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Words, Words, Words: The Power of Language
Writing is a tool of communication in which we express ourselves through carefully chosen words and genres – with conventions that we follow (or break – depending on where you stand) – to get across whatever message we want to get across. It is also, as a tool, more efficient in terms of how we can structure our messages – one can see how evident we develop our arguments through writing, how deep we can bring it, how effectively we can express ourselves. It’s different from speech because speech is spontaneous, prone to fillers, and to slips of the tongue. Writing should then, ideally, be an effective form of communication.…
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Brick by Brick: The Value of Writing Exercises
If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health. – Hippocrates Exercise can easily be defined as something one has to do in order to improve oneself in a particular area. That sounds rather broad, so to put it into perspective, we do physical exercise in order to keep fit and healthy, we exercise proper hygiene in order to stay clean, we exercise discipline in order to keep our lives and our affairs in order. And, of course, if we are writers, we have a few exercises we perform to…
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What’s the Next Step?: Knowing What to Do With Your Writing
So you’re done with writing your piece. What next? The answer may sound easy, but the path that you undertake to get to wherever you want to get definitely isn’t. There are a lot of options that you can choose from after finishing your piece (for the sake of this article, let us assume that it is your first draft). It is important that you should know what your options are, and where these may lead you. There is one very, very important step that you should go through, though, regardless of what you plan to do with your piece: Leave your work alone for a while. Well, it is an option, although it doesn’t sound like something…
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Critical Concerns: Taking and Giving Criticism in Writing
Criticism is a difficult thing to take, sometimes, especially if you’re particularly proud of the piece you’ve written. The basic thing to understand, though, is that not everyone will be pleased by what you’ve done, and often people will pick out one small detail they find negative in your piece and focus on that, eventually overshadowing and overriding any – and perhaps all – meritorious things that your piece has. It’s pretty difficult, as well, to criticize, especially if you know the effects of criticism or if you’re not entirely confident that your critique is value-adding. To be an effective writer and critic, though, you must look at the piece…
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Solitary Confinement: Making People Understand the Writer’s Needs
I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. – Henry David Thoreau Making art, in general, is a solitary process, and we have established that several times in previous posts. It’s an experience as individual as eating – you are a self-contained unit as an artist, and while you are encouraged to show your work to others so that you can defend it and improve it, taking other people’s pieces of advice is not required. And this is probably one of the reasons why artists – in our context, writers – lock themselves up in their rooms for ridiculously long periods of time, possibly ignoring fundamental needs…
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Chasing Dreams: The Importance of Inspiration
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. – Jack London The quote from Jack London seems terrifyingly aggressive, but rather fitting. Artists of all kinds – writers, musicians, and painters, to name a few – often owe much of their work to muses, or inspirations. And inspiration comes in all shapes, sizes, and forms, often elusive, often ephemeral, always hitting you in the head when it comes and drilling an idea that festers under your skin until you actually work on it. And the argument is that inspiration comes when it comes – which, as the quote has already pointed out, can be…
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Keeping Focus In Writing
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Keeping Focus In Writing
Writers have the interesting – sometimes productive, sometimes just plain bad – habit of thinking of a lot of ideas that can be penned down and used for later. In other words, really, there are a million worlds running through a writer’s head, and they’re just dying to be written. It’s fun, of course, especially if you go through a rather productive brainstorming session when you’re looking for a new project to work on. It’s a blessing when you’re looking for those ideas. It’s a curse when you’re midway through a story idea and something else tries to grab your attention. While it’s not necessarily wrong to juggle several writing projects at…
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The Importance of Writing Breaks
It’s pretty easy to get carried away when it comes to writing. A lot of authors agree that writing is a largely solitary act, one that hinges prominently on the writer and what the writer knows – or is trying to make up – and how the writer can deliver these pieces of knowledge. Of course, the idea of co-authorship or interpretation comes into play, when the reader steps in. But before that part of the process, the writer has to focus on actually writing. The tendency, then, is to keep the self isolated from all forms of distracting activity, people, or an environment that’s not conducive to writing. At…
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Dreams and Nightmares: So Your Dream Job Is Writing
British author Tim Lott wrote an article for website The Guardian, and the piece is his reaction to a poll that says that 60% of Britons want to be an author (you can find Lott’s article here). Now, no writer – whether published or unpublished – needs to be told that writing is not as fun as it seems. It’s the kind of thing that is both fun and arduous, by turns liberating, sometimes limiting, frustrating, and suffocating. Writers know this kind of feeling, being torn between wanting to write and wanting to throw the laptop out of the window and forever get rid of an idea that refuses to be tamed. Also,…
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Why Even Write?
It’s a question all writers come to, at a certain point in life. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re published, or from where you’re coming, or what your day job is or how positive the people around you are. At some point, a writer starts questioning himself or herself. Why do I write? What’s the point? Stories that seemed incredibly brilliant at the start begin dragging on the more you write. Characters start feeling two-dimensional, as if your writing does not give them any justice – or even a semblance of. Events go downhill, plot twists start feeling contrived, and you’re just stuck in a bog and you don’t…
