Things I Didn't Know About Writing
Let me start off with a shocker. When I stared writing almost two years ago, in May of 2012, I thought writing was, well, about writing. I read books about writing, I studied tips and techniques I found in books on writing, I read blog posts and articles about writing. I was preparing myself for doing fancy things like plotting, character development, proper descriptions, proper dialogue, and the like, and guess what happened. I've been writing full time for almost 2 years now, and I'm realizing that writing is NOT about writing. At this point you're like, what the…? I know. I would think this too if I were you, if I were a beginning writer. But it's truly what stops most people from writing books or completing them, this fear that somehow whatever they write is not how it's supposed to be, comparing their writing to published works. Here is the secret. Are you ready? You don't even need to give me a cookie, I will share it with you for free. Writing is about… *drumroll* …feeling. That's right. All you gotta do is feel something so strongly that you want to share it with others. It's spilling over your soul, your heart, it doesn't let you sleep, it wants to get out. THAT is writing. You are already writing by feeling it, now all you have to do is simply put it on paper. You see, as you write more and more, you will actually learn all about plotting and characters and dialogue and all that complicated smart stuff, but you have to write first, write a lot, write about how you feel, so that your reader feels your passion. Talk through your characters, write through them what it feels like to fall in love for the first time, to find out someone dear to you has died, powerful experiences like that. Don't worry about structure or style or even what type of writing you do, prose, poetry, just spill the words on paper.
When I was starting out, I wish someone would've told me this. I've been close to quitting so many times, that if not for my annoying stubbornness, I would have. And how sad that would've been if I quit writing, there are so many stories inside me that want to get out, they would've torn me apart. I bet you've been there. The other way of looking at it, and the other thing I didn't know about writing (although it's very simple and obvious) is that writing is art. And, like any art, it's an expression of your inner world. There are no rules to that. All you have to do is to express it, that's all. If writing is your medium, then do it via writing, but unless you stay true to yourself, it won't be art, really, so same goes with writing. For example, English is not my first language, and I was terrified to write the dialogue, trying to copy it from other books. Guess what, it was horrible. Instead of making it better, I made it worse, and it's only now that I'm learning it's okay to write dialogue the way I hear it in my head. Again, I wish somebody would've told me that. It would've spared me a lot of anxiety.
What else? Well, there is one more thing, actually. I wish I knew that reading was as much writing as writing. I felt really guilty by spending time to read fiction, but with time saw that without reading I'm not growing as fast as a writer. From reading I learn as much if not more about how to write stories, but the best part is, by reading books I was able to see books as pieces of art, grasping each as its own entity, and that let me see my stories as such as well, and let me to not be afraid to finish them.
There, I think this covers it. So, don't listen to what anyone tells you, even don't listen to me, forget what I said, just follow your passion. If you want to write, write. Life is too short, you never know when it will be over. Why wait? If writing is what makes you happy, be happy NOW.
by Ksenia Anske
