I don't really understand this. Did you read a lot when you were young? I sure did. Some things just sink into your bones when you're exposed to them enough at a young age. I was able to write pretty damn good sentences when I was a kid simply because I'd been exposed to good sentences so much. I knew what they sounded like. I knew what they looked like. I knew what they felt like. I assume others have had a similar experience. It's no mystery to me that people can learn the basics "intuitively." Are my sentences always grammatically perfect? Of course not - everyone makes the occasional mistake. But I catch most of my errors myself, and I have some good usage guides that help me correct them. But I do not think it's unreasonable to expect people - aspiring writers, especially - to have a good grasp of the basics before they enter high school. I'm an engineer by trade, and I've spent my career so far working with other engineers and business people. These are not people trained in English beyond high school, but the large majority of them can write decently when they have to. I see it all the time in everything from their business letters to the system maintenance manuals and other technical documents they often have to write. They're not artists of prose, but they write clearly and almost always correctly. This is normal. Why would it drive a writer - or an aspiring writer - crazy?
Sure, at school I we had lessons for how to work out what rhymes and exercises in writing a poem that rhymes, and such things. At GCSE they taught us about metaphor and personification and how to look out for these things in articles and leaflets and then we had exercises to reproduce them. So, to an extent, when we say we "learnt how to write by ourselves" - we make this statement because we take basic education for granted. There is an assumption that everyone went to school, and those who paid attention and were relatively bright (assuming no genetic conditions, such as dyslexia or something else) would naturally pick up basic skills. This includes writing comprehensibly. Writing artistically - eg. fiction - needs further development outside of the basics, but the majority of us developed outside of school when it got to this area. England was excellent for creative writing, which was a blessing for me, but how can a book tell me if a sentence is good? If the rhythm is good? If the word choice is good? It cannot - that's where intuition comes in. And when I say "I learnt how to write by myself" - I'm talking about this kinda of intuition, which, as a writer, I do take as another "basic". How can you be a writer if you do not have good intuition and judgement about what is good writing, what flows, what word choice is appropriate or inappropriate? Just like you cannot call yourself a chef if you have no idea what cumin is and whether pesto or rosemary is better for this chicken dish, or how long to roast this lump of beef. You cannot call yourself a sportsman if you cannot hold a racket right or cannot hit the ball and keep it within the court boundaries. So such intuition with writing is also a "basic" for everyone who wants to call themselves a writer. And this kind of "basic", in my opinion, can only be taught to an extent. Much of it is something that just sinks into your bones and you just KNOW - like breathing.
I remember at school the teachers being amazed at how good my grammar was, and the first time we had to write a poem I was the only one in the class who used line breaks correctly. I wasn't the brightest kid by a long stretch but I was a real bookworm and read constantly so I guess the basic rules just soaked in. Grammar was not well taught at any level in my schools and I'm still unsure of some of the technical terms, but I do believe my 'feel' for it is still decent (not saying perfect, anyone out there looking to correct my post in any way )
I'd have to say I taught myself to write fiction, and then had help making improvements. I remember writing stories in the first year of the UK equivalent to High School and that was a long time ago. I didn't meet any other writers until my twenties but eventually found some people who were into Speculative Fiction and we formed a writing group. Two of us then took a critiquing course with Judy Merril. That stopped us saying how wonderful everything was and we began to learn how to provide constructive criticism. Another one of us has since sold over a 100 stories. Around that time, I started buying 'How To' books and have even read some of them. I have always read a lot, but I'm a fast reader so not sure how much I absorb outside the story.
I am self taught. I guess you could say that. Im not sure. I just have a very creative imagination and I just go with it. I am an English Major but that has had no impact on my creativity. I dont think its something that is taught. I think you just have the awesome ability to just write and get the feeling across to the reader. If anything is learned in any writing class its about grammar and proper ways of writing a sentence, etc. I believe texting and short hand has ruined a lot of my memory in how to write properly and am trying to recall everything Ive learned in the past to make sure I edit my work properly. Not sure if that answers your question. I just thought I'd add to it.
Self taught, I suppose. I've never taken any writing classes, unless you count the ones in high school. I did have some good English teachers that helped inspire me more, though!
I have learned 80% of what I know about writing from reading. I've read since I was about 6 and picked up things that now seem quite intuitive. I've been lucky that way I guess. I am currently taking Creative Writing at uni, but in our classes we don't so much as learn techniques as learn through experience. Of course, the critiques are definitely helpful. I also attended a writing retreat last summer, which I can say makes up almost the remainder of my "knowledge"/experience (if I have any, haha) of writing. The one-on-one time really helped.
Self taught here as well. Mostly from reading. Although I remember being put in charge of the class' literary magazine at some point in high school. I had to edit the works of others as well as write my own. I remember liking it immensely, although it was a lot of work.
I guess the real question here is once you discovered you wanted to be a writer what process did you follow in order to become one. I remember sentence structure in grade school and believe me none of that inspired me to be one. I think the dream of becoming a writer came after I read 'Catcher in the Rye' in my early teens and then proceeded to read everything that Salinger wrote. Before that it was mainly comic books. My first introduction to 'The Count of Monte Cristo' was in comic book form but from the time of Catcher I became a serial reader. I would serch for Authors that released me from my reality at that time and woud read everything they wrote. I guess I learned to tell my tales from their example, plus a few books on creative writing I picked up at the library. My achilles heel I guess is confidence, when ever I read a piece of fiction that blows me away it deflates my ambition rather then inspires.
This is a tricky question for me. I've always written through my childhood. As well as playing with my dinosaurs, sword fighting and climbing trees, writing was a favourite pass time. I wasn't too good at it as first, and was chaotic with it, starting stories and moving on to the next or just writing the plan in a draft form to satisfy the urge to get the story out, but I improved gradually. When I realised it was seroius and what I wanted to do, I did it at Uni. One of our lecturers said you can't teach someone how to write, you can only improve their technique. Words to that effect, anyway. I've always been able to write, but Uni taught me a great deal.
with 55 answering the poll and a like number posting, i guess this was a good question to ask... thanks for the input, everyone! hugs, m
I began with a seven page ( Back then what I would call anyways. ) Novel. From their I would always write small poems and short stories until my first failed novel attempt in the last years of middle school. This fear of failure would last until ten grade when I got part way through my second novel. All the while my writing in proved and I developed my own style.
I've been writing since I was in 7th grade (and will admit, it was very terrible. Horrifying if I wanted to make it sound harsher.) I haven't written much in my spare time aside from essays, rhetorical analysis, etc. in school. But now, I write whenever I have a chance. So I suppose my writing is mostly self-taught. School just helped me improve my grammatical sentence structures.
I've been writing daily since I was nine years old. I taught myself. When I was 18 I took a course to improve my academic writing and some of what I learned (e.g. complex grammar) has transferred to my creative writing. Right now I'm seven weeks into twelve-week editing class (that I'm taking as part of a larger course) and I feel it is definitely going to come in useful when editing my novels in future.
I haven't been writing since high school twenty years ago and during that time it was only regular class assignments. I'm currently taking an online course, it might be a series depending on how the first one ends, and I slowly begun to write at home. I might even finish the first one soon..... I noticed a few of the newer authors have a creative writing degree, but most hasn't. What most authors have are a bachelor degree (often in English), which to me means they have been practicing their language, analysis skills, critical thinking etc, and they are used to producing massive amounts of writing (reports, dissertation etc), and they are also used to reading lots. In addition many authors are former journalists or reporters which again mean they are used to writing, albeit in another form.
I would say that I was self taught, considering I've been writing for a while. Then again, since I'm a day away from being fourteen, I don't know if I'll take classes later on or not. Just plainly going to school has improved some of my grammar, but a lot of what they teach is stuff I've already figured out from reading so often.
brava! which is why i always say that one can become a good writer by simply being a good and constant reader... if one has the talent for it and the ability to learn the skills, formal training in the writing art is not mandatory...
