The new writer: Five responsibilities

By Dennis Mellersh

You are interested in the process of becoming a writer; you want to learn the craft of writing; and you may want to learn how to write a book.

These are admirable goals yet they carry with them certain responsibilities if they are to be achieved.
Primary among these responsibilities is that you will need to make a commitment to do a lot of work over an extended period of time in order to achieve your objectives.

If you have no experience in writing at an expert level, learning to write well enough to produce a successful book can be a long haul. But it is a do-able objective and certainly a worthwhile one.

Following are five of the main responsibilities you will need to assume and make a commitment to in order to become a writer and realize your ambition of writing a book:

1. Spending time each day (or most days) practising your writing skills. It is the constant effort of working on your writing that will develop it more than any other activity
2. Reading many books (and making notes on them) by authors specializing in the genre that interests you whether it is fiction or non-fiction, mystery novels or how-to books
3. Studying and learning something every day related to the techniques and best practices involved in mastering the craft of writing
4. Doing background research for your book whenever you have the opportunity to push your project forward. Leaving all or most of your research until the last minute will make it a tough job, and an easy one to procrastinate.
5. Making an effort to self-publish your writing work, on a free-platform blog for example, to give you a feel for actually putting your ideas in front of the world and taking responsibility for them

Research shows that the majority of people in North American say they want to write a book. However, most do not take the necessary steps to actually make an effort to do accomplish this desire.

 

One of the reasons is the discovery that learning to write well and then writing a book is hard work and does not happen overnight.

 

However, if you make the commitment and assume the necessary responsibilities, there is a good chance that you will be one of the relatively few who actually does realize their dream of writing a book.

Writing: The benefits of failure

By Dennis Mellersh

In your efforts to learn to write well and then applying your skills to learning how to write a book, you will, like all new writers, experience failures – a  recognition on your part  that what you are attempting to accomplish with a particular piece of writing just isn’t working.

To anyone in the process of becoming a writer, recognition of a failure in their writing can be discouraging, and many even lead to thoughts of feeling worthless as a writer.

Yet actually, experiencing failures in writing, and more importantly, recognizing when you have a failure, is a good sign – it means your discernment as a writer is growing.

Having the ability to recognize when your writing is not as good as it should be means that you have established standards for yourself, whether consciously or subconsciously.

Recognizing that your writing on a particular project is “just not coming together” means that you really are becoming a writer. Failure is a fact of life for even established, successful writers who regularly produce books.

As you grow further in learning the craft of writing, you will also acquire the ability to determine whether a given “failed” writing effort on your book can be salvaged by editing and rewriting, or whether it is so deeply flawed in concept that it will never work, requiring you to start fresh on a entirely new approach.

For further study on reasons why writers abandon a writing project, there is an interesting essay online from The New York Times Sunday Book Review, March 4, 2011 titled, Why Do Writers Abandon Novels?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/books/review/Kois-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Craft of writing requires practice

By Dennis Mellersh

Learning the craft of writing and becoming a writer takes above all, learning the fundamentals of writing well and then, constant practice.

You first need to learn how to write before you can hope to learn how to write a book. And that requires practising your writing, ideally every day.

It’s the same with any artistic pursuit at which a person expects to become competent, and then to excel.

You can’t become a watercolor or oil painter without learning the fundamentals; you can’t become a musician without learning the basics and practising them; you can’t become a photographer without learning the essential technical skills.

And you can’t become a writer without putting in the hard work of practising your writing.

What qualities does a writer have?

By Dennis Mellersh

Many beginner writers, such as you perhaps, who are in the process of learning how to write (and more specifically, how to write a book) want to know the main intellectual capabilities they need in order to become a writer.

The novelist William Faulkner answered this question during an interview with the Paris Review:
“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, [and] at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.”

Another question from new writers concerns the question of unblocking or stimulating the creative flow and taking those first steps to getting something down on paper for a novel, a short story or a poem.

Faulkner answered this question as well in the same interview:

“With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or memory or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what it caused to follow. A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can.”

Ignore doubts: keep writing every day

By Dennis Mellersh

As you continue to learn about how to write a book, and you put in the time to practice your writing (hopefully every day) there are times when you may become discouraged.

One of the reasons this may happen is that as you progress in your writing efforts, you will be continually developing your imagination and your creative way of looking at the world around you and interpreting it.

You already had a strong imagination before you started on your writing journey or you would not have had the intellectual creativity to want to write a book.

But, one of the downsides for people who are creative and have strong imaginations, such as you have, is that they may also have a tendency to imagine the worst as well as the best. However, such thinking is all part of becoming a writer, and having the imagination of a writer. Self-doubts about writing can affect even the most experienced writers.

Thoughts that your writing is not good enough; that no-one will care about what you have to say; that you will never meet your own high writing standards; that some days you are blocked and have great difficulty writing…the list of imagined or anticipated difficulties goes on.

If you are feeling like this, some words from Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain during the Second World War can offer some encouragement:

“You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination, not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination.”

The process of becoming a writer

By Dennis Mellersh

Now that you are learning to write, and perhaps even starting to write your book, you are already in the process of becoming a writer and you soon will be living the life of a writer.

You are entitled to consider yourself a writer if you are making an effort to thoroughly learn all the aspects of the craft of writing and are also taking the time to practice your writing with a view to writing the books you are planning, whether that is fiction, non-fiction, or a collection of poetry or essays.

A new approach to life
As a writer, your approach to life will be now different than before you started to write. Now every aspect of your life has the potential to contribute in some way, either directly or indirectly, to your writing.

Everything you do, everything you read, everything you see, and everything you hear will become part of the background that you can draw on in your novels, short stories, poetry or your non-fiction.
Now that you are becoming a writer, when you go to the library, read articles in the newspaper or on the Internet, and read books and magazines, it will be goal directed, and not just for amusement.

You will be analyzing how you can use the information you are absorbing as a database to draw on in your writing. You will be absorbing the events of the world around you through the eyes and ears of a writer. You will see the world in a new perspective.

Building your writing database
As a by-product of your information gathering, a subconscious process of idea generation will happen. This is why you should always carry with you a small notebook so you can write down these ideas for your writing as they occur to you. And, ideas will start coming to you at any place and at any time.

But unless you write them down, you won’t be able to remember them. Ideas are often fleeting, and you can’t will them into existence, even if as a writer you are starting to develop an active imagination. So you have to be prepared to capture these ideas – hence the notebook. Similarly, you you should start to keep a larger notebook or journal where you can expand and develop your ideas as part of your daily writing program.

You will be reading a lot
An important part of your new life as a writer will be reading as much as you can whenever and wherever you can. Not just material about learning how to write, but equally important, and perhaps more important, reading the works of established, recognized writers such as novels, short stories, poems, essays and non-fiction in general. You should focus your reading more heavily on the type of writing that you are interested in doing.

The short story writer and novelist Ray Bradbury suggests that aspiring writers should reach each day: one short story, one poem, one essay. To that list we could add: a few pages from a novel.
It’s not easy, but it’s necessary

That is a tough order if you are a working Mom or have a full time job in business, for example. But you should do this reading because you may learn more about writing from reading good writing than you will from books and other media telling to how to write.

You will not be able to fully develop yourself as a writer unless you read a lot of what other writers have already done. You should read contemporary writers as well as writers from earlier periods.
To get an even better appreciation of quality writing, try writing out in longhand some passages from your favorite writers that seem particularly good to you. Soon, it won’t be long before you find yourself writing down your own ideas and fashioning them into literary format.

Your practice writing efforts
Regarding your “practice writing” efforts, you should keep all of this experimental or draft material on hand in a safe place. Try doing this draft work in longhand, but if using a computer, print it out instead of assuming it will be safe on your hard drive. It’s also easier to review this older material if it is permanently on paper.

Although you may still consider yourself a “beginner” writer you may be surprised later on when you go back to some of this material to find that there is a lot in these “early” writing efforts which is worth developing further.

Also keep your notes on the passages from your favorite writers in a central safe location. These notes can be a good source of both information and inspiration as you proceed on your journey of becoming a writer.

Another way of taking notes from the works of your favorite writers is to write down the quotations on index cards noting the name of the writer and the source of the information (such as book title). It can come in handy later on if you want to re-read the original source of the information. It can be frustrating if you have an interesting quote, but you don’t know where it came from, or worse, you don’t know who the author is.

The payoff
In all of this try to think of your desire to be a writer and the effort you are putting into it as part of an exciting and ultimately rewarding experience.

Learning how to be a professional writer

By Dennis Mellersh

There is a distinct technical difference between learning (1) how to write professionally; (2) learning how to be a professional writer and (3) being or becoming a professional writer.

In the first case (1) you will be learning how to write as well as a professional writer; in the second example (2), you will be learning how to make money through your writing after you have learned to write well enough; and in the third example (3) you are earning money through your writing.

The novelist and poet Margaret Atwood compares the difference between a professional and non-professional artist to singing. Many people can sing songs in a pleasing manner, perhaps even sounding “professional” but they cannot call themselves professional singers unless people are paying money to hear them sing.

In the case of writing, you can learn to write well through a combination of formal writing courses, workshops, self-study, and a lot of practice. And, you can learn enough about the craft of writing (again with a lot of practice) to be able to write as well as a professional writer.

But you will not technically be a professional writer unless you can make a living or a portion of your living by means of your writing. To paraphrase Atwood, you will be a professional writer when "an informed audience" is reading your work and you are being paid for it.

Many of the people who earn their living through writing are journalists who work as employees of publishing companies. Others have developed their writing skills to the point where they can be independent professional writers and make money as freelance writers who are paid for individual writing assignments or projects.

In nearly all cases, writers who are employees of publishing companies are writing non-fiction.
In my own case, for example, for the first part of my writing career, I was an employee with a major national business-magazine publishing company and progressed through various stages of responsibility from writing articles and news stories to being the editor and editor/publisher of a number of magazines. In the second and current part of my life as a writer, I have worked independently as a freelance writer and editor and that is how I have earned my living to date.

Professional Fiction writers and poets (novels, short stories, poems) such as are discussed often on this website, are in virtually all cases, writing independently from an employer and are earning money through their fiction as independent authors. Similarly, in most cases, writers of non-fiction books are not employees of the companies that publish their work, but are independent authors.

As discussed earlier, you can learn to write professionally, in a professional manner, or as well as a professional writer, but technically speaking,  it is misleading to call yourself a professional writer unless you are making money with your writing.

However, don`t be surprised if you work hard at learning the craft of writing and also practice a lot, that at some point someone will tell you: “Your work is very professional.” If that person also pays you for your work, you are then entitled to call yourself a “professional writer.”

Regardless of these technical differences however, you can call yourself a “writer”, if you are seriously learning how to write fiction or non-fiction and are also actually writing a reasonable amount of fiction or non-fiction.

Do you really want to be a writer: a self-test

By Dennis Mellersh

Many people say they want to be a writer and that they want to write a book; but how many people make the commitment to activate that desire and make becoming a writer a reality?

The prime requirement for becoming a writer is to put in the necessary time and write something every day, or almost every day.

I am not talking about the equally important requirements of taking writing courses, or reading and studying books on the craft of writing, or attending workshops for writers; or doing the research for whatever you want to write about.

I’m talking about sitting down every day with your computer or tablet (with word-processing software) or if you prefer, paper and pen or pencil (if you want to handwrite your draft) and writing a few hundred words every day.

If you are not willing to do that, you don’t really want to be a writer; you really want to find a shortcut that will magically show you how to become a writer in the shortest time possible.

However, there are no shortcuts to becoming a writer. You can write some types of books in a short time (if you already know how to write), but you cannot “become a writer” in a short period of time.

“Wanting to” requires “doing” the writing.

And that’s the self-test. How much have you written each day for the past two weeks?

If the answer is nothing or very little, then you should reassess the strength of your motivation and if you still want to be a writer, make a schedule for writing something every day.

Can you learn to write a book?

By Dennis Mellersh

For the person interested in becoming a writer, it can be discouraging to hear comments such as, “Real writers don’t write just because they want to; they write because they have to.”

The implication being that if you have not been obsessed with a compulsion to write since an early age, you are not a “real” writer and it is highly unlikely you will be able to learn to write, let alone become a writer of books.

The other assumption in that comment is that if you have not been writing anything up to this point, you probably don’t have the ambition, or the natural aptitude necessary to learn writing, or to write books.

Well, it’s simply not true.

You can learn to write and you can learn how to write a book.

A person who has been interested in writing and the world of books and who has made efforts towards writing at an early age probably does have a head start on learning to write seriously. But such people are not members of an exclusive writers’ club that no-one else can join.

Writing is a craft, an art, a form of creative self-expression, and it can be learned. The same as learning to be an artist, such as a painter, or learning photography, or learning woodworking – they are acquirable skills.

A huge part of learning anything, such learning as the craft of writing, is having a strong desire to do so; and you have that desire, or you wouldn’t be reading articles on writing such as this one.

Learning how to write well can be challenging and it will take time, but you can do it.

Don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.

Are you writing, or reading about writing?

By Dennis Mellersh

No matter what type of book you want to write, whether fiction or non-fiction, it is important to read instructive material on how to write, and to read books of the type that you want to write, such as a novel or a how-to-do-it book.

There is a danger we all face as writers, however, and that is in becoming so interested in discussions about the craft of writing that we do not make time to practice our writing while we are learning about it.

Practicing our writing is actually an important part of the process of learning how to write a book and the single most important component of becoming a writer. Practicing our writing is largely a self-directed learning activity in which we will gradually see improvements in our writing as we do some writing every day.

Try to keep all of your practice-writing together so that you can review your progress, perhaps at monthly intervals. Review what you have written at the beginning of your efforts and compare it with what you have recently written. You’ll probably notice some improvement.

Overall, read about writing – yes, but make sure your own writing is part of the learning process.

Your book project: What have you done today?

By Dennis Mellersh

No matter what stage you are at with your project of writing a book, you need to be accomplishing something every day on that project if it is to move forward.

Your book concept might be a novel, or a non-fiction book, or a book-length collection of short stories or poems; regardless, especially in the early stages of writing, a book project is a formidable undertaking.

But if you discipline yourself to do something on your writing project every day you may be surprised how quickly the work mounts up, and before you realize it, you are well on the way to actually completing your book.

So, looking back on today, did you do any of the following?

• Write a few hundred words
• Do some research on the subject matter
• Work on your outline
• Develop down some ideas on characters
• Read something about the craft of writing
• Read some of a novel, non-fiction book, short story, or some poetry
• Read about the life of a successful writer

You don’t need to do all of these every day, but working on some facet of your book every day, combined with learning something about writing every day, will make the completion of your book easier because your will be “in the creative flow” so to speak, and simultaneously developing your writing skills and becoming a writer.

 

Trying to cram all the necessary work into one or two days a week is much tougher, and in the long term less effective.

An apocryphal interview with an aspiring book author

By Dennis Mellersh

Many people say they want to write a book, but what is driving this desire? And, what are such people doing to realize their dream of writing a book, of becoming a writer?

Following is a synopsis of a fictitious editor interviewing a fictitious aspiring book author: the editor is on a quest to discover the answers to these questions.

Editor: From the research I have done I believe that you are a good example of the 81% of the North American population that wants to write a book.  So I thought we could discuss your ambitions, motivations, and the steps you are taking to writing a book. Perhaps we could start with your motivation: could you explain why you want to write a book?

Mr. Abookinsideme: Frankly, it’s just a vague, hard-to-describe feeling. I just have this desire, this urge to write a book a book I can call my own. It’s hard to explain in precise terms.

Editor: Is there any particular type of book that interests you; any genre that has more of an attraction than others?

Mr. Abookinsideme:  I’ve decided that I want to write a novel.

Editor: That’s an admirable goal. Are there any novelists that you particularly enjoy reading; authors that you look to for inspiration? Books in your personal library perhaps?

Mr. Abookinsideme:  Well, actually, I’ve only read a couple of 19th century English novels, back in high-school, so, no, I don’t have any novelists as role models to speak of. I took engineering in university, so I thought I might write a novel related in some way to the engineering profession. I don’t really have a library as such, just professional books to do with my job.

Editor: It would probably interest our readers, who also express an interest in writing books, to know what instructional books you have read about the craft of writing, or any courses or writing workshops you might have taken, particularly with novel writing, to help you in this process.

Mr. Abookinsideme: So far I haven’t read any books on the topic or taken any courses or workshops. My thinking is that I have life experiences, and I keep up with current events on the Internet, so I thought I would write the novel based on my experiences with life in general.

Editor: You mentioned the Internet; there are a lot of good websites and blogs and videos on YouTube about the subject of writing. Have you found those to be helpful?

Mr. Abookinsideme:  To tell you the truth, I just don’t have the time to spend on that; wish I did.

Editor: Are there any noteworthy moments or general experiences in your life which you think could be the foundation for your debut novel?

Mr. Abookinsideme:  Not really, but I’m observant, so I believe I can just draw on that.

Editor: Would it be imposing if I asked to see some of your work to date? Some of your early drafts?  I know, however, that some writers don’t like to discuss their work-in-progress.

Mr. Abookinsideme:  Right now I’m not working on anything; sort of just taking things in for when I feel inspired. Then I’ll sit down and start writing my novel.

Editor: Well, I know you are a busy person, so I would like to thank you for taking this time with us. Good luck on your novel.

Mr. Abookinsideme:  Thank you; I’ll send you a couple of copies when it’s published.

The dangers of writing your book for someone else

By Dennis Mellersh

One of the surest paths to failure with your book is to write it to please someone other than yourself. You are the person you must satisfy with your writing; otherwise your writing will not be authentic.

The novelist John Steinbeck, author of the grapes of Wrath and many other notable works, commented, that, for him, his writing had to be an end in itself. If he wrote to try to please a segment of the literary world, for example, it would be like trying to write with someone constantly looking over his shoulder. He essentially wanted to write without expectation, other than realizing his ambition to do good work.

For you as a person on the path to becoming a writer, to write even with the expectation of being published can color your writing because you will be trying to impress someone such as a submissions editor at a publishing company, or a literary agent, for example. The resultant writing is not likely to be in your true voice.

I am not trying to minimize the importance or the worth of doing paid work (for someone else) as an assignment or as part of a career (freelance or in-house) in working for a media company. Much brilliant and worthwhile writing is being done every day by journalists, corporate writers, and copywriters.

But if you are setting your sights on writing fiction such as a novel, or hoping to write enough short stories or poems that you can subsequently compile them into a book, then you have to write first for yourself, and not for someone or something else.

As a perceptive observer once said, there are few things more sad than to see someone die with their music still inside them.

Writing your book one day at a time

By Dennis Mellersh

It’s a given that if you write a certain amount every day, it will not take long for you to accumulate enough pages of manuscript to have a book. You might call this the one-day-at-a-time approach to writing.

There is also an important psychological benefit for you as a writer in keeping your writing life in day-tight compartments. Writing is one of those professions that can entail a lot of emotion, and it’s sometimes negative emotion.

Some days you may feel that you are failing in your writing objectives and that your book will never materialize. But remember, that’s just how you are feeling on a given day; today the writing may not be going well, but tomorrow could be a day when the words flow effortlessly.

If you read the biographies, autobiographies, and journals of professional writers, or watch their videos on YouTube, you will find that, invariably, they all say that they have good days in their writing and days that are unproductive, when the words just don’t happen. Professional writers recognize that at such times, forcing the writing usually is counterproductive…so they take a break by reading, doing some research, or finding a distraction of some sort to take their minds off their work.

As a writer, you could take a lesson from professional athletes, such as baseball players. They know that they are not going to be 100% every day. If they can have days when they win 65% of the time as a team, they are doing exceptionally well. In the art of hitting in baseball, being productive 30% of the time, or batting for a 300 average is considered excellent.

They key point is to show up every day at your writing place, whether that happens to be on any given particular day a desk in your home, sitting in a coffee shop, a park bench, or jotting ideas in your notebook while waiting for a doctor’s appointment.

Just show up and write, take the good days with the bad or seemingly unproductive days, and you will soon have a book. And remember, even on the “bad” days, you will still be learning something about writing a book. Little “failures” for a writer are lessons in themselves.

It's all part of becoming a writer.

The dangers in imitating other writers

By Dennis Mellersh

In your journey of becoming a writer and learning how to write a book, a habit to guard against is that of imitating, consciously or subconsciously, the writing style of a favourite author.

Although it is important for you as a writer to follow the general guidelines or market principles for the book genre that interests you (writing a mystery novel for example) imitation of another author’s style will hurt your writing and your credibility with your potential reading audience.

One of the reasons that imitation can surface in your writing is if you greatly admire the work of a particular author and perhaps think that if your writing were similar, you could be a successful writer too.

But, it is a dangerous trap.

I recently came across a good explanation of why this is so in a book titled Creative Authenticity (1) written by Ian Roberts. Roberts is a painter, but he explained in his book that visual arts and writing both require authenticity, or speaking with your own voice in your art.

Here is what he says about using the yardstick of comparing ourselves to others:

“We can run into trouble comparing ourselves with another artist’s work when our temperament is completely different from his or hers, which means that we could never do what they do…it is unproductive to compare and evaluate ourselves against someone else’s work. What we’re trying to compare doesn’t. And it can be harshly discouraging to try.”

Developing your own style as a writer will take time – time spent writing every day. By disciplining yourself to write every day, eventually your own style will emerge.

(1) Creative Authenticity, by Ian Roberts, Atelier Saint-Luc Press, 2004

Some of what you write won’t be good

By Dennis Mellersh

If you’re doggedly going to go down the path of becoming a writer, you will often need to reach for the eraser or the delete button, and sometimes the trash can.

In our work as writers, some of what we produce will be just “good”, some not-so-good, some passable, and some of it just plain bad. Sometimes, a book will “just not come together” and we will need to abandon the concept, regroup, and start afresh with a new project.

After working diligently on a promising idea, you may find, for example, that the idea is simply not big enough or sufficiently important to sustain a book-length project. It might be more suitable for a short story, or an essay, for example.

Or, the idea may excellent but we simply aren’t experienced enough as writers to execute it effectively – the idea is bigger and more complex than our present capabilities as writers. The tool-chest of our writing skills is not yet complete enough.

The sooner you recognize this fact of your evolving life as a writer, the better.

Otherwise you will be discouraged by your unsuccessful writing results and will not be able to feel the joy of work during those times when you are “in the zone” and the words are brilliantly flowing onto the paper like magic.

In the work of virtually all writers who tackle fiction and non-fiction, the writing will vary in quality. Even the greatest writers did not always hit home runs.

For the beginner writer, it is important to realize that over time, writing badly and learning from the experience will eventually result in writing well as we progress on our journey of becoming a writer.

Are you a writer at heart?

By Dennis Mellersh

If you have become discouraged at any time in your efforts to learn how to write a book, here’s a thought to provide some inspiration: the major components of becoming a writer are intention, desire, and inclination.

You already have the intention to write a book, you have the desire, and you may find, if you look back, that you have exhibited the inclination to be a writer throughout your life.

Some positive or “yes” answers to the following questions can mean that you have an inborn inclination towards the creative process and writing:

• Do you enjoy reading books about writing, writers, and the creative process?
• Do you find yourself searching the Internet for information such as articles about writing?
• Do you like reading about the lives of famous writers?
• Do you read book reviews?
• Do you find yourself making notes about books and other informational material?
• Have you tried writing anything, such as a short story, or a poem?
• Do you make thoughtful comments on articles on websites and blogs?
• Do you have a “love affair” with writing materials such as pens, pencils, writing pads, journals, index cards?
• Do you write down notes about various ideas you have

If yes, and to use a cliché, “you get the picture” – you’re inclined to be a writer.

Becoming a writer in a more formal sense is really a matter of channelling the creative writing energy you already have in a disciplined way to learn about the craft of writing, and then practicing your writing (on anything) every day.

Keep reading, and keep writing!

I want to write a book but I don’t know what to write about

By Dennis Mellersh

Sometimes the desire to be a writer who wants to write a book is just a vague emotion, inclination or desire. There isn’t necessarily a concrete idea of the specific book we want to write in our minds, we just have this urge to write.

For beginner writers this often can be summarized in the statement/question: “I want to write, but I don’t know what to write about.”

Having the freedom to write anything we want can be limiting or constraining, because in the early stages of learning to write, having this freedom of choice can be paralyzing – writer’s block in effect.

The successful children’s book author and writing instructor Judy Delton stated this problem well in her book, The 29 Most Common Writing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.

Delton related a situation in which she became aware of a university student taking a creative writing class that she was struggling with. The problem is that in the course, for some of the assignments, the students were told they could write about anything they wanted to. The student said she found this “intimidating” and had trouble writing anything at all for the assignments.

Here’s what Delton explained about the challenge of not having a specific topic to write about:

“Everyone needs limits. If I say in a class ‘Write about bubble gum’, or ‘ink’, or ‘your vacation’, the whole class is writing in a moment. But if I say, ‘Write about anything in the world you want to’, they sit and look stumped. It is inhibiting. So set some limits for yourself, something not too big, and give yourself permission to fail.”

She also suggests that beginners in the process of becoming writers should realize that in the learning stage they don’t need to write about something “important.” The purpose is to get used to the habit of writing, by practising writing.

Worrying about the topic you are going to write about will interfere with your creativity.

Is fear preventing you from writing your book?

By Dennis Mellersh

Fear, and particularly fear of failure, can be a major roadblock in realizing your desire to write a book.

You are taking the steps to learn about how to write a book, and you want to start practising the knowledge about writing that you are acquiring through your studying  and research.

And yet… you feel it is still too early to start writing.

It’s not too early.

Learning to write is a progressive activity; writing is not a skill you learn by studying and taking instruction in every conceivable aspect of writing, and then at some magical moment, setting pen to paper and starting to write.

Rather, you need to be practising your writing at each stage of your learning process.

Mostly what holds us back in our writing efforts is fear:

• Fear that our book will not be good enough in the eyes of others
• Fear that our writing will not meet our own expectations
• Fear that “the publisher” will reject our book
• Fear that the critics will think it is no good

And the list of writing-based fears goes on…

 

Throughout history such fears have affected many famous writers who worked work in different genres:

 

• The renowned poet Emily Dickinson kept most of her poems in a drawer and the poems were not discovered until after her death
• The brilliant naturalist Charles Darwin withheld his seminal work on evolution  for decades, largely due to fear of the anticipated public and scientific negative reaction
• Some well-known published novelists, with an initial successful book to their credit, “dried-up”, sometimes due to a fear that they would not be able to repeat their earlier success

Fear is normal. But giving in to fear can prevent you from becoming a writer.

 

The key is to recognize the fear for what it is, an emotion; and to have the courage to discipline that emotion and write what you feel despite the fear.

When writing your book, be true to yourself

By Dennis Mellersh

For the beginner writer, one of the surest and most common routes to failure is trying to be someone you are not.

Writing a book and becoming a writer takes effort, time, and focus; it’s a lot of work. So why make that sacrifice if your book is not going to reflect the real you?

Here are four ways to help ensure that your true persona comes through in the writing of either your fiction or non-fiction book.

(1)Write what you genuinely want to write, not what you think you should be writing. Write what you think people need to hear, not what you think they want to hear. Writing what you think people want to read will not result in much originality.

(2) Similarly, write in a style that is natural for you; as you write more and more, your natural style will start to emerge more positively.  Don’t try to write in a style or manner in which you think you “should” be writing.

(3) Please yourself in your writing. Don’t try to please everybody in the belief that by doing so you will attract more readers. Try to please everybody and it’s probable that no-one will be pleased. Write to satisfy yourself, and at least you will be pleased.

(4) Write the way you talk, not in a way that you think is more “literary.” When you are writing, Ask yourself, “Is this actually the way I would express this idea if I were talking to somebody?” This applies to both non-fiction and fiction. The exception, of course is if you are creating the dialogue of a character if you are writing fiction.

Remember, your readers want to hear your natural voice – the real you. Not an imitation of your favourite author or a knock-off of a particular writing style that you admire.