Just right - it doesn't have to be

The first thing my inner teacher taught me about writing was that if I wanted to be a writer I had to write. In the early stages I found this very difficult. Like every blank canvas is a potential masterpiece, every blank sheet of paper, or new blank document on my word processor, has the potential to be brilliant … until that first mark. 

Inner doubts lurk in our minds. Tiny voices whisper:

What if I am not good enough?

What if I have nothing to say? 

The thing is, when it comes to writing, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you write.

After writing comes refinement. After writing that first draft you can think about your choice of vocabulary, your sentence constructions, the narrative voice you use, the characters, the world they inhabit and all those other important things.

But if you don’t write, if you wait until everything is perfect before you make a mark, you will never start. 

So ignore the voices in your head, and write. Resist the temptation to read another book on writing (if you’re like me you have shelves of these). Ignore the housework, or the gardening. It doesn’t matter what you write; it doesn’t matter how good, bad or indifferent it is. Once you’ve got it down you can come back to it and improve it, or throw it out. The important thing is that to be a writer, you have to write.

Why I write ...

Margaret Atwood, in the introduction to her delightful book about writing, Negotiating with the Dead, wrote about the feeling of “finding yourself in a great library as a young writer, and gazing around at the thousands of books in it, and wondering if you really have anything of value to add.”

I write for other people. I write what they need or want me to write. They tell me what it is they want written – and this sometimes makes life a little easier. I don’t have to think up amazing topics or profound insights. And I love writing so this is all quite fun.

But I do often wonder if deep within me there is something “of value to add”. I’m not talking about an extraordinary, unexpected addition to scholarship. What I would really like to achieve is the ability to write just one or two phrases that stick in people’s minds – phrases that they quote at dinner with friends because they express so perfectly an idea they wish to convey. They won’t need to find the words because they have mine.

Of course, there are other things I want to achieve with my writing. I want to make a good living. I want to have time to explore new ideas and find ways to communicate them. I even want to one day dream up a fascinating plot for a novel.

Meanwhile, I will keep writing what others want me to write. And put my occasional thoughts on writing into this blog.

The dictionary is your friend

Or if it isn’t, it should be.

Why do you read and write? The power of our language is that it can take us anywhere. It can create emotions, show us places we’ve never seen, allow us into the minds of strangers –real or fictional. It allows us to communicate with each other with varying degrees of sophistication and effectiveness. And along with all this, language is fun.

I love dictionaries. The English language is incredibly rich. It includes hundreds of thousands of words (how many exactly is a difficult question, but there are definitely a lot).

This means that there is a word for just about everything. And for many things there are words and words and words. 

It is a gift to have the opportunity to explore this rich vocabulary and learn new words. There are times when I read deliberately to learn new words, but sometimes I don’t want to face the risk of not finding words I don’t know. I want a guarantee that something new is going to seep into my brain.

This is when it’s time to get lost. You know that wonderful feeling when you’re in an unknown city or town and you just wander to see what you can see. That’s what I like to do with words. I like to get lost inside my trusty hardcopy dictionaries, or delve into one online, or range around the dictionary on my Kindle. I can spend hours lost in a dictionary of synonyms.

The words you use and the way you use them is what makes your writing unique. The way you as a writer put words into the mouths of your characters is what differentiates them and gives them life. They are an essential tool of your trade. Put aside some time to get lost – I’m sure you won’t regret it.

And if you find any really great words you think others will love, please leave them in a comment …