Writing is not homeopathy – less is not better.
Writing is a sport – more is more.
You don’t see Usaine Bolt sitting by the track, watching other runners, hoping to absorb their fitness. No, he is one of those runners, slogging round the track, day after day. He runs and he runs and he runs. And he gets better at running.
Writing is like life - the more you do whatever you do, the better you get.
Writing’s a sport and the best way to improve is to stand by and watch others, hoping to absorb their greatness … No. It. Is. Not. To write well you’ve gotta’ write and write and write.
It often starts out as drivel, childish drivel, but keep on drivelling and it will become something else. It will become you.
Most of us have learned the rules of writing from others: Don’t start sentences with and. And don’t start sentences with but. But you must only have one and in a list. Don’t use archaic words like thou and henceforth and thee. And, henceforth, all sentences will have a verb and a noun. Avoid abbreviations. Lotsa’ rules.
That’s fine as it gave you some basics to pin your hat on.
However, our heads grow and childhood hats no longer fit. Rules are there for a purpose – to get you up and running till you can, with experience, form your own. You see, lights at a pedestrian crossing are good for children who have little perception of vehicle speeds and spatial proximity. For adults, those lights are for the stupid who can’t make their own decisions.
The same for writing rules. You start with them to give you direction when you have none. Then, as you cross the road for the hundredth time – or write your 100,000th word – you realise you can leave people and rules behind and skip gaily across a carless road while the pedants wait for a light bulb to control their lives.
You can’t, however, move comfortably into your own rules until you’ve crossed you own road enough times to forget the rules.
You see, when you turn up at the page, put pen to paper over and over and over again, something happens. Whether you choose 500 words a day, 2,000 words a day or 5,000 words a day, the discipline of doing it, doing it, doing it, will guarantee something arises in you – something beyond old, other-people rules. As you gain confidence in your wordiness (worthiness?) and lose that childish self-consciousness, this indefinable beingness will move through your pen and into your words and phrases.
You’ll find your own pace, your own unique phrasings and style. You’ll invent new words. Your sentences will start with banned words and they’ll be beautiful. Or taut with anger. Or gripping. Or flowingly loquacious and gently sweet … whatever you want them to be.
As you practise your sport – as you let loose the words you have inside you, all around you – you’ll find they take over, they do the work. It doesn’t become effortless for it’s always damned hard work. But, through the effort of leaving the enticing world for a time each day – to lay down sodding word after sodding word – you’ll find the traffic lights are red and there are no cars; you can skip across a rule, take a shorter way, a longer way, a different way.
The way will come to you and that way is what we call your voice – your particular, peculiar and enchanting way of arranging the words.
However, that way does not come to the pedant, obediently waiting for the green light. It comes to those who cross on red lights, having narrow misses, playing with possibilities and letting go as the 100,000th word stretches itself out on the paper and sighs with gratitude to you.
The first word won’t do that. The 1,000th word won’t do that. The 10,000th word won’t do that. But the 100,000th just might.
Yes, go to your writing classes. Read the books on writing. Learn the rules. Talk to writers. Go and do all the vicarious stuff for it certainly helps.
But what really helps and what there is no substitute for is writing, writing, writing.
There. Is. No. Alternative. Write. Write. Write … and for everything else you do in life … Live. Live. Live.
... practice makes the master :-)