In the beginning, middle and end of every writer’s career there is a two headed dragon that must be slain. This nasty beast goes by several names:
“Writing Style”
“Effective Prose”
and even worse…
“Better writing”
To defeat the dragon and salvage any type of writing career you must first realize its true identity, only then can you thrust Excalibur through the tiny chink in its armor and free yourself to write for a living.
The two headed dragon that sits on the shoulders of every writer and has claimed the careers of countless writers is known as:
“Trying To Write Like Someone Else”
Why Writing Like Someone Else Will Put You In The Mental Hospital
Mental health is nothing to joke about. I have PTSD, I know how serious this stuff can be. When I say that trying to copy the writing style of someone else will put you in the mental hospital – I am not joking.
Writing is an extension of the self.
The act of putting your thoughts on to paper is about as intimate an act as I can think of that doesn’t require getting naked.
New writers are pressured by “how to write” books, blog posts, writing instructors etc. to focus their writing efforts on conforming to the styles of other writers.
Don’t get me wrong – I am not saying that writers shouldn’t study the greats (I still hand copy 500 words per day from books I like), I am not saying you shouldn’t constantly be trying to get better as a writer – what I am saying is that you should NEVER under any circumstance look at your writing and say,
“I wish I wrote like so and so.”
That is instant death to your own originality, to your own existence and to whatever great things you and only you could have shared with the world.
The key to better writing isn’t to aim for emulation, but to set your sights on writing more honestly.
How Writing Honestly Cures All Writing Ailments
Got a bad case of writer’s block?
Write honestly.
Got 13 unfinished manuscripts sitting in your desk and want to finish them?
Write honestly.
Want to change the world with your words?
Write honestly.
Honest writing (not trying to be something it isn’t) frees your mind to communicate, to write, to explore the depths of your mind where the good stuff is hidden.
Try an experiment with me really quickly.
First, pretend you and I are sitting across from each other. Now tell me your life story.
Great. You sound amazing and wonderful and we should get coffee together sometime.
Now, pretend you and I are sitting across from each other again. Tell me the life story of Margrit Thatcher.
Having troubles? Getting stuck? Are you experiencing more pauses? Is it taking you longer? Are you more easily distracted? etc.
Even for those Brits out there that may have an extensive base of knowledge on the old PM the process still isn’t that easy. You use a different part of your brain when you tell a story from your own memory versus telling a story that you memorized (two different things).
The same goes for writing.
When you are constantly checking the memorization vaults of your mind, trying to remember how someone else wrote a particular passage, you stumble and your writing becomes clunky. When your brain sees how clunky your writing is becoming it shuts itself down – we call this writer’s block.
The second you tell yourself,
“You know what, just write it like it comes out.”
You free yourself from ever having to worry about writer’s block again.
And your readers will thank you for that.
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3 Ways To Write More Honestly
Write A Letter To A Friend
The easiest way to write more honestly is to pretend that you are writing a letter to your friend.
The next time you sit down to hash out a scene, pretend you are simply writing an email to your friend describing something that really happened to you.
This doesn’t need to be in first person (though it helps) but be yourself. Write like you speak. Describe what you see.
I know for a fact that you can write emails.
Not only will this approach allow you some much needed freedom in your writing process, but it will also benefit the reader in ways that you may not have previously considered.
Storytelling is, at it’s heart, an oral tradition. Stories being told by the campfire, lessons passed on from teacher to student, children trying to scare each other – all of these are examples of the earliest and truest forms of storytelling.
When you write with a reader in mind (like pretending you are telling a story to your friend) you return to this oral tradition and your writing automatically improves. Your writing then becomes simply a form of communication instead of a hurdle to the truths in your story.
Write For Yourself
Only write things that interest you.
If you are new to self-publishing and haven’t figured out what genre to write in then you have probably been bombarded by Internet marketers trying to convince you to write in “popular” genres like Romance or Erotica.
I have nothing against these genres (Nora Roberts is an occasional guilty pleasure of mine) and if you love writing Romance, then do it. If you love writing Erotica – please for-the-love-of-God write Erotica.
But don’t EVER write Romance because you think it will sell well.
Don’t EVER write in ANY genre just because you think it will sell well.
This is my favorite quote on writing ever and you should memorize it and make it your mantra if you want honesty to be a part of your writing:
“You want everything to happen and you want it now, and things go wrong. My first book, a piece of journalism I’d done only for the money…should have been a bestseller…if the publisher hadn’t gone into involuntary liquidation. … I decided that I’d do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn’t get the money, then you didn’t have anything. And if I did work I was proud of, and I didn’t get the money, at least I’d have the work.” – Neil Gaiman
Your readers aren’t idiots. They can smell a fake writer from a million miles away.
If you plan on writing something and then self-publishing it because you think it is a *hot* genre – please send me your mailing address so I can come to your house and punch you in the face.
That kind of writing is what gives self-publishing a bad name. That kind of writing makes readers distrust us. That kind of writing deserves to be burned and the author forever banded from writing books.
Write what you want.
Writing something that scares you.
Write something that makes you giggle and embarrassed to show people.
Write something that gets you excited enough to step out of the way and to tell the story honestly.
Let It Rest
Have you ever been so upset or emotional that you said something you didn’t really mean?
I do it all the time.
I do it in my writing as well. I may write something that I think is brilliant at the time – only to come back to it a week later and realize that isn’t at all what I meant to say.
Sometimes honesty needs refinement and editing. That is what makes writing writing and not speaking. You can come back and edit.
The key is not to try and edit your work so it sounds like someone else – the key is simply to edit your work so you feel that it is 100% what you meant to say.
Let your writing rest before you publish it. Your readers deserve it.
Go Be Yourself
The world wants to hear your voice. It wants to read your writing.
Stop pretending to be someone else and start being you.
The world will reward you for it.