When I first started out as a
professional writer, I read every
resource I could grab on the subject. As I read, read, and read some more, I noticed that one piece of advice kept cropping up: "If you want to become a writer, just write." At first, I thought, well, that's not very helpful. Obviously, writing is what writers do. Besides, that doesn't tell me anything about how to be a
better writer. If
writing is that simple, then everyone who does it for a living should be bestselling authors by now, right? But the more I thought about it, and the more I wrote, the more it made sense to "just write". Over the course of my writing career so far, I realized:
(Writing) Theory is Nothing without Application
Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that you completely ditch "How to Write" books, articles, and the like in favor of mindlessly tapping away at your keyboard all day. Trying to write without a solid grasp of the basics is like trying to swim without knowing how to float and hold your breath underwater.
via Ed Gregory Still, you can't spend time reading about writing without actually writing. Otherwise, what did you do all that reading for?
Writing Rules Can Be Broken
To me,
writing "rules" are more guidelines than dogma. While it's true that the likes of the passive voice, long sentences, and adverbs can weaken your writing, there are written works that incorporate all of those into their prose, and still turn out great anyway. Case in point: Stephen King once chided J.K. Rowling fo
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