This is the first of a series of articles that examine three of the myths surrounding writing:
- Good writers are born writers
- Good writers wait to be inspired
- Good writers get it right first time
Whilst the series and this site are intended for writers of nonfiction, I hope writers of fiction may find some benefit in them too.
When we talk about writers being born, not made, what we are really saying is that writer x seems to make it so effortless whilst we have to struggle to put together more than 10 words.
There may be a few writers for whom this is true, but the majority of them have to work at it. Which, if you think about it, is great news as it means that if we put in the same effort, we can improve our writing to a level where people enjoy reading it. Let’s look at what goes into that work:
Patience. Like most skills, writing takes time. Most of us start from a good base, having learned the basics as part of our education; some have not been so fortunate. Young people are graduating from Universities across England with degrees in English without ever having taken a single grammar lesson whilst at school or university! Be patient and practice. And don’t beat yourself up when you make mistakes or you will quickly become dispirited.
Redraft. Don’t be concerned if you have to edit, rewrite and rework your output. It’s normal and, incidentally, has little to do with the length of the piece you are writing. Indeed, it often takes longer, and requires more rework, when writing a short piece, than it does when we have the luxury of developing our ideas in full. Why? Because we have to work hard to make the precise point we are trying to in a small, tightly prescribed space.
Read Other Writers. Find out what they do, how they manage their workflow. There are a number of good blogs that give great writing tips; I’ve listed some of them in the links section on the right of the screen. Post comments on their articles; ask questions – you’ll find that most are very helpful.
Ask for Feedback. Reader response is invaluable to a writer. Ask people you trust for feedback about both your style and content. This will help you to check that you are conveying the message you intend and give you the chance to work on weaknesses. But remember – never become defensive! You asked for the feedback so be prepared to take it on the chin!
Read Material in Your Field. Look at the way writers in your field present their ideas. See if there is anything you can take from their styles. This is a tricky area because, at the same time, you don’t want to become a clone of someone else! Sing your song with your voice!
Use Google Reader. Google Reader saves me so much time, I’d be prepared to pay quite a lot for it; yet it’s free! With Google Reader, you can ‘subscribe’ to all of your favourite blogs and have them fed into the one reader. It saves you having to visit each site individually; whenever a new article is posted on one of the sites you subscribe to, it will appear in Reader. You can scan it and then decide whether to read it later. You can give it a “Gold Star” and all starred items appear in one folder. It really is a wonderful application.
Create A Swipe File. Swipe files are so called because in the old days of paper files, creative people would ‘swipe’ a copy of an article that contained a good idea, or a picture they thought they might use in the future and place these items into a swipe file. It’s a repository of things you might find useful in the future for articles, books etc. I use Google Documents; whilst it’s not the most sophisticated application of its type, it comes as part of the same package as Google Reader, so I can work from one centralized suite of apps.
Be warned, however, that at the time of writing this article, Google had not found a foolproof way of reading the contents of Google Reader or Google Documents offline. This can be a pain if you travel a lot as you can’t access their contents whilst travelling. It requires a little planning and cut and paste if you think you may want to use some of your Cloud-based resources while offline. I’m sure it won’t be long before Google addresses the problem.
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