Before you can write, you have to read. Specifically, you must read a ton of books, inside and outside your chosen genre—getting the feel for what has been done and what can be done.
| Writing is one of the few arts where you have unlimited freedom to make corrections. If a violinist plays a wrong note during a concert, there’s no way to go back and do it right. If a painter messes up part of a painting, it’s possible to paint over the problem, but if you do that too often, you get a thick lump of paint layers. If an architect makes a mistake (to quote Frank Lloyd Wright), “all you can do is plant vines.” But writers can keep going until they’re satisfied. |
You also have to read your own work. Assess what's there, and decide what needs to be done in order to make it better. In the process of reading your work analytically, you'll probably find mistakes and weaknesses...but that's okay. You can rewrite as often as necessary.
Learning how to read your own writing is a crucial skill. You have to detach yourself from possessiveness; you have to develop the skill to see what's worth keeping and what isn't. It isn't easy, but a degree of judgment comes with time.
Writers are often told to "kill their darlings"—toss out stuff that you really like but that doesn't fit with the rest of what you're doing. (Samuel Johnson once said, "Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.") But you also have to be able to recognize material that actually has value, even if it isn't yet in perfect shape. That means you have to see both the good stuff and the bad...and that's tricky.
Copyright © 2001, James Alan Gardner