More great advice from one of the best reasons to visit Santa Fe: (Hey, Peggy lives there, that’s all we’re sayin’.)
Writing is always a tricky business. It’s the writer’s job to hook the reader without the reader knowing he or she has been hooked. You want the reader to fall in, enjoy the adventure and not be aware of you, the writer, or even the fact they’ve been ‘away’ except for that golden afterglow of reading a truly great story.
This is a reminder to all the writers out there.
When you create a script or a novel or a short story or even something more along the lines of an article you’re not just writing. You’re not just creating an object like a script or a book or a magazine that can be held in someone’s hands.
It’s easy to talk about craft and grammar and spelling and all the little how-tos and don’t-dos when thinking about and discussing writing. And it’s easy to skip over the more simple things a writer needs to keep in mind or do or both. The more general concepts you kind of have to get into your head and keep there.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. A writer has to read and write – a lot. You have to love it. You have to pretty much think about it when you’re not doing it. You must do both. The more you write the better you write. The more you read the better you write. If you read some bad writing it’s a great lesson in what not to do. Great writing gives you great tips on what you should do. Quite simply they go hand in hand. If you don’t have time to read then forget the writing.
Well, all our non-writer friends are always saying that what we do isn’t work, right? So it must be play.
Especially for Peggy because she always, you know, makes it look so damn easy…
Having been a writer over the course of years, I’ve learned many lessons. So, I thought I’d share some of them with fellow writers and at the same time give readers a glimpse into the writer’s life.
Here’s the thing. A writing life is a great life. BUT, some additional planning needs to go in to it above and beyond what working at say an office or a store or another profession might require. I mean, stuff happens.
And, when it happens, you’re a self-employed indie with few resources other than the ones you’ve prepared and planned on. If you’re ‘laid off’, i.e. can’t get a writing gig at the moment, you don’t have unemployment. You also no doubt don’t have health insurance. Some writers take the route of having an outside job for money as well as benefits, but if you are exclusively an Indie, welllll….. you need to plan for the down times.