Sunday, March 15, 2020

JUST GETTING STARTED

JUST GETTING STARTED Put down that pen! Dont you even think about starting off your writing career with a book. Why? Because you havent become a writer yet. In all my conference classes, the first thing I tell people is this . . . BECOME A WRITER FIRST. A lot of people skip that part of the career the educational process, the word order, the flow, the friggin VOICE that so many people ignore. Thats why so much writing just muddies together. One big mass of earthworms, tangled together in a Kindle world. Just finished reading a short book about a ghost in Savannah. The writer has great potential. Shes even educated. Some comment she made on a blog made me buy the book. (Let THAT be another lesson for you.) However, she head hopped. She switched characters, disassociating pronouns. She skipped descriptions. It was so obvious that the material was in her head, but somewhere between her gray matter and her fingers, it got waylaid. So now, I associate her name with less-than-stellar writing. Premature writing is like a bad marriage. Its always in the background. Always a reminder. Sure, after enough years its remembered less, but seriously . . . do you want to wait years for a bad piece of work to fade away? Magazines. Start with magazines. No matter what you write, there are magazines you can write for. Yes, youll be rejected, as you should. Yes, youll get frustrating coming up with unique ideas, as you should. But magazine writing is the jumping off point for all writers, in my opinion. That and/or newspapers. No, Im not belittling either profession, but your opportunities are more and you learn lessons faster when you have to meet deadlines, or have to eat from the articles you sell. Romance, mystery, sci-fi, nonfiction, all exist. But write about anything . . . everything. Test yourself. If you think you have the guts, um, prowess, to write anything book-length, then magazine articles should not be daunting. Reasons to start with magazine writing: You learn how to carefully choose your words in a small space. (i.e., writing tight) YOu learn how to adhere to an editors needs. You learn how to write faster. You learn how to research, and cull that research since youll never need it all. You earn money, always a good thing. You earn clips, which actually show that . . . you are a writer. Tough love time. If an editor sees your