The Art of Writing

The art of writing fiction can be a meditation in process. Whether you are writing a piece based on someone else’s story-line, or writing because a story or character appeals to you, the process is the same. At its best, the words pour out onto the page because you have delved deep into your soul where all your experiences and the feelings engendered by those experiences are stored. When you are in this place, the feelings you need to express are there, waiting for you to tap into them. This all happens beneath the conscious level. What comes out is the words.
One famous writer has quipped that writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down in front of the keyboard every day, and open a vein. The process goes better though, when you are able to find a good artery.

Whether you are writing because your protagonist will not let you stop until you have told his story, or because a situation strikes you as having good story potential, the processes may start at opposite ends of the spectrum, but by the time you have finished you will have covered all of them. Sooner or later, the character driven story needs to come to a conclusion, and then it must be pruned, which scenes promote the story and carry it forward, and which ones might be nice, but not necessary. And, just what hurdle does the protagonist have to cross before he reaches that peak moment - that place where you know that whether for good or bad, everything has been resolved.

On the other hand, the writer of the plot driven story must identify with his protagonist to such an extent, that it becomes just as much alive to him as the people he lives with. The process is at its best when the writer can feel and express the pain when the protagonist is hurt, and then express the surprise and pleasure he experiences when something unexpectedly good comes his way. In truth, there is no right or wrong way to write a book. A situation may intrigue you enough that you want to explore it to its fullest extent. At that point, a character may begin to speak to you. So, you sit down to write about this character within that situation, and the more you write, the more you feel you know that character, and the more you want to know about him or her. He isn’t you in that sense of the word, but parts of you are certainly in him.

The act of writing is simple; you set aside a certain time every day where you sit down in a quiet space and you do not get up until you have covered a given number of pages with words. A famous writer once quipped that yes, writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down in front of your keyboard and cut open a vein. Personally, I have found that arteries work better, as they come straight from the heart. For an editor the process is the same. You sit down every day with a given number of pages, and you do not get up until they are done. You do this every working day. And when a paying job is not in front of you, you write ads to go in all the directories you can find for them. And, you compose articles for your website, revising articles and posting them, finding good places to link, and places that will link back with your site. And the job never ends. However, there is always something new to learn, because someone will ask you to write an article or a book in a way that is different from anything you have done before.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 8:12 am and is filed under Freelance Writing, Writing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.