If you’re starting out on the path to becoming a writer, here are three ideas that might help.
- Read widely in your chosen genre. Read for enjoyment the first time (read as a reader) but the second time through, read as a writer.
Read as a writer
Make notes as you go, recording your feelings and thoughts at different stages. Try and work out how the author caused you to think and feel those things. And how it served the story.
- Become your own editor: leave what you’ve written for 3 weeks and then go back to it. It’s likely you’ll see it with fresh eyes and easily pick out what’s working and what’s not working in your piece.
- Write as much as you can as regularly as you can. Put the time in. You will learn through doing.
Write when you can
Forgive yourself if it falls by the wayside – we have busy lives – but pick up again from where you left off and as far as possible, as Isaak Dinesen said, write ‘without hope, without despair’.
