So you wanna be a writer?

Most people with aspirations toward writing can’t string two coherent sentences together. Many think that modern inventions like stream-of-consciousness prose and blank verse poetry mean they no longer need to worry about technique or construction. I hate to break it to you, but you are not Marcel Proust or Allen Ginsburg. Not even Proust and Ginsburg started out being Proust and Ginsburg. They had to work at their craft for years and learn all of the rules before they were allowed to break them, and so must you. Putting a line break between each sentence does not turn your shoddy prose into poetry. Writing is a fine skill, one that fewer and fewer people choose to study, and I applaud anyone who wants to learn. Just remember that writing, like any skill, takes time and dedication to master. Not everyone is cut out to be a writer. If you don’t have the time and inclination to really work at it, you shouldn’t do it. If you are willing to work at it, but don’t know where to begin, start by asking yourself a few questions:

First, do you know the basics? Do you know the difference between “there”, “their”, and “they’re”? Do you know the difference between “too”, “to”, and “two”? Do you know the difference between “its” and “it’s”? Do you think it is ever acceptable to use words like “irregardless” or “thirdly”? Do you know the rules for commas, periods, colons, and semicolons? Do you know the possessive singular and plural forms of names like Charles and Moses? Do you know the possessive forms of “her”, “their”, “your”, “our”, not to mention words like “righteousness” and “conscience”? Do you even know what the possessive form is? If you are unsure about any of these things, you are not ready to write. Go read The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. The entire text is available on Bartleby.com, or you can get the book for around $8 new at any major bookstore. Read the whole thing, cover to cover. Refer to it often. Commit it to memory if you can.

Second, do you have unrealistic expectations for your writing? Do you think rules like the ones listed above are unimportant? Do you think writing well is easy? Do you think revisions are unnecessary? Do you expect that the first story you write will be published and become a best seller? Do you think the fact that nobody criticizes your poetry means that it is perfect? Are you just as proud of something you wrote ten years ago as you are of something you wrote yesterday? If you said yes to any of these questions, you are being unrealistic. As Isaac Asimov said, “Don’t expect to sell your first story. Yes, I know Bob Heinlein did it, but he is Bob Heinlein, and you are only you.” Professional writers will revise a piece over and over before submitting it to publishers, and even then they are usually rejected. No piece of writing is ever perfect. No matter how good it is, it could always be better. One of those truisms that has been repeated and paraphrased so often that I am not even going to bother trying to find the original quote is “art is never finished, merely abandoned”. A good writer never feels a piece is finished. He will tweak it over and over until he reaches the point where he has to say “this is good enough” and move on, either because the deadline has arrived or because he cannot bear to work with the piece any longer. Good writers, like all craftsmen, hone their skill and develop their own style over time. The absolute best, defining work of a great writer is not always the last thing he publishes, but it is never the first. If you do not see anything wrong with your old writing, or you do not see any improvement in your new writing, then you are either not working hard enough, or not being sufficiently critical of yourself.

Finally, can you take criticism well? Do you get angry and defensive when someone points out a mistake or suggests a correction? Do you ignore criticism, telling yourself that your critics are just jealous, or too stupid to get it? Do you live for adulation and empty praise? If you do, you are selling yourself short as a writer. The last thing a good writer wants to hear is “Great job! Don’t change a thing”, because he knows that there must be something he can improve upon. Good writers need to have their work read with a ruthlessly critical eye. Once you have spent enough time with a piece, you become blind to its particulars. You cannot see the forest for the trees. You cannot tell if others can follow your thoughts, because you tend to read what you wanted to say, rather than what is actually on the page. You need to have others read your work, and you need them to be merciless. A good editor will cut out words, sentences, even whole paragraphs because they are unnecessary, and a good writer will be pained by those cuts, as if he's own flesh were being sliced. But just as an athlete needs the pain of training to grow stronger, a writer needs the pain of editing to make his work stronger. No matter how much he may recoil at first, a good writer will find he's work much improved once the excess fat has been trimmed away and all the unsightly flaws have been circled in red ink. If you don’t have the stomach for criticism, you shouldn’t be a writer.

Once you have come to grips with the facts of writing, and committed yourself to starting down that painful road, there are a few golden rules to follow. Read, read, and read some more. Reading is by far the best way to develop an “ear” for writing, and analyzing what you read is a great way to develop critical skills you can apply to your own writing. Read both fiction and non-fiction. Read many different styles of writing, from award winning prose to advertising copy. Read books about writing (I recommend On Writing Well by William Zinsser, to start). Read LaVey’s essay “Writter’s Disgust” from Satan Speaks! Read anything and everything you can get your hands on, with one notable exception. DO NOT, under any circumstances, read personal blogs and websites, let alone chat or text, as if they were examples of real writing. Though they may occasionally be well written (as I hope this one is), the vast majority are terrible. Not only do spelling, grammar, and punctuation all get thrown out the window, but quite often these kinds of writing don’t even contain complete or coherent thoughts. They seem to be written by drunken schizophrenics with the IQ of retarded chimpanzees.

Pay attention to what you read. What was effective, and what wasn’t? Read works that are critically acclaimed, and try to figure out why they are considered good. Analyze why a piece is good or bad, what you liked and what you didn’t. Was there a particular phrase that just jumped off the page at you? Why did you like that phrase? Was there a section that you had to read over and over to understand, or a phrase that was so awkward it hurt to read it? What was bad about it, and how can you avoid it in your own writing?

Remember that popularity is not equivalent to quality. Reading every book on the New York Times Best Sellers list may help you determine how to write a book that will sell, but it will not teach you how to write well. Conversely, just because something is widely critically acclaimed does not mean that you will enjoy it. That is fine. Something can be good and still not be your style. During the course of my literature studies I have often come across works that I simply hated. I could understand why they were assigned and could develop an appreciation for what made them quality writing, but I would still never choose to read them again, and would absolutely never write that way myself. Still, there is much to be gained from reading these works, just as there is much to be gained from reading writing that is universally understood to be bad.

Finally, write, write, and write some more. Write every day if you can. Don’t worry about making it good. Most of it won’t be. Most of it will be terrible. That is ok. You can go back and rewrite it if you like, or you can move on. If you know it is bad you may want to refrain from asking others to read it, but just the act of writing will make you a better writer. Write on whatever topic you like, or no topic at all. If you have a particular piece you are working on, you will usually want to write for that piece. This is good, but remember that sometimes it is better to just clear the pipes by writing something else. If there is something consuming your thoughts, write about that so you can get it out of the way. If you get exhausted with one topic, put it aside and write something else. If you absolutely can’t think of anything to write, it might be good to take a break and do some reading instead. Reading will get you thinking about writing and may give you inspiration. Just make sure that you come back to your writing later on. Just like any other skill, if you don’t use it, you will lose it. So whatever you do, make sure you write something.

If you find yourself unwilling to do the work involved, you are not a writer. There is no shame in this. Not everyone was meant to be a writer. Accept your shortcomings and move on. But whatever you do, DO NOT subject me to your shitty poetry!


Most poets are wannabe writers who can’t properly compose a sentence, much less write a story. – Anton LaVey, Satan Speaks!