It’s Wednesday, time for
another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears
to the world – or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If
you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up.
We’ve all heard the old
saying which has been attributed to Somerset Maugham, ‘There are three rules
for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’ Well someone
ought to tell that to the modern writing gurus because in the last few years
there’s been an explosion of ‘how to write’ bloggers, books, articles
and websites.
“Throughout your
MYSTERIOUS AND WONDERFUL AND OCCASIONALLY MISERABLE ART JOURNEY, you will meet
many naysayers, and you will be given enough advice that, if you wrote all this
advice upon many pieces of paper, you would singularly destroy a significant portion
of the world's forests.” ~ Chuck Wendig
My writing tutor said to me once ‘your sentences are kaleidoscopic!’ In my earnest attempts to win her favour I learned how to shorten and tighten. I read all the 'how to write fiction' books I could get my hands on. I thought, wow, I know nothing about writing fiction and I became filled with doubt.
“How-to”
tomes often coax us to be a writer rather than encourage us to do the
hard work that would turn us into writers. That is to say, write your brains
out. I’ll bet there are young writers out there reading less literature than
“how-to” books. We’re being seduced into posing as writers “rather than
spending the time to absorb what is there in the vast riches of the world’s
literature, and then crafting one’s own voice out of the myriad of voices.”
(author, Richard Bausch) ~ PJ Reece
It took me years to realize that in my adherence to the modern rules of writing fiction, I had limited in every possible way my natural way of telling stories.
At one stage I found a
new writing partner. He said, 'your sentences go clunk', and 'they're the oral
equivalent of riding over cobblestones'. He suggested I read every single
sentence aloud. I did, and I discovered
something significant. I realized that in my earnest following of the rules,
I'd lost the soul of my work. I'd pared, and primped to the point of squeezing
the juice, the life out of my story. I had done what I was told. But all I
had left was chunks of clunk.
In trying to please
everybody, I had sabotaged my own story. ~ Anne R. Allen
And yet, since I’ve started reading bestsellers in my genre, one thing I’ve noticed again and again (so far), is that none of these successful writers are following the rules! What gives? Why do we have to follow the rules and they don’t?
This ties in nicely
with the theme in my life as I get older, of listening to my own spirit.
Allowing for my own knowingness of what's right to imbue my work, rather than
what everyone else tells me is so.
Paulo Coelho ~ Books are not there to show how intelligent
you are. Books are there to show your soul.
These days I'm trying to give
myself full permission to 'just write', to let it flow. But I have a long way
to go yet in throwing off the shackles of the myriad ‘rules’ I’ve imbibed.
Chuck Wendig ~ Write like you don’t give a damn. Write like there’s no
expected outcome except a finished story.
I
really like what Bryan Hutchinson had to say over on Positive Writer, he said,
'there’s a crazy myth writers need to kill: The myth: You need to be an
expert in all aspects of writing to be a writer. No. No you don’t. As a writer,
there’s only ONE thing you need to be able to do, write.'
I have to somehow find my way out of the forest of
advice and back to my natural state. How about you? Are you a writer in your natural state? Or are you still trying to adhere to 101 different writing rules? Or are you stuck halfway between both worlds (like me)? I'd really like to know!
Talk to you later,
Yvette K. Carol
