Writing

Writing has always been a happy experience for me.  I have only two secret secrets/suggestions.  First, I read constantly whether it be magazines, news articles, or novels.  Second, I have a two-step writing process.  Let me explain.

First, the reading.  Just as you would not expect to be an expert baker or cook without seeing others in their natural habitat, you need to read if you want to be a writer.  In this way, you expand your options, your resources, your ways of getting from point A to point B.

Our era is a visual one.  We all spent huge amounts of time taking information in visually, whether it’s TV, the movies, PowerPoint slides, or the Internet.  Just in my professional lifetime, the pace of the visual information feed has increased enormously.  We’ve learned to speed up our visual inputs and become more sophisticated in the visual genres and styles that we can absorb.

I believe this increase has come at a price.  We don’t read as much, and we struggle more when we do.  Is it any wonder that writing, then, is difficult for people who have spent thousands of hours learning visual information techniques, but comparatively little time in written word?

You want to write easily, then?  You’ve got to study the craft.  Read daily.  I read about 3 books per week, periodicals, newspapers and oceans of email.  I often talk to people who say that they read one or two books per year at most.

Second, the writing process.  This is essential.  First write, without self-criticism, then edit.  It’s as simple as that and as profound.  If you can’t silence the inner critic, then writing is incredible slow, painful and unrewarding.  You must write first, then fix.  First the creator, then the editor. And don’t be meticulous about your writing.  Just get on with it.  Talk to yourself, and write that down.  The more conversational your prose, the better it usually is.

Write on planes, in waiting rooms, while waiting for paint to dry,  whenever you can.  It’s nice if you can have the luxury of a dedicated writing space, with all your pictures, music, and trinkets around you like little good-luck charms.  But don’t wait for the perfect place or space.  Start writing.  Write anywhere, anytime, on anything.  Write daily.  Write about stuff you care about.  Write about the topic you’ve got going at the moment, but if you suddenly get inspired, write about that.  You can fix it later.  In fact, you should fix it later.  That’s the whole point.  Create first, edit second.

If you’ve crafted a good outline, then writing is just a matter of filling in the buckets. It’s a craft, like building a brick wall or throwing a clay pot.  With practice you get better at it.  If you think about it like the romantic poets talked about it, as a inspired, artistic, creative process, then you’ll never get done. Writing is a dirty lengthy process.

I suspect that you’ll find that some of the stuff you write when inspired is good, and some of it isn’t.  Just as some of the writing you produce when you’re just putting one word in front of another will surprise you with its brilliance  and some other times it won’t.

So get to it, start writing.