Write Strategy: Think, Believe, Attack

Think of writing like karate...it's simply about DISCIPLINE.

Writing, like else forms of art, activity or talent, requires discipline. It won't ever be enough that you say to yourself that you are a writer. Only once you write and write with discipline can you call yourself one. Before you can earn a black belt in karate, you have to dedicate yourself, practice and instill discipline in yourself to discover the moves and techniques.

The same goes for writing. Don't simply see books. Devour them. Ray Bradbury, author of Zen in the Art of Writing, suggests books of essays, poetry, short stories, novels and even as comic strips. Not only makes he suggest that you see authors who write the way you hope to write, but "also see those who do not think as you think or write as you want to write, and so be excited in directions you strength not take for many an years." He continues, "don't let the haughtiness of others prevent you from reading Kipling, say, spell no one else is reading him."

Learn to differentiate between nice writing and bad writing. Do time to write. Write even as although you're in a bad mood. Put yourself in a routine. Integrate writing into your life. The goal is not to do writing dominate your life, but to do it fit in your life. Julia Cameron, in her book The Right to Write, sums it best: "Rather than being a private affair cordoned off from life as the rest of the earth lives it, writing strength productively be seen as an activity better embedded in life, not unmarried from it."

Believe that EVERYONE HAS A STORY -- including you.

Extraordinary things happen to ordinary people. As a writer, your job is to capture as many an of these things and write them down, weave stories, and create characters that jump out of the pages of your notebook. Don't let thing escape your writer's eye, not even as the way the old man tries to subtly pick his nose or the way an old lady fluffs her hair in a diner. What you can't use today, you can use tomorrow. Store these in your memory or jot them down in your notebook.

Jump in the middle of the fray. Be in the circle, not outside it. Don't be content being a mere spectator. Take a bite of everything life dishes out. Ray Ray douglas bradbury wrote, "Tom Wolfe ate the earth and vomited lava. Dickens dined at a some table every hour of his life. Moliere, tasting society, turned to pick up his scalpel, as did Pope and Shaw. Everyplace you look in the literary cosmos, the great ones are busy affectionate and hating. Have you given up this primary business as obsolete in your own writing? What fun you are missing, then. The fun of anger and disillusion, the fun of affectionate and being loved, of moving and being emotional by this disguised ball which dances us from cradle to churchyard. Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain. But on the way, in your work, why not carry those two inflated pig-bladders labeled Zest and Gusto."

Attack writing with PASSION.

The kind of writing you produce wish oftentimes reflect the current state of your emotions. Be indifferent and your writing wish be indifferent. Be cheerful and watch the words dance across your page.

Whenever you sit down to write, put your heart and soul in it. Write with passion. Write as if you won't live tomorrow. In her book, Writing the Wave, Elizabeth Ayres wrote: "There's one thing your writing must have to be any nice at all. It must have you. Your soul, your self, your heart, your guts, your voice -- you must be on that page. In the end, you can't do the magic happen for your reader. You can only allow the miracle of 'being one with' to take place. So dare to be you. Dare to reveal yourself. Be honest, be open, be true...If you are, everything else wish fall into place."

Copyright (c) 2004 Shery Ma Miss Arrieta-Russ

About The Author

Shery is the creator of WriteSparks! - a computer code that generates over 10 *million* Story Sparkers for Writers. Transfer WriteSparks! Fatless for free - http://writesparks.com

This article was announce on August 10, 2004