Writing Tips for Beginners: For The Love Of The Craft

So, you want to write. To that I say welcome to the madness that is the writer’s club. Like all good creative professions writing is filled with as much triumph as it is heartache. Characters live. Characters die. Good ideas come and go. You will often feel like you’re in a race between getting your ideas down on paper and them floating out into oblivion.

Not everything you write will be a testament to your creative genius and language prowess, but when your work is good it will blow even your mind.

But how do we get to that point where everything we write is golden?

Simple answer is: Practice. Write a lot. Write every day. Write for 30 minutes. Write a page. Practice describing random things. This is the only way you will get better. You have to, have to keep doing it.

When Stephen King was asked how he writes his stories, his answer was startling and brilliant in its simplicity. He didn’t go into a whole long diatribe about blending inspiration, imagination, and politics. All he said was he writes his stories, “one word at a time.”

That statement has become my favorite on writing and one of my favorite quotes of all time. It’s a simple universal truth about everything ever written. One word at a time. It’s the same technique used by Shakespeare, Poe, and Anne Rice. It’s the same one you’re going to use.

See? Easy already.

Hopefully, you’re already an avid reader. If you are, you will already be familiar with some of the things we’re going to talk about. If you’re not, writing life is a going to be little more difficult for you. As Stephen King says, “If you don’t have time read, you have neither the time nor the tools to write.”

Please, take a moment to make a note to self. Not all of these techniques will work for you. These are techniques that myself and writing friends use as well as some authors I’ve had the pleasure of hearing in panels.

I say that to say this. Experiment. There is one thing anyone in any creative field shouldn’t be. Afraid. Take the ideas in this book and use them, twist them, and break them until you find your style, until you find a technique that makes writing as easy as breathing.

All I want to do is give you exposure to some ideas you may not know and give you different ways to apply what you do know. From there the bus is all yours.

So, I hope you’re feeling better and more confident about this literary journey we’re about to embark on.