“The guys that wrote the best songs were the guys that wrote the most songs.” That was said by the daughter of a Tin Pan Alley songwriter. But it’s obvious, isn’t it? If you want to be good at writing, you need to do as much writing as you can. And there’s a corollary to that—you need to read as much as you can too. That’s the way to find out how other people have done it. Read the things you like best to learn how to write things you will like. And train yourself the way an athlete does. I spend time every day practicing being able to sit down, pick up my pencil and go, before the fear and doubt have a chance to make me timid. I also spend time writing without knowing what I’m going to say or where my story is going to go. I find that when I write that way, I stumble upon interesting ideas that I didn’t know I had, directions I couldn’t have planned for. But that’s what I do. What you should do is figure out what it is you want to write, what kind of writing you want to get good at, and then practice that a little every day until you train yourself. That seems much more useful than going to writing workshops where you write something and then have other people tear it apart. Quentin Tarantino said, “I didn’t go to film school. I went to films.”
Ruth, reading has so been lacking in my life. I’m so grateful for my Kindle that I can now catch up. I almost feel like I had forgotten how to write because I wasn’t reading anything. Reading is such an amazing source of inspiration not only for content, but for writing style.
I love imagining you writing with a pencil instead of on your computer. =) Maybe it would be a really useful exercise for me to write with a pencil or pen. I’m such a perfectionist that I almost always have to write “without knowing what I’m going say” and then I go back to edit later. Pencil writing will be perfect practice for this. =) I won’t even be able to “backspace” as easily! =)
And I wholeheartedly agree in your theory about going at it instead of taking classes or workshops. =) Thanks for being an amazing mentor! =)
Dear Sam,
Thanks for your comment. It’s a good idea to try to write with a pencil for a change. Anything you can do to trick that perfectionist from stopping you or criticizing what you are writing before you even have it down. For me, one thing will work great for a while, and then I have to try something else to get past the part of my brain that finds fault with everything I write. But only one thing matters, and that is to keep on writing. I loved what you said about how reading feeds the writing. When one of my boys was little, he was writing something, and he said it was because he didn’t have a book that he wanted to read, and he thought reading and writing were interchangeable. I always loved that.
Ruth