Learning how to write – Certifiably insane

‘De stok dat zijn wij. De lat bepaal jij.’
‘We’ll be the bar, you’ll decide how high to raise it.’

It’s the slogan for one of the educational facilities here in the land of the Dutch. Their commercials are everywhere, which pretty much means that I’ve heard the phrase enough to passionately hate it.

Just like how you’ll ruin your newly released favorite song by keeping it on repeat so long that you overdo it, and then subsequently hate it every time it starts hitting the radio stations when it’s picked up months later.

But last week I started looking at college courses (and ended up on their website) while filling in my yearly review at work. You know the kind – where you reflect on your past performance and future ambitions so you can convince your manager to grade you with the highest possible mark for 5/6/7 years in a row in hopes of making a killing when it’s time for a salary raise (only to be disappointed when that comes in low. Again. And again. And again.)

This year it was an interesting one to write, with the change of job and subsequent successes and steep steep learning curve. So all in all, that review in itself was in the pocket already. But there’s always the question at the end which has you looking at the year to come and the things you’d like to achieve. This year?

I wrote down that I want to learn how to write.

Now. For those of you who hang around here pretty much daily…watching me do just that…that might feel a little weird. But in the world I was brought up in – just being able to do something is never enough. If you don’t know WHY you’re doing it the way you do it and have the paper to prove that you LEARNED how to do it…you, in fact, can’t ‘really‘ do it. Aka – I can’t write, because I was never taught how to. It’s all just lucky strikes based on no know-how whatsoever.

So I want to learn how to write.

Not just to improve the quality of my writing, but also because I’d like to have one of those silly pieces of paper that make it possible to ‘prove‘ to other people that I can. I’ve always had a knack for collecting diploma’s. Because if I don’t have the paper to back it up – can I really justify that my writing has any merit whatsoever?

Studying comes easy to me, so I’ve always jumped at any opportunity to grab another degree, or certification or anything that puts a stamp on an acquired skill that will reflect well on a resume. I’m a generalist in that regard too, I haven’t specialized in one knowledge area but just picked up bits and pieces from whichever fields I bordered in my work (from softskills, conflict management to software testing, to developing, to automation and from agile working to classical management theories.)

As long as there’s a diploma or other result to show for spending my time on it – I’m down.

But now that I’m looking at all of these courses around writing – I’m mostly learning that I know VERY little about writing, and which course would be the best to prove that I am…in fact…a capable writer. Should I be looking at Creative writing for Competitive Environments? Commercial writing? Business Value Copywriting? Tender writing?
They all seem like fucking basic bitch programs with no ACTUAL scientifically based pool of knowledge that could be given in a local library by some dude who just took up a fancy for teaching without having any particular skill. Or let go of the writing focused theme entirely and just go for a Sales program of some sort with an element of commercial awareness? A new college degree in Business? Or Marketing Communications? But are they of any use?

There’s so many choices, and with my general lack of knowledge on the subject of writing (I’ve always just ‘done’ it, so far). I have no clue. And it’s driving me certifiably insane. Although that, too, is not going to result in a degree I can mention on my cv. Darn. I thought writing was supposed to come easy.