A Struggling Writer
Professors as Writers - A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing by Robert Boice
Boice does not address this, that we are doing something with our beings by writing, and that in some may we must allow external change as well as just this habit of changing our writing practise.
Of course I write this from the standpoint of a completely unsuccessful writer: I have a good habit of doing 10 minutes of spontaneous writing each morning, weekdays, but the generative habit, and indeed any kind of writing that leads to someone else reading it are almost non-existent.
Twenty years ago the book that got me scribbling was Wild Mind -- Living the Writer's Life by Natalie Goldberg ...
But wait, there was something a few days ago in the video on electric geology, that had someone as having said get out into it, walk in the nature. What is this for the writers? Conversation or the movement of the cars on the streets?
What I think I am writing about is that I have unique problems that others have not even dreamt about, which is obviously a really sneaky nasty excuse. I'm sure all sorts of slimeballs have used it. I just need to be writing more ...
My advice to young writers (as a very unsuccessful writer) is READ-READ-READ! Read everything you can get your hands on and you will absorb it and a style will come forth. You can't "learn" how to write. Robert Mitchum said of learning how to act: "It's like going to school to become tall."
I took a creative writing class in college by a prof that had written a book. I read it and it was TERRIBLE! You could tell that he had never experienced any of the things he tried to write about. That's my other bit of advice... Experience all you can and tell YOUR story!
Thank's for replying.
What would your advice be to an older struggling writer? I've got to the stage where I'm preferring more to re-read, although there's a lot of books I haven't got around to get.
I'm an old writer as well, so I would say given that you may not have as long as you might like left...read the classics and pay particular attention to the style. Depending of course on whatever genre you're wanting to write. Currently I'm working on a horror story and I've read a lot of Stephen King (not a great writer but a superb storyteller) also H.P. Lovecraft... I love his style, if not his choice of subject matter. For poetry, the greats. My favorite is Alfred Noyes (the Highwayman)... his style gets me.
So I would say pick a genre- pick a few greats within it and focus on style.