Practice, Practice, Practice!

We expect musicians, for example, to have to do a lot of practicing in order to develop their talents. Why not writers?

As writers, we all find that we have a ton of drivel in us and if we will do a lot of practice writing, we'll get a lot of that out of us before we try to write for publication. I also believe that we learn by doing and nothing teaches us about writing like trying to put on paper the storylines that are floating around in our heads.

Nothing will teach us about the problems of plot and characterization like actually writing a story. In that way alone will we encounter the various problems that arise and have to solve them.

Reading a lot will show us what plot devices and other attributes of writing are overdone or fall flat. Practicing our writing will show us whether we can still use those things and perhaps give them a fresh twist, or whether they still fall flat no matter what we try.

I think, too, that practicing writing will show us what weaknesses we have. Do we overexplain and thereby kill suspense? Do we attempt to compensate for our own personality problems by creating perfect characters who do everything right all the time? Do we get carried away with creating excitement and adventure on every page because we like those things and don't realize that lulls in the action provide a needed counterpoint?

There is a lot to writing and practice shows us what we need to improve and what we do well already. It helps us get the ideas that have been done to death out of our system and also the tendancy to preach and the tendancy to include a lot of autobiographical material and the tendancy to overexplain. We see if we overuse certain words or phrases if we find them in every paragraph when we read back through what we've already written. We find out if we have a weakness in grammar or spelling. We find that skimpy research and planning simply aren't adequate to support a good story. We also learn if we tend to spend all our time researching and planning and never get around to writing the story.

There is much to be learned from writing a lot, even without someone to help guide and teach us as we go along. So practice, practice, practice!!