How to START Writing

There are a million places one can go to learn how to write, to write better, to write a best seller, to write the world’s best business report, the greatest resume, and countless other things.

I will not, and probably could not tell you how to do any of these things. Over the past 53 years of writing, I have written a few good resumes, that and being a moderately pleasantly looking affable white male, have landed more than one job I probably didn’t deserve, but as a rule, I am not what some would call a successful writer.

In fact, my first point is to suggest that the traditional definition of a successful writer is not and never has been a reliable yardstick. First of all, most writers are not published, and most published writers don’t make any money, I mean they earn well under $1000 per year, maybe under $1000 for their entire “career.” Success, in writing, like in most things, means does it accomplish what you intend it to.

So, if you would like to be able to share your thoughts with friends, and maybe leave something for your children and grandchildren to read someday so they can better understand the life you have lived, then I can help you.

If you want to make a million dollars writing, I can help you, too, but not as well. Let’s get the million dollars out of the way first: You can either become the world’s greatest hack writer, (in the old sense of the word), or you can write however you want, and possibly, the odder, the better. Either way, you are going to need to do a lot of things BESIDES write to “succeed” if you write novels, you will need tons of luck. It’s like writing screenplays, for every superstar, there are 1000 writers just as good who did not catch a lucky break, AND have the gumption to take advantage of it properly.

If you can write ABOUT something, food, fashion, health, business, or even, I suppose, writing, though I haven’t made any money at it, you have a better shot at this thing people call success. But often it helps if you work at it backwards. Become wildly famous and successful at doing something, and then start writing about that thing. Ok, I am tired of talking about “writing for success” it bores and frustrates me, and if that is what you want to know, there are slightly less than a million people already writing those pieces. I don’t know if they give much in the way of solid advice. I am pretty sure the best advice about writing for money, is “don’t!”

So now, to talk about what I love, the REAL success of writing is to write something that you appreciate and are proud of, whether you ever persuade a soul to pay you a penny for your efforts or not.

A couple more things to get out of the way. Grammar, spelling and punctuation, and basic storytelling. First the grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I rarely capitalize anything, I punctuate as the spirit moves me, I write one long sentence. Dropping in commas and periods as seems appropriate, but if it was up to me, I wouldn’t use any, most of the time. But if you are a little concerned about your “editing” ability, don’t be. First, it doesn’t matter, and second, Word cleans up almost every mistake you can make, suggests other corrections, so you can look passable if you simply follow its suggestions. The worst problem in this area is using the wrong word, but even that is sometimes caught by todays word processing.

Now, the serious part of editing is storytelling structure, both in word choice, and story arc and believable dialog and a list of other items, if you are trying to be a professional and commercial writer of fiction.  Poetry has always been my favorite form of writing, because if I write something, no one, not even my Ivy League professor of poetry (who actually knows these sorts of things) can tell me I am wrong. Of course, there is bad poetry, but if someone writes a poem, as long as they are happy with it, and especially, as long as they don’t insist you agree that it is “better than Shakespeare,” then it is fine and it succeeds in making the writer feel better!

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