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Mar. 8, 2011 So, you want to be a writer of serious prose, do you? Well, your local bookstore’s shelves are sagging with books telling you how to do it. There’s a gazillion books there, all profusely explaining how to write everything; There’s novel writing, short story writing, short-shorts, articles, fiction and non-fiction, movie and TV scriptwriting, and the list goes on and on, ad nauseum. Then, of course, there is a plethora of books on how to write a plot, how to make your characters real, and how to formulate your dialogue. And let’s not forget all the reference books that run the how-to gamut from grammar and sentence structure to formatting and binding your own books. All you need to do is buy them all, read them all, and, viola, you’ll know a whole bunch about what you want to do as a writer. Trouble is, you’ll be too old to scoot up to your computer or typewriter, and too broke to buy paper or Internet access. Well, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m about to point you toward it right now. Read on. As an author, I would be the first to tell you to read, read, read. Whenever you aren’t writing, you should be reading, and vice versa. Now, this is a double-edged sword unless the reading-writing ratio is reasonable and well balanced. In other words, reading 90% and writing 10% wouldn’t be too productive, nor would a ratio of 90% writing and 10% reading, although this would be the preference, given these two choices. What is important here is not how much or how little you read, but what you read and how you interpret it. Processing all this written information can start by understanding that writing is in itself a conflict. Everything you read about the writing profession can be contradicted in another book! As an example, one lady writer begins her novel by writing the last line of the book. She says, quite convincingly, that one should not embark on a journey before knowing where it ends. A thoughtful point, but let us look at another famous author who begins his work by writing the word the, and following it with whatever comes into his head, then another word and so forth. He has no idea where this is leading, and lets his characters guide him through the story. Talk about conflicting methods! And both of these writers are very successful. I use these conflicting theories to emphasize my point about what you read and how you interpret it. All this can be condensed into one rule: You should rename the instructional material you are reading to this is what works for me (the author). This rule applies to every writer, every how-to book ever published on writing, whether it is a famous author’s method of character development or a magazine article about plotting mystery novels. Whatever the subject, the rule applies. Once you understand that what you are reading is what works for the author, you will be free from the cluttering, mind-boggling, intimidating material you are studying. Then you can relax, learn, and apply the principles as they apply to you, and not as though these are hard and fast rules chiseled into literary stone.
After studying a library full of books on the subject, over many years, I might add, I finally realized that I should apply the important principles as they applied to me. After I learned this, I wrote my first book, and it was a joy!
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