Some Advice for the Would Be Writer

So you wake up one day, dust off that best selling novel all the reading ladies in your life have been raving about, and find it’s cliche garbage. You’re not even sure what cliche means, but you’re damn sure you could write better than that and make God knows how many million dollars sitting on your couch in your underwear. Then you realize you’re in your underwear now. What was stopping you?

Try the blank page. That treaded spawn from the ninth circle of hell blank page. What do you write? How do you make things witty? Witty? What kind of half cuckold whore spawn of a word is that?

First things first, write. I know, the obvious answer is obvious or something equally cliche. Try it nonetheless. Just start writing the first thing that comes to mind. Get that first sentence on paper, and bask in its glory.

Good! Now, step number two. Keep writing, and yes, I get it, another line in the log of Captain Obvious in his tight pants. When you write that first sentence, don’t you dare stand up. Don’t check your twitter feed or post a horrible idiotic statement like “I just wrote my first sentence in my masterpiece LOLs #Blond Writers”. No water! Die of hunger if you have to. Just keep writing. You stop, and you turn into that fat kid trying to run long distance who walks every five steps. You’ll never start again.

Keep that momentum. Wrestle it to the ground hog tie that chimera, and beat it into submission before drowning it in molten lead. Bonus points if you know what I’m referencing

Now the third step, having something worth writing about. Your average nerf herder may think you need something to write about before you splash your word vomit on to a page which is why they’re herding imaginary space goats on the edge of a fake universe. Call this step number two point five and four quarters: start practicing writing now no matter how horrid. You will improve.

That said, there is another part to this step. You might make a fabulous, drop dead gorgeous, die for a taste piece of literature, but if you run out of topics after your fourth paragraph you’ll burn off your wings faster than Icarus on the Hindenburg. So how do you have something worth saying and thus writing?

This step requires its own blog post or more accurately a host of books and endless parade of scholars spouting endless wisdom on the topic. Put simply, you need to be an interesting and better person. If you’re interesting then your writing, with practice, will be too.

How do you become interesting you ask? There are many ways, but let’s simplify it into two categories. Very loose and broad categories mind, but this is a short blog post so we got to make this fast like Montezuma's swift revenge after partaking of the forbidden fruit known as street tacos.

First type of growth toward the fascinating man comes from experience. This one is the more tempting quick fix pyramid scheme style option that many a young lad has fallen for in the house of the rising sun. Now, it’s not all bad. You should gain experience in life to make it worth living in general, but most young chaps use this as an excuse to never work on their writing or just get plastered every night and call it “experience”.

In this category I would say the best kind of experience comes from learning a craft and mastering it. This takes time and hard work. Most people despise both, and so go the drug destructive route. Now I won’t say that can’t work, but I don’t recommend it. Your mind as a writer is your most important asset so don’t destroy it boys. Remember that whatever experience you have will color how you write.

The second type of life development for interesting writing comes from reading, and reading more than your brain can cram after taking four cans of redbull. I don’t just mean random reading either though most any reading will help. If you haven’t guessed I’m talking about reading the classics, not what’s considered the modern classics, but the books with the ideas that have shaped our culture.

This is going to get meta boys so don’t let Beatrice out of sight as we guide through this little inferno. I’m sure you’ve noticed whenever I do that. In that past sentence I could have written something cliche like “hang on to your hats” or “rough seas ahead”, but instead I made my own referencing Dante’s Inferno.

See the fun thing about English, and its connection to Western Culture is the fact that we get to feed off thousands of years of other people's experience and knowledge passed down to us. At the beginning of this post you might have caught my line about the ninth circle of hell. That was another reference to old Dante as well. I was able to not only avoid tired pros, but also reinforce the fact that blank pages suck like hell but not just hell. The circle of hell where Lucifer himself rests flapping his wings trapped forever in a frozen pit constantly chewing on Judas Iscariot the betrayer himself. 

Yep, that’s what old Dante put in his ninth circle. We get that very idea of nine levels in hell from Dante’s Inferno. Now why is that important besides just a tool to be witty? Books, essays, and writing in general is a way to almost download experiences, concepts, themes, and knowledge from people with far more interesting lives than your own. People who have thought, and experimented for centuries. All their triumphs, failures, proverbs, all what human history and knowledge can be found in writing.

Not only do we benefit personally from such gratifying works, which remember the more fascinating man of mystery we become the more our works will rise from the crowd faster than you can scream Spartacus, but as you read you’ll learn faster more efficient ways to communicate not to mention more and more themes to explore. Some of this comes from sheer exposure to the giants of our past, but that isn’t the only benefit.

If I say the word “Spartan” what comes to mind? A whole world just erupted in your mind as you imagine anything as simple as a warrior cloaked in scarlet to King Leonnidas facing the Persian hordes. A few might even feel posh enough to mention the adjective “spartan” or the Greeks in general maybe even Pericles who led Athens against Sparta. All that from a single word.

That’s the kind of power you can wield after only scratching the surface of the pillars of Western Civilization. Of course, you don’t have to stop there. Eastern Civilization has plenty to offer as well as tribal stories from cultures from around the world just remember to know your audience. To many obscure references they have to stop reading to look up is another speed bump of death before the roadblock of boredom. 

Now, the last aspect may have been missed, but you also need to become a better person. The more you understand morals, life, personalities, knowledge, and the plethora of concepts that have been gifted us from everyone from Aristotle to Shakespear the more the deeper themes in your writing will improve.

This of course is the Holy Grail that we seek. Understanding literature is more than structuring your writing; it's adding to the human experience. The hope that one day your writing can add the Halls of Valhalla. The silent cacophony of endless souls crying out to be heard from the past. Writing is that way that you take a snapshot of life, wisdom, and experience of time that you live, and pass it on to future generations. A privilege and a responsibility that should never be squandered. 

That doesn’t even scratch the surface of the matter, but if I could somehow immerse you into wisdom and all its mysteries I would need to write endless books and blog posts. A task that even Atlas would shrink from. Besides countless other more talented, and better men have already done it so get reading. 

On that note, let’s recap the best methods for putting all those Twilight writer wannabes on notice for their chicken scratch they refer to as writing. To start, get that first sentence down on paper, and don’t stop writing. Then remember no matter how poor a writer you are, start writing now and practice till your keyboard shatters or you pencil crumbles.

While you practice remember to read the pillars of literature from a Tale of Two Cities to old Tolkien himself, and don’t forget to search out meaningful experiences while preserving your mind. Do these things, and watch that perfection mindset kick in.

Writing like anything else is an art, science, and most of all a massive amount of hard work. Good luck lads, and get out there and start living and writing.

Thanks for reading!

If you want more on writing click here.

If you want to read some quick fiction click here.

And if you want to try something completely different click here.