You ARE a writer! : Srsly (2nd step on the road to success!)
#6 of Srsly
You ARE a writer! : Srsly (2nd step on the road to success!)
Do you want to unlock the secret heart behind your writing? Take your reader on an emotional rollercoaster that'll leave them begging for more? If so, read on!
2. Your writing experience is special and advice is going to make you into a complete schlub of a writer nobody's going to read!
All advice (Including this.) is unmitigated bullshit. If this were your usual writing guide, would it be propping up your tiny writer's ego (I'll come back to this, it applies to us all.) and giving you some kind of hope that the path ahead is simple if only you do the right things? Would it be telling you that there is some formula to success, some tiny set of actions you can take to empower yourself and find your true potential?!
Has reading this text so far improved your word count? No. And just reading it never will. Writing advice is a gigantic pit that will suck up your time ineffectually. The same is true of the stark majority of creative writing courses, mentorship programmes, blah blah blah.
Here is your writing advice that actually works. Stop reading this immediately and start writing.
No, really.
Don't stop to think about this. Go write. Now.
Did you do it? Really? No? Well I guess writing advice doesn't really do much for any of us.
And there is no map, no path, no secret, no method that will make it easier. It will not help if you outline, use mindmaps, fill out character questionnaires or follow someone's step by step guide to adding emotional turmoil to your work. There is only you.
What can you do?
Avoid like the plague any writing advice that tries to make you feel good about yourself. Writing is not easy. It is very hard. There's a quotation from some guy I've never heard of, beyond the fact he said this, called Red Smith. It goes; "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
People will try and paint some kind of happy smiley face on this, tell you the lie that writing is good for the soul and it is your special unique happy place, blah blah blah. No. Writing is the worst thing that's ever happened to you.
This is not like bricklaying or firefighting or accountancy or cooking. You don't wake up in the morning with an existential crisis if you do any of those. Our brethren who sling around paint brushes are perhaps the only ones who will understand that nagging feeling you have (Or should have, unless you are a deluded maniac - also your prose sucks and I hate you.) whenever you sit down at the keyboard. The little voice in the back of your mind, twittering away no matter how many words you wrote yesterday or the day before.
'You have no goddamn clue what you're doing, do you?' 'Can you really do this AGAIN? Sure you wrote that other thing, but that was just fluke.' 'You don't understand symbolism, the nature of man, or any of that stuff. You have no business writing seriously.'
In short, you desperately want to find some advice, some words, some anything to get past those feelings. Like a handy ten step guide to how symbolism works, or notes on how to understand the nature of man and the human condition of mortality.
Don't falter.
Here's what you do instead:
Read books. You hear this a lot, but the fact of the matter is every jerk with a library card and a wall full of books would obviously then be perfectly set up to become the next award winning author. There are a lot of people out there who read a lot. But they don't read.
Do you understand what reading is? Reading is not eating up text with your eyes, spitting it onto your brain, and experiencing a story. It is examining every turn of phrase, every exclamation point and period and trying to determine why the author wrote it like that, what imagery and concepts and meanings this conveys, and whether you could do it better.
It is hard as hell to do this regularly. I find it easy to do with shitty text and as a result I read - more frequently than I'd ever admit - things like movie and game tie-in novels. These are almost always crap. You will always find something in them you could have done better. If you start working up a good emotional head of steam and are about ready to throw the book against the wall, that's perfect. Get angry because the author missed so many opportunities to do something right. Keep reading.
If you can start applying this to your favourite and most admired books, you will come to understand how these things were written and why you love them so much.
If you must have a book on writing, examine it carefully. Does it pad your ego? Does it tell you things you want to hear?
Or does it cause you trauma? Does it make you question what you thought you understood, make you feel struck low as you realize you did not write as well as you thought you did? If it does this, buy it immediately.
The best places to find material of this nature are in serious literary criticism type books, doing things like dissecting the structure of the novel or discussing how the author brings their life experiences into their works. Typically these books will have been printed by a university press or Writer's Digest and be comparatively expensive - this doesn't matter, but you should be browsing through the book before buying it.
Go to your local book store and ask where they keep copies of the Writer's Market - books like this will usually be hiding somewhere in this area. (Beware - handy ten step guides live here too.)
You want to be challenged in your thinking, you want to discover the ladder you thought you were so high on has ten rungs above you that you never knew were there, you want to feel like you just got knocked off the ladder and need to climb back up. You need to have an introspective philosophical and psychological journey into the heart and soul of who you are, why you write, and why you read.
If this all seems a bit high brow for you, re-evaluate why you just spent a couple of minutes reading the above. It hopefully didn't make you feel better about yourself, and it sure as hell didn't improve your word count.
Guides won't mysteriously make you a better writer if you read them. Particularly not this one - all this one can possibly do is make you realize that you need to work hard and put in the effort.
Remember: There is only you. You have to improve yourself, the rest of us won't do it for you.
This work is hereby released into the Public Domain. To view a copy of the public domain dedication, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.
That means you can do whatever the hell you want with Srsly, from ripping it off entirely to 'quoting' it in your own guide to rewriting it. Please feel free and encouraged to make copies for your writing newsletter, blog, or anything at all. If you would like to link back to me, which is nice and polite but by no means compulsory, please use 'http://www.furaffinity.net/user/foozzzball/' or my e-mail address, [email protected]'.