Robin Rendle: Be Loud About the Things You Love

A writing tip for myself in the future, if I may (and I do): delete every use of “…for me…,” “in my opinion,” “some might disagree,” “I think,” etc. etc. These snippets are a bad habit and make your writing fragile, lacking any conviction, with one eye always over your shoulder. After a while these self-doubting platitudes become road bumps that get in the way of describing the thing that you love.

I find these sorts of disclaimers more helpful than Robin does, especially when talking about things I don’t like. Almost everything we all espouse opinions on are (naturally) subjective, and I like making my negative opinions very clearly that: opinions, not facts. I don’t want to give the impression that because I didn’t like something, I’m suggesting it’s “wrong” for others to like it.

Now I will say that when it comes to talking about the things you love, don’t be shy! My pet peeve is when people talk about a movie they love, but they preface their review with, “I know it’s a bad movie, but…”

If you’ll allow me a quick tangent, my current main version of this complaint is people who really enjoyed Avatar (1 or 2) and can’t seem to just say they liked it without, “I know I shouldn’t like it,” or “I know the writing is horrendous” or something in that vein. Here’s how you do it, and you can quote me on this one – Avatar: The Way of Water is an awesome movie that I enjoyed from top to bottom, including the story.

See, that’s how you do it 😊