I’ve always enjoyed writing. Since I decided to take it more seriously, I want to share what I’m learning. This page is being edited as I develop my understanding and approach with the goal of keeping myself aligned and helping others define what writing is for them.
I believe the quality of writing is dependent on the creativity and quality of the thinking that goes into it in equal measure with one’s mastery of the craft of writing itself.
One’s lived experience and expanded lived experience, in short what you’ve experienced through others, benefits the writer who can articulate the experience through detail found in knowing.
Honesty, which is related to authenticity and exposing one’s self emotionally builds on detail. Having a lived experience is one thing, being able to express the experience with raw emotion and feeling is the next step. Without this, the writing tends to lack an emotional connection with the reader, the writing feels soulless.
My last consideration at the moment is writing with restraint, because you have learned to trust the reader. Being honest and exposing yourself should result in presenting what the reader needs to decide what meaning there is in your story.
If you have done your job well, the reader will understand your intention and you will not have to tell them what it is. This is writing with restraint.
I think a lot, but that doesn’t make me a good writer. It does lead me to consider what I know and what I don’t on the subject. From that I try to learn more about what I don’t know and progress from knowing how to write to being a writer to being a good writer.
Outside of my professional work, I have mostly written blog posts and essays. At the end of 2025 I embarked on fiction writing. I wasn’t sure what I’d write about or in what format, but I started thinking of scenarios and characters. It was a start.
In four months, I became invested. I joined a local established writer’s group and a brand new one at my local library. I even completed a 60,000 word first draft of a novel. It is a contemporary retelling of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent.
I was very excited about my progress. And then I had a realization, or several. I didn’t know what my story was going to become. I knew it was prose, not poetry. It was a novel, but what genre?
I wasn’t sure. I knew what I read, what I liked, and what I didn’t, but couldn’t say what genre any of them were. What was the plot type? I hadn’t given it any thought. What was the plot? Which character’s story was it? This might have been the most challenging question. In the original story it was Verloc, the Secret Agent, in my retelling, I wanted it to be Winnie, the Grit Girl, the title character. Did I change it enough to make this happen? I wasn’t sure.
It turned out I didn’t know as much about my book as I first thought, and before I considered myself a writer, I ought to at least know what I wanted to write. I didn’t, or at least I couldn’t articulate what it was I was writing.
After two revisions of my novel, I began to understand a friend’s advice to try short story writing. I started with what wound up being creative non-fiction. In March and April I wrote six short pieces, which helped me focus on character, point of view, and editing my own writing.
It helped me better understand what I enjoyed writing about and how I liked to write.
Now, I’ve come to realize that my creative nonfiction is stronger than my fiction, my novel needs work, but has potential, and my nonfiction project has real possibility.
I also realize, they all still need work.
My Writing Style
I like to write about things I am curious about and often these are related to the tensions and contradictions that drive human behavior. I like to get inside the head of characters and use setting as a character to help tell the story. I want my characters to be observant, vulnerable, and engage in natural dialogue and actions while maintaining emotional restraint in a trying world.
I try to be clear, direct, and honest, which is harder than I thought, because to be honest one must expose oneself emotionally and we are essentially taught not to do that growing up. I strive to write with intention and rhythm. I want to be psychologically attuned to be consistent, calm, thoughtful, and grounded.
Diction is word choice. Of the many things I learned from Tolkien is that there is a right word for every situation. Being a philologist Tolkien took this to another level. His word choice was not only in current meaning, but in the word’s origin which added depth to his writing.
My own word choice is not as well done as his. I prefer clean, contemporary, and emotionally precise words. I try to remove what is not necessary and reveal what is needed for the reader to understand the character, scene or story.
I want my word choice to feel transparent in the sense that the reader believes anyone can write this until they try and recognize it is not the case. I want my writing to read as effortless and elegant, not jarring or loud.
Closing Thoughts
In my current writer’s bio I describe myself this way:
Ross R. Nunamaker leverages lived experience, place as character, and hope amidst chaos, while maintaining emotional restraint as he explores the disconnect between reality and desire.
One of the things I value personally is a love of learning and my primary engagement of it is through scholarship: reading, writing, research, thinking creatively, and presenting.
When I say I’m a writer, it is in the sense that I value and enjoy writing. It is personal. The process of writing allows me to engage in scholarship and express my thoughts and ideas. These things are important to who I am as a person. It is a part of my being.
I’d like to one day be published by a literary journal or a traditional, print publisher, but I won’t be defined by it. Being a published author would be great. The process would validate the work being published.
However, it would be an additive external accomplishment separate from how writing daily enables me derive joy by doing what I value, and that is why I consider myself a writer.
More…
South: my writing background.
North: I value writing as a part of scholarship, which allows me to pursue my love of learning, learn more about the Structure of Being.
Ross Raymond Nunamaker 