I recently came across a list of "73 Things You Can Do To Become A Better Writer". I tend to be suspicious of lists, and also of people trying to tell me there's a checklist for being a better writer, but I had a look anyway.
There was a lot of repetition in the list, so I thought I would mess around and see if there was a thematic breakdown, rather than a list of random shit you should do. And some of it is deeply random shit. Some of it I disagree with; some of it is my personal practice. But this list of 73 things essentially rolls together into five pieces of advice:
1. Find the best way to ensure that you write a lot.
2. Challenge yourself.
3. Seek out criticism and use it to progress.
4. Be rigorous in editing, but remember to take breaks.
5. Engage with the world and with the literary community as much as possible.
Within those five categories there are a lot of suggestions for how to proceed, though ideas like "Write, and then write some more!" and "Read grammar books" are moronic. And really, in the end, that five-item list is pretty vague. Probably for a reason: you are the only person who can dictate how and why you progress as a writer.
While I don't espouse some grand theory of everyone's special snowflakeness within the general population, I do believe that people can be extremely diverse in how they frame their creative experiences and productions. If you are going to make up a thing out of your very own head, any kind of thing, you have to find what works best for you, what balance of comfort and challenge helps you make what you want to make. There are people who want to use what they make to improve their abilities or the world around them, and people who want to make stuff because it's fun or they want to show off what they can do. All of those goals are valid.
Yes, there are some basic building blocks I think every writer needs, but what works on a level above basic varies wildly. I don't need to trick myself into writing -- I write like I breathe, and I have no idea if that's natural inclination or learned behaviour. I don't particularly like engaging with the world on the world's terms, so I engage with it on mine. That leaves me some blind spots, but I tolerate those and suppliment them with research, because that is what I can do. The things that have helped me the most to get to the point where I am are a high tolerance for criticism, an instinct for honesty about my motivations when I write, and a great degree of (slowly, laboriously built) patience with my inadequacies. When we encounter criticism, I believe we should stifle our immediate defensive instincts, examine the statement for the degree of truth in it, and apply that truth to our future work. But I'm not going to promise any of that will work for you.
By all means, read the articles and lists and books about writing and how to improve yours, but the one thing I think nobody should ever do, as an artist, is give their whole personality over to such things. There is no single magic guideline that will make you better at creation. Take what you can use and throw the rest out. Sometimes that gets you five rules from seventy-three, but at least you won't waste your time reading grammar books or worrying about every damn adverb you use.
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neifile7 fixed my commas and kicked all the little awkward bits around till I made them make sense. :D
