At The Write Practice, we publish a new article each day designed to help writers tackle one part of their writing journey, from generating ideas to grammar to writing and publishing your first book. Each article has a short practice exercise at the end to help you immediately put your learning to use.
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How do you continue believing you have a message worth telling, when no one seems to want to listen?
How do you justify all the hours spent alone working on your craft, when the rapidly slamming doors all seem to say, “Keep your day job!”
I’ve wrestled with these doubts for years. If you have too, I’m honored that I have the opportunity to help you ease this frustration and amplify your message.
Some days, writing is easy. The words flow effortlessly and quickly. You walk away feeling a sense of accomplishment and pride.
Other days, writing is hard. Each sentence takes time, making it onto the page in fits and starts. You do what you can and contemplate deleting it all in the end.
So why do we write? What is the most satisfying part of writing—that part that brings you back to the computer or paper time after time, no matter how challenging the process feels?
If you critique other writers work, your own writing improves. Everyone knows that.
But can critiquing make you a better person?
In my experience, it can!
I recently read a novel that bugged me. It took me about a hundred pages to realize why.
Many of the scenes were no longer than a few paragraphs. They felt rushed and not fully imagined by the author. Worse, most of the shortest scenes were flashbacks which added to the jumpy, disconnected feel to the story.
How long should scenes be in a novel or memoir?
A few days ago, I got an email from a Write Practice regular who said she had recently gotten a job writing a weekly column and was expanding her freelance writing business. “The Write Practice, and it’s great community, have been a big part of that,” she said. “I’ve learned skills and gained confidence that have been invaluable.”
It’s good to hear feedback like this. Sometimes I wonder, “Does The Write Practice really work? Are we making a difference?”
Writers are in constant struggle to come up with the new and unique. Keeping our long history and language boundaries in mind, this is no easy task and only adds more to the daily doses of writers’ anxiety. It’s especially true in moments when you’ve just had “the idea” – the one you were convinced was radically new – and after a quick research you realized it’s as old as your town square.
Thankfully, there are many ways to be ‘new’. Form, style, topic, voice – all these matter; however, sometimes only one of them will do.
There have been too many days when I didn’t know what to write about. I sat here waiting… waiting… waiting, but nothing came to me.
I used to think that some mornings I just wasn’t meant to write anything. Inspiration did not visit me, and instead I wasted hours drinking cold coffee while staring blankly at my computer screen.
Well, frankly, that sucked. So I started something new.
The scene’s clear in your head. The characters are running around creating drama, making their own lives difficult but yours easier with every passing word. Until you realize you don’t know the name of that brown-eyed beauty and her Prince Charming lacks an identity of his own.
I attended my sister’s college graduation this weekend. Traveling back to my own alma mater, drinking in the springtime air and clusters of brightly blooming flowers, the buzz of excitement and energy, was good for the soul.
But it also made me think about those times in life—like graduation—that are simply bittersweet. The good comes with the not-so-good. Reaching a new point means letting go of what’s come before.
And it made me ponder why writing about bittersweet moments is so good, so deliciously satisfying.
A few years ago I taught at a high school with a strong Arts program. At the end of the school year, the fruits of students’ labour were put up for sale in a silent auction. I remember walking through the room, mouth agape and eyes bulging in awe of the talent I saw.
Later in the staff room a colleague and I, both of us English teachers, both aspiring authors, were fawning over the accomplishments of our students and I remember saying, “I wish I had talent like that.” My colleague assured me that I did. When I protested that I couldn’t even draw a wiggly line, she said to me, “You’re an artist; you paint word pictures.”
It was a moment of epiphany, one that’s stayed with me to this day.
