The question I’m asked most often by aspiring writers is how it’s done; my answer is pretty simple: Write… Just write… then write some more. This is expanding on one of the points I made the other day about some of the things that work for me as a writer. And this is in response to a lot of chatter I’ve seen online from people who are frustrated by how slowly everything is progressing in their writing careers.
I think that frustration blooms for a few reasons. For one thing…
Overnight success takes a lifetime. Even for writers.
I said it the other day, and will say it again here. Does anyone really think that Usain Bolt just rolled off the sofa one day and wandered outside to break the world record? Course not. That came after years and years of back-breaking training and a single-minded determination and dedication.
Sure, he was born with an astounding natural gift. But if he hadn’t worked on honing those skills, he would have stayed a “coodabeen champion,” as we call them in Australia. As in, “he could have been a champion.”
Good writing takes time.
It’s no different for writers. Yes, some lucky sods are born with a natural knack for it. But without proper care, an acorn with the potential to grow into a mighty oak will remain just that… an acorn.
I was wondering why it is that people seem to think the literary gods will smile on their creative efforts as a matter of course. There’s an expectation that doesn’t seem to attach itself to most other fields of endeavour.
Imagine you decide you want to learn the violin. The first time you pick up that bow and drag it across the strings, you’ll know that it’s going to be some time before you knock Yoyo Ma off his perch.
Or how about you’ve got it in your head that you’d quite like to be an Olympian and wouldn’t mind having a go at the 100m sprint. Set a stopwatch, do the race, and you’ll see how much work you’ve got ahead of you. There’s no doubt about how far short of the mark you are, because it’s captured there in numbers.
The best writers are magicians. They’ve got the write stuff (Apologies. Last pun. I promise)
Writing is different. Because it’s something many of us do every day. So surely it can’t be that difficult, Right? Wrong.
Many of us also cook dinner every day. But who out there thinks they could run a Michelin starred restaurant? Perhaps that’s different because there are very real skills we see at play there – skills we know we haven’t mastered yet.
But the very best writers hide their skills. They’re Dorothy’s wizard behind the curtain. And they don’t want you to be aware of their tricks, for want of a better word, because that saps the magic out of their performance on the page.
As writers, we keep practising and refining those skills in the hope that, one day, we’ll also master a trick or two. And every time we write, we get better at it. Because literary superstars don’t happen by accident. They get there through hard work and practice. Lots and lots of practice.
In their own words:
Margaret Atwood: ““Let’s speak of [writing] in terms of furniture arranging in your house. You put the sofa there. Hmmm…I dunno, it might look better over here. Hmmm…maybe it’s the wrong sofa. Maybe we could put this sofa upstairs and then this other different one here. Sometimes you take a turn down a corridor and it’s a dead end.” (Bobby Powers)
Salman Rushdie: “The only commitment a writer needs is the commitment of the seat of his pants to the seat of his chair. In other words, just sit down and do your work. Sitting down is really important. Sit down and don’t get up until you’ve written something.” (medium.com)
Zadie Smith: “I rewrite continually, every day, over and over and over. . . . Every day, I read from the beginning up to where I’d got to and just edit it all, and then I move on. It’s incredibly laborious, and toward the end of a long novel it’s intolerable actually.” (Electric Literature)
Tim Winton: “The only way to learn is to keep writing, to make any progress is to keep going. You just have to keep going.” (Penguin Australia)
