The Same Advice We All Give - 4/25/2014

Okay, so the big question all writers get asked is: what's the secret?

The answer I can give is exactly the same as the ones all the other writers out there give.

Write.

Sit down and write. Put words on paper. Any words, any time, any format.

Don't sit down with the intention of putting something specific on the page. Don't shoot for Shakespeare EVER, much less your first time. Billy-boy did his bit, you do yours. Sit down and put words on paper.

There are a thousand techniques for doing this, but one of the simplest is stream of consciousness. Put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and simply start writing whatever words come into your mind. Even if it's just “I can't think of anything” over and over again.

Another is to pick an object, any object within your field of view, and start writing about it. Anything. “The brick is red” might be a start. Or “There's a bird in the tree outside”. Anything.

One problem most people have, especially when they're starting out (or starting back up, Mystery), is that they get hung up on quality. There's this idea that quality in writing happens the same way as quality in a craft. You don't make a single good set of cabinets by churning out hundreds of them in search of one good one.

But that's exactly how you get good words. Pour a thousand on the page, and fifty or a hundred might really suit you. Get rid of the others, at least the ones that aren't necessary for those good words to work. In writing, you are creating the raw materials from words. Images, character, setting, plot, all of it is coming FROM the words. Cabinets come from wood, which comes from trees. When you are writing, you are not building the cabinet, you are growing the tree. Once it is grown, you cut it down, slice it up and take away everything that isn't that wonderful, beautiful, well-crafted cabinet.

So if you're sitting there, wishing you could write the great story that is crashing around in your head, just sit down and DO IT. You might have to write a forest to get a footstool, but it will work and it will be worth it.

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