DO THE WORK: TWO STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVED WRITING

By Jerry D Pate

 

In his Fiction Writing Master Class, William Cane encourages new writers to copy the styles of various writers until they find their own voice. He notes the practice is common in music and art, so why not writing?

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, he notes, began playing together in 1957 performing songs done by other artists until they perfected their own style and songs; and were suddenly discovered six years later. They did the work.

Painters are encouraged to study and copy the works of others until their skills are honed. Writers could do the same.

Cane’s point in all of this is keep working at it.

I thought, Do the work.

A few years back I sat in on a class an English professor/instructor at UofSC opened to the public. The professor read various passages from a book and made comments.

After one reading she observed, “Here the author is using this as a metaphor for…”

I thought, Metaphor? Writers use metaphors?

The next day I was in the gym on a treadmill next to Pat Conroy’s brother and was still puzzled about the professor’s comment. I asked him if Pat ever said he was looking for a metaphor to use in one of his books.

He gave me a strange look. “Metaphor? He never asked about metaphors. Hell, when Pat was working on a project he would write and write until he came out the room and said, ‘I got three pages done today’.”

I thought, Maybe you just have to write to be able to write?

My own creative process at times gets stymied by the don’ts, do’s, and you musts of punctuation, grammar, voice, etc. Perhaps getting the story down first and worrying about the format later, might help.

But only if I’m willing to do the work. Writing is a process, not an event.

Resource:

To master the fundamentals of writing, try emulating the work of great artists – William Cane, Fiction Writing Master Class, Writers Digest, 2009, 2015.

ISBN-13:978-1-59963-916-1