How To Be a Writer
…Or do you have what it takes? I’ve talked about some aspects of this before, but I think it all bears repeating. Young writers constantly ask other people whether they have what it takes to be a writer. Often times they ask based on writing alone and when you think about it that’s not the best approach. While it is important that you be a good writer, or even a fair writer, it’s not the only thing you need to be concerned about. Being, or trying to be, a writer isn’t easy, even if you’re published. It’s a rough road full of disappointment and rejection. It can be an emotional ride too.With that in mind, here is a list of things that you need to do if you want to be a writer: PracticeYou can’t go from being an okay baseball player to a great player if you don’t practice. Same with writing. Don’t kill yourself, but you should write when you can. ReadWhether it be books on the craft, your favorite authors, or whatever, reading will teach you new things. For example, I learned ways to use the dash and the semicolon in fiction from authors who did it well. Grow Thick SkinLearn how to take rejection. This is life. Whether it be an editor, a friend, some random person on the Interwebs, or someone in your writing group, you will get rejected and criticised. It’s okay, though. If a story gets rejected, don’t fret! Submit it elsewhere! Don’t get ticked off at the editor. That’s never a good idea. Grow a SpineDon’t be afraid of what people will think about you and your writing. Being afraid of criticism means you lock up all your writing and never let anyone see it. If you’re okay with doing that, then no problem, but if you want your writing to be read by other people, well, then you have to put your writing out there! Develop a Web PresenceSome vote against this because it sucks time away from writing, but I recommend you try to get involved with potential readers now rather than later. You can make new friends, learn a lot about the craft and promotion, etc. It’s up to you if you want to do this through a blog or just being a part of a social network or group. The WillYou can’t just like to write. You have to have the desire to be published and the desire to do whatever it takes to get there (and when you get there, to do whatever it takes to make sure you can keep doing that–all within reason, of course). Plenty of people fail at this because they don’t have the will to learn, to write, to do anything that is required of you to be a writer. This applies to any form of writing. Be GraciousThis is one that took me a while to learn. If someone is kind enough to look at your work and offer a critique, be sure to thank them! Don’t spend your time arguing and disagreeing. There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing on some things; not all of the changes another person suggests will be useful. But it doesn’t help if you’re going to be disrespectful of ungrateful. Remember, they put a lot of work into their critique for you (or, at least, they were supposed to). Accept FailureEmbrace it! Tack your rejections to your wall or laugh about them. It’s important! You can’t expect to win from the start and you can’t let it get you down. Turn the emails or rejection letters into paper airplanes and toss them around the house or, if you’re not the sentimental type, collect them together and have a bonfire! If that isn’t a good starter list, then I don’t know what is! Any suggestions for things that should be included?
List Universe Tackles the Olympics
Want to know fifteen things about the Olympics that you probably didn’t know? Well List Universe has you covered here. One of my favorites: 13. The last running race added to the Ancient Games (after the addition of two longer distance races) was the hoplitodromos – in which competitors would run 400 or 800 yards in full armor with shields and a helmet or greaves (leg armor). This was introduced in 520 BC. Runners would often trip over each other or stumble on shields dropped by other competitors. In the image above we see athletes competing in the hoplitodromos – in far more an orderly fashion than was likely. I submit that we need to have something similar in today’s world. Seriously. Wouldn’t that be one hell of an event to see a bunch of folks in full ancient armor running down the track? I would want to see that every year. On a side note, I have a question for all of you:Do you ever wonder what the ancient Greeks and Romans would think of our seeming obsession with them? We make movies, write books, dress up, and even celebrate them. Do you think they are watching us up there and wondering what the heck is wrong with us? I for one am curious what you all think. Anywho! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Creating Aliens: Ground Rules
Over at HowStuffWorks you’ll find this brilliant post called “How Aliens Work“. Pay careful attention to it. If you want realistic aliens, some of those rules should be firmly planted in your brain. Aliens, of course, would be bound by many of the same rules that we are (the laws of physics for example). Yeah, good little post. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Science Fiction: Sometimes it’s wrong.
Browsing through today, I discovered a very interesting website that discusses the errors within science fiction, particularly in TV and movies. Some of these errors are, quite frankly, rather stupid on the part of the creators. Such as: In the Star Trek Voyager episode “The Fight”, Voyager encounters a Negative Space Wedgie that is “2 light years across”. They start “11,000 km” away from it and yet, the whole phenomenon is visible on the viewscreen. As the Agony Booth review of this episode points out, this is exactly like “putting your nose on the ground, and still being able to see the whole landscape from horizon to horizon” except…you know…even worse. The thing also looks about as big as Voyager when it engulfs it, which might make slightly more sense (for a given value of “sense”) since Voyager is apparently the size of a planet. Yup, that’s Star Trek. There are even a few related to literature. Such as: The original Dune series was set 10,000 years (human history goes back 7,000 years at present) after the Robot War known as the Butlerian Jihad, featuring an old, decadent society that had presumably been going downhill for a long time. However, when Frank Herbert’s son picked up the reigns and wrote prequals set before and during said Butlerian Jihad, the prequels end with all the social orders and customs, and even the religion, of Dune already established as nearly identical to the ones in the original novel. And the reader is expected to believe that they stayed exactly the same for almost a third longer than the time between the invention of writing and the present. Yeah, pretty interesting, don’t you think? Check out the site. Maybe one of your favorite shows is on there with an error.
The Common Mistakes Solution
Alright, so I’ve decided to do something new with the way I write–or edit, actually. And I think this is a good idea for a lot of writers to do. Here goes: We all make mistakes, and some of us make the same mistakes over and over. Mostly I’m referring to spelling and grammatical errors, even errors that don’t seem like errors, but really are. Sometimes you catch them; sometimes you don’t. It’s when you don’t that it’s a problem. See, sometimes you write a word and it’s actually correct…according to the dictionary. But that word isn’t really correct, because the context is wrong. Take for instance the word “breathe”. Sometimes I screw up and use “breath” instead. You can’t take a breathe. You take a breath. It’s one of those strange British things that never went away, and while it might be silly, that’s just the way it is and you have to deal with it. I imagine a lot of people don’t even realize it’s a mistake too (I didn’t for a while, and that’s because I’m sometimes an idiot about such things). So, here’s a good idea to solve this problem. If you start noticing you make a mistake, and you make it repeatedly (even just two or three times every other story or something), write it down and take note. Put it in a word document or something and then the next time you go to edit you can start doing search and kill procedures to find all the little mistakes. In fact, that breath/breathe thing should be a standard, because many of you may make that mistake and not even realize it’s a mistake. I’m doing this now. I’ve started putting a list together of things I can search when I edit in hopes that I can catch more of these mistakes and kill them before they end up going to a crit buddy or to a publisher (I made a mistake with one of my last submissions and left some errors in there, and I’m a bit miffed, because I didn’t see it for some reason). So that’s my recommendation for solving this issue.
Rambo’s Good Advice (Part Two)
And Cat Rambo has posted another five great bits of advice for increasing our manuscript’s chances. Read them. Go on, you know you want to! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)