Tony Dyer Writes

I was given some advice by a very good friend about my activities especially the Internet. His advice was to simplify. Too many web sites. Focus on one.

And this is the one I’ll focus on.

My writing is among the most important half dozen things to me: family, friends, cats, me, my writing and the rest…

So my aim is to write regularly and post here once a week.

I’ll say no more for now.

Too much of the Internet has become about monetisation of everything. Sure we all have money concerns particularly in the current world economic situation but much of it is over-priced offering poor value.

There are plenty of books available giving great advice and training at low cost.

It may be that you learn better by video and audio and books don’t meet your needs so try Audible or look at Youtube to see if there are any resources you consider of high or acceptable quality and relevance.

There are even some Audible audio courses and books that offer much better value for money the many of the online offerings.

Be wary of parting with substantial amounts of money and the time that you might also have to invest.

No matter who the personality is giving the course; they may be a great writer but consider are they any good as a teacher and/or course designer?

It is in your interest to carry out due diligence and ask about and read independent reviews of the product you are interested in.

Some say writing needs talent, some say writing can’t be taught but only learnt through writing and reading. If you hope people will read your work then you need to know of the best in the genre you want to write in.

You could do worse in your learning journey than taking apart your favourite novel or screenplay or short story and see how that works and then use that knowledge to write your own material.

Remember, writers write.

 

I’ve used this technique (freewriting) on and off for many years. Of late I have fallen out of the practice. It used to be part of my morning pages  (MPs) practice which I abandoned about two years ago.

I sorely miss both morning pages and freewriting. I have rediscovered freewriting through an excellent book Accidental Genius by Mark Levy. This has set me on a sound footing to reestablish both MPs and freewriting.

Sometimes I write for no one’s benefit but my own. I can clarify my thoughts on screen or paper. Often it’s paper and pen that’s my preferred medium over this digital form. Sometimes I wish that there was an elegant way to get the handwritten text onto the web. The web can be so tyrannical about media.

Someone might know a way other than scanning.

Remember, writing has many purposes – thinking, therapy, informing, recording, entertaining, communicating, helping…

I’ve been writing on and off for most of my life. Other than my poetry book and one poem a magazine that’s the extent of my published efforts.

I’ve read hundreds of books on writing (I have a collection of about 400 books and audio and video). I’m not sure I’m any wiser or more competent at writing.

I’ve done degree level courses and workshops.

What I realise now that most of that time (thousands of hours) I have spent on the studying and thinking has essentially been wasted and I should have spent that time writing.

Some advice is necessary to help improve your skills but the practice of writing is primary. Don’t keep searching for a silver bullet of Holy Grail. There not in that advice.

Take a book like Stephen King’s On Writing or Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat and run with that either until you exhaust the application of advice or you need something fresh. There are as many ways to write as there are writers and your job is to find, by writing, what your way is.

I have no knowledge of where you are in your writing journey. Perhaps you read lots of craft books, or maybe you’ve done a course or two. You might like the monthly writing magazines that appear in your local newsagent. The internet is also a vast source of writing information, some good, some not so good.

Then you also probably find that you do a small amount of writing. And everything is wrong. You’ve overloaded with too much info and lots of it is conflicting. But there is one sure fired way to get better at writing and that’s to find a model of writing you want to emulate because it’s good and then write like that and compare what you write to your model. Write, compare, and repeat. Do this often enough you will become better. It’s like learning anything. Want to play the guitar then practice appropriately and often with a good model and correct, and repeat.

Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool in their book PEAK Secrets from The New Science of Expertise on page 155 They outline how, without a teacher, Benjamin Franklin studied and emulated what he considered good writing by practicing and comparing his own work with his selected model from The Spectator magazine of his day.

So if you need a slogan, as we say in Scotland, then here it is:

Writers write!

The thing  about writing is that you have  to write. It’s strange to think that most people miss this point including myself.

If you want to get any body of work built up you (me) have to write something and rewrite to improve your (my) work?

I’m not surprised, but I’ve learned a significant lesson.

Baby Steps, I Need To Do Baby Steps if I’m going to succeed.

 

Like a demented fool I am going to do NaNoWriMo again but this time with a real commitment to complete it and more. Enough said for now. Back to my prep.