So You Want to be a Writer?

Me too.           

How do you get unstuck?

One day, when people ask me questions about my writing job, they will ask, what do you do when you are stuck while writing? I have no idea what my answer will be then, so I’ll answer it with what I do now. It depends. If the words won’t flow for an assigned essay, then I’ll start it with, “In English Renaissance Tragedies,” or “In personality psychology,” or “In education,” whatever fits the paper. Usually, unless the sentence sounds very awkward, I keep it, which means probably around 70% (or more) of my essays have started with the word “In.” However, in college, I have run into essays where even the ‘In’ strategy doesn’t work.

Write Whatever As Long As You’re Writing

So I’ve developed another method, besides procrastinating, or completing other more agreeable tasks in order work up to writing the stubborn essay*. I say whatever I want to about the topic exactly how it comes out of my brain, however non-academic sounding that is. For example: 

"All the elitists were like yeah, that’s true. We need our power, but outwardly they just nodded. This dude’s proposition was voted into law and many people were stripped of their citizenship. 

            One tiny guy tried to say, actually right now if you either have to have two Athenian parents, or your mother has to be Athenian. I mean we should probably extend it farther, but for goodness sake let’s not shrink it further. 

            So the dude’s only opponent was ostracized 20yrs for trying to create or maintain the unbalanced equality that existed.”

I couldn’t turn that in for my final paper on empires, but later I translated it into academic language, added citations, and it worked. Therefore, I hadn’t wasted any time when I was stuck.

Non Academic Writing

Similarly, when I write for an hour everyday there are times I don’t feel like writing, even though I love it.** So, I often switch from actively trying to write sentences that I know go with what I’m writing. Instead, I write very grammatically incorrect sentences in all capital letters that depict my goals for that part of the piece. Yesterday, I wrote an entire page of words in all capital letters, because I couldn’t figure out how to get what I wanted to say across. All of these strategies allow me to stop focusing on being “correct” and just get my thoughts and ideas onto the page.

Other Peoples’ Tips

Since I want to be a writer, I often look for tips on how to be a successful writer. One internet person suggested that writers should nearly never use the word “said” in their writing, but look for more descriptive words like asked, screamed, mumbled, wondered, etc. Later, I found someone complaining that writers are becoming too fancy with their dialogue tags and should just use said, except in rare cases. Both of these people were published writers who have made a living out of their words. There are many other examples too. What I’ve found is that with every person telling me to do A, almost the same number will tell me to avoid A at all costs, same with B, and so on. Nevertheless, there is one tip that is never contradicted, write. Write and do it often. That seems like sound advice to me. Hence my writing for an hour every day and a blog post once per week.

My Tips

If I, as a relatively-non-successful*** writer, were to give any tips to people who want to become writers it would be these three things: 

1. Write

Whether it’s bad, whether it’s good, whether you want to, whether you don’t. How can we expect to become good, if we don’t practice? 

2. Edit

Personally, I don’t think it matters whether you edit as you go, whether you edit once you’re done, you only edit when it’s sunny, or you only edit when it rains. We should do it, because, in my mind, that’s (part of) why writing is so great. If you mess up the first time, you can just erase/backspace it, put in something different (repeat as necessary) until it works. And no one will ever know that one particular sentence went through 29 variations before the final draft or whether you didn’t change that sentence at all from brain to page. 

3. Do what works for you

Like really. In what we write, in how we write, in how long we write it to be, we should do what works for us individually. What worked for Emily Bronte isn’t going to be what works for Neil Gaiman, or Ernest Hemingway, or Toni Morrison, or J.K. Rowling. So how is anyone supposed to know how your essay is supposed to be written, or my blog post, or their book? That doesn’t mean we don’t take any constructive criticism. We definitely would do well to incorporate feedback into the editing suggestion (see 2.). However the way I see it, why would I write anything but what I want to write? The goal is for me to become a writer, because that’s what I want to do. I can’t really be doing what I love, if I’m doing it inauthentically. 

One Last Strategy

Oh, one more thing I do when I’m stuck while writing, I write about what I’m doing. I couldn’t think of a topic for this blog post. So I used that strategy. It turned out pretty ok. 

 

Notes:

*This, I’ve recently learned, is an actual scientifically backed strategy for motivating people to do things called behavioral momentum. Teachers use it. I stumbled upon it while trying to trick myself into working on projects I either didn’t want to work on was too stressed to work on or both. Now it’s come up in one of my education classes that are required for my major. 

**Typically, after I then finally do start writing I enjoy it immensely and I forget why I didn’t want to write in the first place. But some days that just isn’t the case. Either way I write, because as I later explain it’s important, since I want to become a full-time writer. 

***How can anyone define success anyways? I guess I’ll consider myself successful when I can write full time, but that sounds harsh. Anyways…