Maureen F. McHugh
Mission Child |
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Getting To It On the other hand, everybody has the basic skills needed to be a writer. We all compose language every day. Musicians spend a long time learning to play someone elses compositions before they ever learn to compose their own, but we are all composing sentances from the time we can talk. So everybody's got what they need. The things that are going to distinguish you from everyone else are discipline and a level of craftsmanship beyond normal, ordinary composition skills. If you are going to be a writer, the most important thing to do is to arrange your life so you write. Do whatever that takes. If it means getting up at four in the morning, get up at four in the morning. If it means buying a laptop computer and spending two hours in the mall tayping on it, type on it. If you have the time and you're still not writing, then arranging your life includes finding what makes you write. If having disagreeable chores to perform makes you write, arrange your life so you have those chores. Then write to put them off. If you sit and stare at a blank screen, find a strategy that helps you get around that. Type out of the phone book until your mind rebels and starts coming up with something to write just so you don't have to type out of the phone book. Allow yourself three pages of dreck about your life, your job, whatever is on your mind, then write. Or keep a journal and then write. When Hemingway stopped writing for the day, he always had to know what was going to happen next. But you find out how to write by writing.
Craftsmanship - The Lecture and some people can't write anything worth reading even though they understand the craft inside and out. But those people are the extreme exceptions and for me, learning craftsmanship has lead to artistry. Look, you're not going to learn the craft of writing from a Web Page anymore than you're going to learn basketball from one. But understand that there is a lot to learn. You can learn some of it from books. You can learn it from other people's writing that you admire. You can learn it from classes, from writer's groups, from a mentor. Probably you'll learn it from all of the above. But if you are going to be a writer you must be utterly ruthless in your pursuit of what you need because that knowledge is the only thing that is going to separate you from the hordes who can speak and think and write in English but who no one but their friends and mothers want to read. Fiction is a luxury. It isn't like food, it doesn't nourish the body, keep it warm or safe or dry. Fiction is pretty important to a lot of people, but it comes after the groceries. You've got to do something to make the reader want to read you. Craft teaches you how to control a reader's experience. And that's what you want to do. Craft comes in a couple of parts. The easiest is grammatical. The next easiest is style. The hardest is structure. Grammar says, "Grammar is the piano I play by ear." Not all of us are so lucky. Joe Haldeman has some links to places on the net where you can find good advice on grammar. If you have trouble with grammar people will point fingers at your fiction and make fun of you. This is not what you want to happen when you write. Some people want the reader to forget that the words are there; they want the story to be like a movie in the reader's head. If your grammar is clunky, people notice it and they are no longer living the movie in their head. Other people want you to admire their words. Poets, for example. Having lousy control over grammar doesn't help you in this arena, either. How are you going to get people to pay attention to your style if you can't control your grammar? Style
I can tell you lots of rules ala Strunk & White--Show don't tell, don't use
said bookisms
My advice is figure out how you want to write. Do you want to write like the literary mainstream? Okay, join a writer's group or take a class at your local college. My other advise is aim for the very best. Aim to be just a little better than you really understand right now. If there is writing you almost like but somehow you feel you don't quite get it all, find out how to write that way. It may take years, but it will give you something to grow into. Form
If you can tell me more than that,
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