Quick tip
This
post is going to be based off a lecture given by Brandon Sanderson at BYU. I am
only going to mention a few things since I want to keep it short but if you are
interested in hearing the entire lecture (and more) go to youtube and look up
Brandon Sanderson Lectures on Writing. They are great! Okay now to get to the
tip.
What is
writing about? When I was younger I thought I was a pretty good writer with a
lot of natural talent (I have since wised up a bit). Now I believe writing is
more like singing. You can have natural talent and once in a great while you
get the person with a killer voice who drinks milk all the time and never warms
up but usually the great signers are great because they practiced (yes that
wonderful word everyone loves). But it's true. Brandon gives the metaphor that
when a pianist sits down to play you can usually tell within a few minutes how accomplished
they are. He goes on to say that editors can do the same thing with your
writing. They can read one page and have a fairly accurate idea of how good you
are at writing. This is because writing is more like a performance art, meaning
it takes a great deal of practice to sit down to your computer and type a novel
with a solid plot and intriguing characters.
Brandon
also says that writing is not about ideas, inspiration, or even luck (luck
mostly applies to getting published). Ideas are a very good thing but Brandon
points out that the best writers can take a terrible idea and write a brilliant
novel out of it. And the worst writers can do the opposite with a great idea.
Focus more on developing your skill in writing instead of break through ideas.
Your best billion dollar idea will be in the half off shelf (If it gets
published at all) if you can't properly portray it.
Brandon goes on to say that
writing is not about inspiration because even though everyone has moments of
inspiration there are many times where you don't feel like your work is at all
inspired. You just sit and write and it feels almost forced but you do it
because you know it's what you have to do. You also have moments where you feel
like you are on fire and the writing flows almost faster than your fingers can
type. However at the end of the day, after you have done some basic editing, no
one will be able to tell the difference between the two.
He also
mentions some other ways to work toward getting published but I will not go
into that now. Suffice it to say that getting published has little (if
anything) to do with luck.
So what
is writing about? Yep, you guessed it, practice!
Thanks
for reading. As always, feel free to comment in the section below and I would
love advice and suggestions on the subjects I cover.
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