will say that I am intentional in my writing, and this is something that’s led me to…not been the result of…maintaining a blog, and publishing several books, with others in the hopper.

Writing is a necessary skill that many who need to, do not intentionally engage in, and of those who do, very few accept criticism or feedback well. For myself, I have a long history in my career of having to write, which stated in college in the mid-to-late ’80s. I was an engineering major, and my English professor said that I wrote “like an English major”. To this day, I still don’t know what that meant, because I was constantly switching verb tenses in my writing, which was reflected in my grades. 

While on active duty, I had to write, and because it was the military, there was feedback..it was part of what we did, so there was no getting away from it, shrinking back and retreating when someone had recommendations. It started in training, with things like operations orders, and continued out “in the fleet”, progressing into JAG manual investigations, fitness reports, pro-con assessments, etc. There was all kinds of writing, and there was a LOT of feedback, whether you wanted or liked it, or not.

Another thing that was clear about the writing in that environment was that not everyone received the same feedback, and not everyone took the feedback they received the same way. Very early on in my career, I learned some “truths” about writing fitness reports, particularly from knowledgeable individuals. I reported to my first unit in May 1990, and not long after, a CWO-2 named “Rick” returned from a promotio

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