My Shakespeare professor told this to us about starting our papers. It's been a while, but I'll paraphrase. "Just dive right in. Don't act like the paper's the Amazon and there are little man-eating piranhas swimming about that will jump up and gobble you into bits." So have fun!
I think "learning to write" is circular, really. I assume you're a life-long reader (otherwise I don't really understand why you'd want to write) so with that as a given, and now looking just at the writing... Write something. Analyze it, using whatever tools seem appropriate - crit groups, beta readers, self-reflection, comparing it to theories you've found in books on writing, etc. Re-write the original piece, or abandon it and write something else. Then analyze THAT. etc. You might also want to keep your goals in mind. Are you seeking publication, or self-expression? I think most writers are looking for a combination of the two, but there will be times when you'll have to make decisions that make it feel like a conflict between the two goals, so I think it helps to know which one you hold most dear. And I disagree about writing having to be a passion, or a need. I write because I enjoy it, but I didn't write for a good chunk of my adult life and I wasn't in agony - I was busy with other stuff, enjoying things that now give my writing depth and details. Experiment, explore, see what works for you. Enjoy yourself! Writing is FUN!
Agreed! Passion with writing is like passion in a relationship. At some point, you wake up, see that person you couldn't live without sleeping next to you, and wonder what the hell happened.
Read your favourite authors and reread them again. Get lost in the syntax and breathe the words. Some people will tell you write what you know. For many that shoe just doesn't fit, so write what you love. Watch movies with the subtitles on, and listen when people speak. Take notice of the things around you, learn to people watch and listen...Listen before you begin to write. The world is complex and diverse, people even more so and that transfers into writing. There is no hard and fast way to do it. What works for one person might not work for another. Take stock of your project, ask: Why am I writing this? Is it to inform, to entertain, to defend...What? (If you are writing non-fiction disregard the following) Challenge yourself. Sign up for things like National Novel Writing Month. Join the Flash Contests, and the Tri-Weekly Competitions for Poetry and Short Stories. Experiment with voice, interrogate your characters, get involved with the RPG's. See what happens when you take your characters out of your construct and put them into one of another's making. How well do they, (you), respond under pressure. Put them through their paces. Learn them...Their facial expressions, unconscious gestures, and speech patterns. Reading is a fifth dimension, an escape for many. Keep this in mind and make it real. Make the world tangible. Use all your senses. Observe: smell, touch, listen, taste, and look beyond what you normally would. Go for a walk, trace a railing, touch a sign. What does the air taste like? Is there a scent teasing you nose? Carry a mirror, what does the expression on your face reflect? What are you seeing...feeling. Transfer your experience laterally onto your character. How are they responding to what you just did? What are their reactions to the stimuli compared to yours? Some folks will tell you that writing is all about the story, it isn't. It is about the characters, their emotions and reactions. They are the medium through which a story is translated. Fiction is character driven. Know your characters, know your project.... Okay, enough with the fiction tangent... Get involved with writing groups, both on-line, like you have here, and in your community. Check with the local bookstores, colleges, etc. If there are critique groups in the area, they will know. On-line is great, but being able to critique and debate face to face, is a precious opportunity. There aren't the inherent distractions of the internet at hand, the focus is all on the writing. It can be a heady experience. Listen to what others say in their critiques and take their advice with a grain of salt. Try seeing your work from their perspective and see if you come to the same conclusion. Take at least one writing course so you can lay down a firm foundation upon which to build. And remember, writing is a craft and every craft takes practice.
I would like to ask the OP an important question at this point. Why do you want to write? Do you love to read and have always wanted to write? Do you have a story to tell? Do you want to record your life history? Do you want to make something that was wrong in real life come out right in fiction? Are you interested in a particular place, culture or time period and want to explore it? Why do you want to write? The most important question you can ask yourself at this stage. If you want to write because it's something to do on your computer, but you don't have any stories or poems in your head and you don't like to read, I'd say you're lacking a vital ingredient. Kind of like somebody who wants to play the guitar but doesn't actually like music and never listens to any. If that's the case, I really don't know what to tell you except find a reason to like what you want to do. However, if you already have characters, plots or poems in your head (the ideas) and you can string words together into coherent sentences (the tools) ...then I'd say just start. Sit down, open a computer document file, and start. See what happens. Don't tell other people you're doing it, because that puts pressure on you. (Avoid the beginner's temptation to write three paragraphs then start asking everybody what they think.) Just start in earnest—either at the beginning, the middle or the end of the tale you want to tell, and just write. Be true to yourself, and don't worry about what other people will think of you. Create the kind of characters you love, let all sorts of things happen to them. Don't worry about being silly or depressing or too violent or too sexy or too boring. Be honest, be daring, be creative, be original. Be fearless. ENJOY the process. You are in total control. Keep at it till you know you've 'got something.' After you've got a fair amount done, then I'd say pick up a few 'how-to' writing books and see what they have to say. Avoid the ones that promise success in five minutes, and go for the ones that deal with specific writing issues instead. By this stage, you'll have an idea which writing issues matter the most to you. These books will help you to organise and refine what you've written, and maybe work out a few mistakes you've made. You will make mistakes, but that's part of the learning process and is NEVER a waste of time. Besides, nobody else knows you're doing this yet, right? So you can correct mistakes on the QT, and nobody will be any the wiser. Then see what you've got, and see how you feel about it. Once you've finished a first draft, THEN start thinking about showing it to other people and getting feedback. That's when you really break out of your shell.
I'll echo everyone else saying go ahead and dive in, but I'll disagree on using how-to books after you've gained a bit of writing experience. I was also brand new to creative writing about a year ago. I had the urge to write, so I wrote some and then took a college course in creative writing to further develop my skills. I started to see potential in myself as a writer, but I still felt odd in my sentence structure, flow, etc. I liked my stuff, but the writing just didn't capture the mind like veteran writing does almost naturally. It's hard to explain, but that's how I felt. My writing really took a giant step forward after I read Dwight Sain's Techniques of the Selling Writer. It taught me many new techniques to think about when writing, and how to make my writing sounds... writerly. I don't agree with all of the things that Sain said--he even states in the beginning of his book that you shouldn't always follow all of his advice--but I think it's good to understand techniques that many writers find helpful so that you can purposely choose to either ignore or accept them. I think this is the biggest point I can make. How-to books don't shoehorn you into a specific way of writing; they allow you to more easily and more quickly find your own path purposely off the more established path. Furthermore, how-to books can't possibly hurt you; they can only help you or not help you. In my opinion, they are an extremely good use of a neophyte writer's time. Also, I'd specifically recommend Techniques of the Selling Writer.
I think it's possible for SOME writers to get caught in a sort of technique-trap, where they don't want to do any writing until they've "figured it out" and "learned how". Reading how-to-write books keeps them from actually writing. Doesn't happen to everyone, of course. But I think it's important to be writing AS you're reading. It makes the reading more meaningful and easier to understand, because you can go and try something right away, AND it ensures that the person doesn't become an expert on writing who's never actually written anything!
I have to disagree with this. How-to books can be like critiques to new writers - "God". The first book they read becomes The Way to Write. Anyone who has been on writing forums for any length of time has seen the meltdown by some new writers when people disagree with The Holy Writ. Get a grammar book if your sentence structure is iffy; read fiction to learn about story-telling. Write. Then write some more. If you sense something isn't working, then get some how-to books for ideas on what else you can try. But there is no one book out there that's going to give anyone all the answers, or can guarantee to make you a good writer.
I don't necessarily agree with the idea that you need to start writing by reading about writing. You yourself wrote first, THEN learned what you might have been doing wrong. Then you learned how to make your writing better. I don't think it hurts to have your own writing a starting point. (You might discover inherent strengths as well as weaknesses.) And as @BayView pointed out, reading too many how-to books before you actually write anything can make you so scared of making a mistake that you never really get going. As @Link the Writer said: "Just dive right in. Don't act like the paper's the Amazon and there are little man-eating piranhas swimming about that will jump up and gobble you into bits." If you make mistakes, you can correct them. If you're so afraid of making mistakes that you inch along and aren't willing to take chances and try new things, your writing may become stilted, fearful and unoriginal. There are certainly lots of ways to approach the issue, and if reading manuals before you start actually works for you, fair enough. They can certainly give you some good ideas, and the best ones are also quite inspirational. They're just not necessary as a starting point, and CAN create a bit of a straitjacket. I was nearly 5 years into my novel, and had reached the end of my first draft before I read ANY how-to books. (I now have a shelf-full of them.) I would not have traded that experience of free writing for anything. It was the most enjoyable period of my life. Sure I made tons of mistakes, but they were all correctable. What I didn't lose was the intitial impulse to write, and I wrote my own story my own way without ANYBODY looking over my shoulder telling me what not to do. It's been heavily re-worked since, and there are many 'mistakes' I will never make again. But will I have as much fun writing my second one as I did the first? I don't know. I've started it, and somehow it feels flat. Not filled with energy like the first one was.
it's not a how-to book, or even specifically about writing, but I'll always recommend Art and Fear. as to how I got started writing... in grade school, when we were given writing exercises and everybody else groaned and complained, I would be delighted--and often keep writing, well past the required word or page limit. as I grew up, I just kept reading and writing, and never stopped.
I will acknowledge there is a possibility that someone could be too scared to write after reading it; in my case, I was actually more intimidated by writing before reading Swain's book. I would read my stuff and know that it somehow didn't sound right. It was frustrating to not know how to even begin to fix it. Swain's book provided me with confidence because I was better able to deconstruct my own writing, and the purpose in writing various ways. If you approach a book like Swain's with the idea that it is a theoretical framework instead of gospel, it can help you find your own unique writing style more quickly than without it. I guess the best advice is to know how you as an individual learn best and plan accordingly. I just wanted to show that a how-to book was invaluable in my development as a writer, and I think it can be very valuable to many new writers. I didn't mean to say that you need to use a how-to book first, but I do think it is very helpful near your beginnings as a writer. I agree that it doesn't have to be the first thing that you do.
Excellent responses! No one knows that I am planning to write anything. I feel no pressure, and will just dive right in. I greatly apprecciate the wisdom and am inspired by such an active, honest community.
Ahaha! That's exactly where I am right now, and have been for a while. I'm married to writing. The honeymoon is over, the magic is gone. After having written 8 ms's it's become work, kind of, even though it doesn't bring me a lot of money yet, and sometimes when I see my writer-friends being all starry eyed about the whole writing thing I realize I miss that feeling. But I'm still here, in the business, even though our relationship isn't very romantic at the moment. Although I do feel kind of excited when I get a new, really good idea and I try to hold on to that feeling for as long as I can.
To me, there's a difference between being excited about a project and being passionate about it. Excitement is what makes the hard work fun anyway; passion leads to claims of writer's block.
I will suggest you to keep following things in mind if you are a new writer. You should have to know more about writing, try to get more knowledge of information. Allow your feelings to go to weird places. Write until your done, don't leave it on middle. etc....
I have a bit of expectations vs. reality issues. I've been working on this story for months. But the truth is, I'm just a teenager from Hong Kong, still studying in secondary school (or middle school as you know it). School work and pressure is mounting on me and I'm still just halfway through the story. Should I go on? I've been doing research about publishing manuscripts, and I am not really certain if I have the time for all these efforts to get my work published in future, and in fact I don't even know if I can spare time to work on the unfinished story. I'm afraid that I might lost my passion for the story if I choose to pause my work. Is this dream of mine, to become a writer really worth to pursuit for a secondary school student?
You have to prioritize, and it will be hard for someone else to tell you whether you have time to work on the story and still put a sufficient amount of time into school (which should probably be your priority). There are lots of little pieces of time throughout the day that you can capture, though. Carry a small notebook with you, and when you have some down time, even if it is only a few minutes, do some writing. Look at your other "disposable" time, if you have any, and replace some of those activities with writing. I wouldn't worry too much about all of the steps of publishing at this point. Better to just concentrate on improving your writing ability, and that is something that is best done by actually writing. If you lose passion for this story due to lack of time, another story will come along. So long as you're able to continue to do some writing on a regular basis, I think you're on the right path even if you don't have anything to submit for publishing yet.
I think you should go on, but forget about getting published for now. Just write because you love it and because you want to get this story out of your head. It doesn't have a sell-by date, you can stick it on a shelf (or a USB stick) and then look at publishing when you're done with school. In any case, the best thing to do with a manuscript when you finish it is to shelve it for at least a few months, read it afresh, and discover all the glaring problems with it that had never occurred to you at first
Treat it as another step in learning how to write (and be aware that that particular learning process is likely to last a lifetime)
I think Tenderiser is right, too. Many dream of publishing, but if that is all you are writing for, then you are bound to become disappointed and even frustrated. Write for the sake of writing. There is no sell-by date.
