If you want to be a writer, you need to be a writer.
That sounds like a Zen saying, doesn't it? Let me explain what I mean.
So many people say they want to be writers; few of them actually do it. There are many reasons why a desire to write doesn't translate into producing finished pieces of writing. One of the main reasons is that most people don't know what writers actually do.
That's because most writers work in private. We don't see them at work; all we see is their finished products, those books shining on the shelves of bookstores or libraries. It's much easier to see what other kinds of workers are doing: we can watch a carpenter put up a wall, for instance, or watch a teacher conducting a class. But even if we could step inside a writer's office and watch her or him at work, what would we see? Someone typing at a computer or staring out the window! That doesn't tell us much—and that's because the work a writer does happens inside her brain.
I've been writing and teaching writing for almost thirty years, and for most of that time I have been fascinated—you might even say obsessed— with this question of what it is that writers actually DO when they write.
I was guided into this realm by the work of Peter Elbow and Donald Murray and other educators who developed what's known as the “process” approach to teaching writing. But even though I taught “process” for many years, eventually I found myself dissatisfied with this approach. I felt it didn't go far enough in teaching what writers actually do. And so I began my own exploration, which resulted in my own approach to teaching writing. This approach provides the basis for all the lessons you will find here, as well as my book, How To Be a Writer: building your creative skills through practice and play.
If you want to be a baseball player, you have to start out swinging the bat and throwing the ball. If you want to play the piano, you have to move your fingers over the keys. The same thing is true for writing: if you want to write, you have to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard on a regular basis. This does not mean, however, that what you produce is going to be any good (if you were starting out as a baseball player, would you expect to a hit home run with every swing?); it means that you are engaged in practicing what writers do, in getting a sense of what it feels like to do the work of writing.
Perhaps you will discover that you don't really enjoy this activity. Perhaps you will love it. You won't know until you give it a try—ideally more than once. Here's how:
Take a pen and paper (or open a word processing document). Now, start to write—about whatever first comes to your mind; it doesn't matter what it is. When you get tired of that subject, move on to something else. If you get stuck, write the same word or sentence over and over until your mind gives you another idea.
There are three important rules for this practice:
When your ten minutes are up, take a couple of minutes to reflect on how this exercise went for you. Did you enjoy being a writer? What parts appealed to you? What didn't you like?
It's essential to remember that what you have produced with this exercise is practice writing. You are not going to show it to anyone; you don't even have to look at it again if you don't want to. The purpose of this exercise is not to write something “great”; its purpose is to give you practice in doing what writers do: namely, put thoughts on paper.
If you want to write, if you are coming back to writing after an absence or a bad experience with it, if you get stuck or blocked when you try to write something, doing this practice (known as freewriting) on a regular basis will help a lot. It will make you comfortable with the activity of writing.
Once you feel comfortable just putting words and ideas on paper, then you can begin to develop the skills necessary to produce writing that others will want to read.
Suggested next lessons:
© 2010. All Rights Reserved. Barbara Baig