Writing Advice

Writing is a passion of mine, and my personal way to cope with anything I can't bring myself to say out loud to anyone else, whether it's through writing little stories or short poems--writing just makes life a little easier to hold when you have an interpretation to tag along with it.

So, to my fellow writers, I thought I could share a few tips on getting words to meet the page.

Thinking about writing is far easier than actually writing, trust me I know. But, beautiful minds deserve to be expressed externally. It's easy to procrastinate and say to yourself that if you think about it long enough then it'll be even better when you begin to write it, right? No. Not really. One word after the other is how you do it, and yes it may be hard to even read what you've written but after awhile you get the hang of it. The best start in beginning to write is simple as much as it is hard: honesty.

Expressing yourself as much as you can without barriers is the best and quickest way for your writing to be equally good and most of all original. As they all say, no one knows you better than you know yourself, and when you open the gates of your mind to expression, you begin to learn that. All the words you need are up there somewhere even if you have to sort through a bunch of crap paragraphs to find them.

"Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way." - Ray Bradbury

Reading! Yes I know, it can be a long and dull process for some, but a book can lend you more than you know.

With frequent reading comes the flow of writing and easier access to intuition. Diving into other worlds of fiction, or real worlds in which history had taken place and mattered enough to be documented advances the inner world. It teaches us as we enjoy the words we read, the placement of punctuation, and the correct way to evoke feeling in the reader. A good book ignites inspiration and understanding. Even if you don't read often, I recommend you grab a quick read of something you believe will be of worthy of your time, and look; observe the flow of words from the author, what is their style, how do they speak, what are the characters like? As honesty gets you far, knowledge can grant you wishes, and sometimes looking at someone else's writing can show you what you need to fix in your own.

"You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write." - Annie Proulx