Write Dammit Write!

If you want to Write, or do any type of art, you need to start working on it. 
Today.

No, tomorrow is going to become Saturday morning.  And Saturday morning is going to become Monday.

You have to start working on your art today. 

Practice, practice, practice.

That’s what makes the difference.

One can have an innate talent.  Maybe even a magnificent one. 

But Stephen King states that: 

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

The more you do anything, the better you will be.  And with time, you will find your own voice within your work.  

You’ll find out what you can do, or can’t.  Find out what your strengths are, and your weaknesses.  My dialogue has always been strong, which is why I love screenplays so much.  For me, they’re extremely easy to write.

So, when I turned to prose, I needed to work more on my descriptions.  I had to figure out how to make the action in my head, work on the page.  Sometimes the action flowed out, but other times it’s more clunky.  Then I have to go back and keep fixing it until it flows on the page.

Also, the beginning of a story can be troublesome for me.

Sometimes, I’m just putting words onto the page to catch the momentum.  But then, I look back to the beginning and recoil in horror.  Off the top of my head, I know I had to work the beginning of “Night of the Bright Blue Bems” and the “Caliper House” for awhile.  I’ve even tossed out the beginning and started from scratch.

How did I know it was clunky to begin with?  Practice.  I know now, innately, how the page should flow.  But that didn’t happen overnight.

Editing is another place where I had to learn how to edit my own work.  And it was not something that came naturally.  But now, I know that my work is much stronger because of it.

But that took a lot of practice.  And, I’m still learning.  

I’d like to work on better plots for my characters.

At times, it’s been annoying, but I’m a stronger writer for it.

And the trick was simply to keep going.  

To keep working.  To keep trying.

Which can sometimes be hard to do.  But, there are always writing prompts.

Rehash classic tales by showing what a weenie Achilles was, and how great Hector was.  “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire is a great example of this.  He did this to great effect with the Wicked Witch.  Or, show how weird it was for the Wizard of Oz to send out Dorothy as a hitman.  (I mean, if it was Matilda from “Leon The Professional”, that would be one thing.)

Any story or characters in the Public Domain is fair game.

The most important thing is to create.  To get words on paper.  Paint on a canvas.  Flowers arranged nicely.   Sew that quilt pattern.

Create what you love.

And not everything will be gold.

But if you keep working at it, soon you’ll have a larger portfolio than you might have imagined a year, 5 years, 10 years ago.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb, lifted from here.