Read good writing, and don’t live in the present. And you might get those magical perfect passages if you write a lot, including all the stuff that isn’t magic that has to be cut, rethought, revised, fact-checked, and cleaned up.ģ) Read. Well, some things almost are, but they’re freaks.
There is such thing as too much revision-I’ve seen things that were amazing in the 17 th version get flattened out in the 23 rd-but nothing is born perfect. Typing is this little transaction in the middle of two vast thoughtful processes. Write bad stuff because the road to good writing is made out of words and not all of them are well-arranged words.Ģ) Remember that writing is not typing. Thinking, researching, contemplating, outlining, composing in your head and in sketches, maybe some typing, with revisions as you go, and then more revisions, deletions, emendations, additions, reflections, setting aside and returning afresh, because a good writer is always a good editor of his or her own work. Maybe at the outset you’ll be like a toddler-the terrible twos are partly about being frustrated because you’re smarter than your motor skills or your mouth, you want to color the picture, ask for the toy, and you’re bumbling, incoherent and no one gets it, but it’s not only time that gets the kid onward to more sophistication and skill, it’s effort and practice. But start small: write a good sentence, then a good paragraph, and don’t be dreaming about writing the great American novel or what you’ll wear at the awards ceremony because that’s not what writing’s about or how you get there from here.
Write what you most passionately want to write, not blogs, posts, tweets or all the disposable bubblewrap in which modern life is cushioned.
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