Neil Low
My advice to aspiring writers is the same as Stephen King’s in his book ON WRITING: “If you want to be a writer, you need to read!” Mr. King is completely right in that you cannot just hope to see your name on the spine of a book on a shelf, you have to fill your brain with new material that gives you the background to draw on when you write. You have to have something to say and should have a well-founded understanding of the genre you’re writing in, what the unwritten rules are and such.
I would also advise would-be writers to follow Ray Bradbury’s advice: “Write one short story every week. At the end of a year you will have 52 stories, and you know what? They won’t all be bad.” In other words, a writer needs to practice his/her craft, finding what works and what doesn’t. I would hope they are having friends and maybe teachers giving them feedback on what’s working and what isn’t in their stories. This would speed up their learning process. They need to understand and practice the rules of good grammar.
My own advice is: Become a master of your craft! In other words, an aspiring writer needs to work hard at learning the rules of writing, especially on how to edit their own work. A good illustration is that I have a friend/author who excels at formal business writing, but his attempt at fiction was a miserable failure. He hadn’t done anything to prepare himself for creative writing, which involves subtlety and symbolism. He didn’t have a touch for this. After writing a scene in a novel, he’d hammer the points home he hoped you had picked up on. This is insulting to sophisticated readers who want to feel engaged and challenged. For them, many times “less is more.” Before I went back to school to earn my degree, I faithfully read WRITER’S DIGEST and all the magazine articles I could find on writing and editing. Now, even with six of my novels in print, I continue to read all the blogs and posts I can find on writing. I’m continually trying to improve my knowledge base, and that’s what you should do.
I would also advise would-be writers to follow Ray Bradbury’s advice: “Write one short story every week. At the end of a year you will have 52 stories, and you know what? They won’t all be bad.” In other words, a writer needs to practice his/her craft, finding what works and what doesn’t. I would hope they are having friends and maybe teachers giving them feedback on what’s working and what isn’t in their stories. This would speed up their learning process. They need to understand and practice the rules of good grammar.
My own advice is: Become a master of your craft! In other words, an aspiring writer needs to work hard at learning the rules of writing, especially on how to edit their own work. A good illustration is that I have a friend/author who excels at formal business writing, but his attempt at fiction was a miserable failure. He hadn’t done anything to prepare himself for creative writing, which involves subtlety and symbolism. He didn’t have a touch for this. After writing a scene in a novel, he’d hammer the points home he hoped you had picked up on. This is insulting to sophisticated readers who want to feel engaged and challenged. For them, many times “less is more.” Before I went back to school to earn my degree, I faithfully read WRITER’S DIGEST and all the magazine articles I could find on writing and editing. Now, even with six of my novels in print, I continue to read all the blogs and posts I can find on writing. I’m continually trying to improve my knowledge base, and that’s what you should do.
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