Writers: Tools of the Trade

Writer's Write

There are some writers out there that aren't writers. They claim to write, yet don't. Sometimes, this is understandable—life, especially as a teenager or college student, is a non-stop roller coaster. Even if you have free time, a break from your hectic schedule, you don't want to write. You want to take a break, and writing is work. This post is not for those. This post is for those who spend more time talking about writing than actually sitting down and writing.

Writing is work.

Writing is a skill.

How do we get better at writing? How do members of the NBA get better? Did those Olympic athletes who just competed in London, were they born with the ability to swim? To shoot an arrow, to ride a horse? Of course not. It's dumb to assume that a lifetime of work wasn't put into training for the Olympics, that they just had the ability right off the bat. Yet many aspiring writers assume that, on their first try, they can sit down and produce a fully formed novel, without any work before hand.

You're in training.

Writing is a skill.

The only way to improve that skill is to write. Well, and read, but mostly writing. Reading good books helps the mind develop its ability to recognize good writing. Read like a writer: don't get pulled into a story, but notice how the author describes things, what he puts in and what she keeps out.

There are downsides to reading for writing. The most obvious is being pulled into the story. If you are prone to enjoying reading, to the point you forget to take a step back and actually write, set a timer. Don't start from the beginning.

The other problem that creeps up is a subconscious one.

Here's my biggest problem when I read: I'm a mimicker. Whenever I do something, whether it be reading or drawing, I mimic what I see. I can create amazing pieces of artwork—if I have a picture in front of me that I'm using as reference. Take that picture away, and I can't draw to save myself. When I read fantastic pieces of literature, I tend to write better. When I read something crappy, something full of comma abuse and boring prose, my writing tends to suffer for it.

Every human being is a mimicker, whether worse than me or better, I'm not sure. Our brains are hard-wired to give out what it's being fed. It's fine to read "bad" books so you get the idea of what not to do, but throw in several "good" books for every "bad" book.

Above all, write. You are a writer. Write your story.