Write Strategy: Think, Believe, Attack
Think of writing like karate...it's about DISCIPLINE.
Writing, like other forms of art, work or talent, requires
discipline. It won't ever be enough that you say to yourself
that you are a writer. Only when you write and write with
discipline can you call yourself one. Before you can earn a
black belt in karate, you have to dedicate yourself, practice
and instill discipline in yourself to learn the moves and
techniques.
The same goes for writing. Don't just read books. Devour them.
Ray Bradbury, author of Zen in the Art of Writing, suggests
books of essays, poetry, short stories, novels and even comic
strips. Not only does he suggest that you read authors who write
the way you hope to write, but "also read those who do not think
as you think or write as you want to write, and so be stimulated
in directions you might not take for many years." He continues,
"don't let the snobbery of others prevent you from reading
Kipling, say, while no one else is reading him."
Learn to differentiate between good writing and bad writing.
Make time to write. Write even though you're in a bad mood. Put
yourself in a routine. Integrate writing into your life. The
goal is not to make writing dominate your life, but to make it
fit in your life. Julia Cameron, in her book The Right to Write,
sums it best: "Rather than being a private affair cordoned off
from life as the rest of the world lives it, writing might
profitably be seen as an activity best embedded in life, not
divorced from it."
Believe that EVERYONE HAS A STORY -- including you.
Extraordinary things happen to ordinary people. As a writer,
your job is to capture as many of these things and write them
down, weave stories, and create characters that jump out of the
pages of your notebook. Don't let anything escape your writer's
eye, not even the way the old man tries to subtly pick his nose
or the way an old lady fluffs her hair in a diner. What you
can't use today, you can use tomorrow. Store these in your
memory or jot them down in your notebook.
Jump in the middle of the fray. Be in the circle, not outside
it. Don't be content being a mere spectator. Take a bite of
everything life dishes out. Ray Bradbury wrote, "Tom Wolfe ate
the world and vomited lava. Dickens dined at a different table
every hour of his life. Moliere, tasting society, turned to pick
up his scalpel, as did Pope and Shaw. Everywhere you look in the
literary cosmos, the great ones are busy loving and hating. Have
you given up this primary business as obsolete in your own
writing? What fun you are missing, then. The fun of anger and
disillusion, the fun of loving and being loved, of moving and
being moved by this masked ball which dances us from cradle to
churchyard. Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain. But
on the way, in your work, why not carry those two inflated
pig-bladders labeled Zest and Gusto."
Attack writing with PASSION.
The kind of writing you produce will oftentimes reflect the
current state of your emotions. Be indifferent and your writing
will be indifferent. Be cheerful and watch the words dance
across your page.
Whenever you sit down to write, put your heart and soul in it.
Write with passion. Write as if you won't live tomorrow. In her
book, Writing the Wave, Elizabeth Ayres wrote: "There's one
thing your writing must have to be any good at all. It must have
you. Your soul, your self, your heart, your guts, your voice --
you must be on that page. In the end, you can't make the magic
happen for your reader. You can only allow the miracle of 'being
one with' to take place. So dare to be you. Dare to reveal
yourself. Be honest, be open, be true...If you are, everything
else will fall into place."
Copyright (c) 2004 Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ