The Professional Writer: Practicing Your Writing

Hi Folks,

First, a housekeeping note. If any of you want any of my nonfiction books on writing, poetry collections, or fiction, you can get them all for 1/2 price today and tomorrow at Smashwords. To see what’s available, just visit My Smashwords Page, scroll down, make your selections and check out. You can purchase Kindle, Nook/Apple or PDF files all in one place at Smashwords. Now let’s get down to business.

Writing is the only profession in which we believe we don’t have to practice.
Of course, that’s nonsense.

How will you get better if you don’t practice? And stumble. And fall. And get up and dust off your knees and practice some more.

Far too many aspiring writers believe that once they know how to form a sentence and a paragraph, well… that’s pretty much all there is to know about writing. It isn’t. They believe anyone who isn’t completely illiterate can be a writer. They can’t. They can write things, certainly, like grocery lists and emails and (maybe) coherent Christmas letters, but they can’t be a writer. That’s like an aspiring med student believing he’s ready to be wield a scalpel and perform intricate surgery because only last Thanksgiving he used a case knife to butter a roll. If you wannabe a surgeon, you have to study and learn the intricacies of the body, and especially the part you hope to cut on someday. If you wannabe a writer, you should have to study and learn the intricacies and nuances and rhythms of the language. Then you should practice and then you should practice some more. Folks, the Soup Sandwich is just as sloppy in literature as it is on the operating table. No surgeon who’s worth a plug nickel ever uttered the words, “That’s good enough.” Neither has any writer who’s worth a flip. Nor has any writer who’s worthy of being called a writer ever uttered the first cousin of “good enough”: “Well, the reader will know what I mean.”

I realize most aspiring writers call themselves writers, but I just can’t bring myself to do that. Why? Because most of the time They Don’t Write. Most of the time they do other things, some of which are related peripherally to writing (research, meeting with writers’ groups, editing, etc.), but most of which are not (sleeping, shopping, dining, watching TV, chatting) and other things that “take priority” over writing. Yep, there’s that P word again. Like all important things in life, whether or not you’re a writer really is all a matter of priorities. Writers write. Aspiring writers talk about writing and want to write and plan to write and will write… but by and large, they don’t write.

And even when aspiring writers eventually get around to actually putting new words on the page, they go into it with the preconcieved notion that what they’re putting on the page is “only a rough draft.” They expect what they’re writing will require several rewrites so that it reads exactly like everything else they’ve ever read in the genre. Then they will insist (without the slightest regard for whether it’s fine as-is) that it “has to be edited” until it’s bland enough to look like an average term paper, sans citations.

(Note: A good copyeditor—someone who will catch your problems without changing your voice and will explain every edit when asked—is worth his weight in gold. A poor editor, one who doesn’t know what s/he’s talking about, should be put in stocks and flogged in the public square.)

And once the aspiring writer has rewritten the piece the magic number of times and once it’s been “professionally edited,” even if by someone who hasn’t a clue what s/he’s doing as an editor, it’s pronounced Good Enough (insert reverse sign of the cross here, dominoes, monopoly, cat feces, amen) and either sent off to an agent or “traditional” publisher or it’s self-published. (Sadly, at this point many fall victim to scam publishers who promise, for only a Few Thousand Dollars, to publish their wonderful novel and provide a website with only a small monthly maintenance fee. Ugh.) Now at this point, the aspiring writer has become an Author and it’s time to “promote” the work in question, which, of course, keeps him or her from writing anything new. Hey, when you’re looking for a reason not to write, any port in a storm, right? Then again, if you’re looking for a reason not to write… hmm… maybe you’re not a writer.

Now let’s talk about professional writers. They’re like professionals in any other profession. They practice. Professional golfers golf, right? Professional carpenters make things. Professional mechanics work on stuff until it’s running again. Professional doctors fix people. And professional writers write. They practice their craft. They do all the other normal things that most people have to do during any particular day. They all do the routine stuff like eating and bathing and checking the mail and playing with the dog, and they all do the less-routine life tasks like taking care of elderly parents or teaching a writing seminar or going to their day job. And then they write. They practice their craft. They practice their profession. Practicing is inherent in their work ethic, just as it is for the golfer or the carpenter or the mechanic or the doctor. There it is. Plain and simple.

Okay, so let’s apply it personally. It’s easy for me to say this because I’m writing a short story every week, right? Okay. But most times I write more than one short story per week, plus this blog (usually around 750 words) plus a new nonfiction title I’m working on (tentatively titled How to Create a Stunning Ebook Cover in a Half-Hour) plus three enclosed short story series (all the stories are about one topic, already set) plus a post-apocalyptic novel.

Now I’m not saying you have to do all that. But if you’re a writer, I do hope you’ll spend some time practicing your craft every day, or at least five days a week (as with any other profession). How many hours you choose to put in is up to you, but remember, if you’re a lawyer, you probably practice the law without giving it much thought. It’s just what you do. If you’re an auto mechanich or a doctor or a plumber, same thing; you probably practice your craft routinely. Same goes for writing. If you’re a writer, write!

Hope this helps. ‘Til next time, keep writing!

Harvey