I've had a great time playing back my boisterous, adventurous, sometimes egotistical and reckless senior year of high school from the perspective of my adult, married, college educated, balding, round, creaky jointed, stay-at-home dad self.
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| Man, it's like I don't even know you anymore! |
I've learned a lot, though. For all his imperfections, seventeen-year-old Nathan has actually ended up being better than I've remembered him. He made some dumb decisions, but at least as far as the most important stuff was concerned, he had things pretty well figured out. I've been too hard on him.
I won't burden you with a crazy long list of observations. My younger self would have done that; that's one of the good changes I've made. But I have noticed how those old blog posts illustrate some practical writing advice.
So, without further ado, here are five writing tips from my old blog posts:
1. Set a Timer
Many of my old blog posts have time stamps before 3:00 PM--some barely after 2:30, even.
Why is this a big deal?
Because school didn't get out until 2:10. With crowded hallways, locker meetups, and fluid carpool arrangements, I rarely ever made it home before 2:30.
These weren't tiny blog posts, either. I often chronicled my school day in extensive detail.
"So what?" you might say. "You were writing about stuff that happened at school. Anyone can just spit out details about their day."
That's what I said, too--until I saw a post about a writing exercise I'd done in one of my classes.
The teacher had given us five minutes and a starting sentence, and I had ended up writing two-ish decent paragraphs. Nothing fantastic, but it was more than I've been able to produce in that same time frame my entire adult life (except perhaps in university exams).
I am not a fast writer. As much as I appreciate the freedom of a terrible rough draft, and as thorough as my late-draft editing process is, perfectionism still stymies my creative output. I get jealous of my wife, who can pump out an entire chapter of a story in the time it takes me to write a few good sentences. But when I set a timer, I surprise myself at what I can create.
2. You're Your Own Worst Critic
Inspired by a teacher's challenge to write 150 publishable words per day, I shared a story on my blog in nine short installments titled "Black Tiled Concourse." I based the story on a dream I had about a lunatic who used a machete to kill two people and himself inside a shopping mall. It started out okay, I guess, but when I posted the last installment I expressed great disappointment in how the story had turned out.
Commenters were quick to tell me how much they enjoyed the story and the way I wrote it--especially the ending. And not even a week later, I wrote another blog post to announce that my story had won an award in a contest at school; the office had called me out of class to present me with a freaking medal.
I still hate that story. It may never see the light of day again.
But readers liked it. They saw something in it I could not.
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| Image credit: Strange Beaver |
Writers should be critical of their own work. They need to solicit feedback, learn their craft, and pay attention to how they can improve their writing. They need to revise, draft, and revise again.
But if I'm too hard on myself, I'll never publish anything. A different pair of eyes can go a long way--and chances are, a reader will appreciate my work far more than I do.
3. Pay Attention: Life Has All the Best Ideas
Maybe I'm just uncreative, but my old blog is full of stuff I simply couldn't make up on my own. From the friend who performed handstands on a moving train to the teacher who kept a binder of his students' best excuse notes, high school gave me lots of interesting character traits to draw from in my writing.
But it didn't stop at character development; high school also showed me random situations I could not have dreamed of for a novel. For example, once I saw a teacher squeeze an egg so hard it burst and sent its yolk across the room into a student's eye.
Another time, a friend and I swiped our psychology teacher's drunk glasses and staggered all around the school during the morning announcements.
Yet another time, the girl I asked to prom responded by delivering pink balloons with pig faces to my first period class; the floating bouquet followed me all day.
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| It's a Sly Pig! |
If you need a good idea for a story, scene, or character, you need only pay attention. Life will give you more ideas than you could ever use.
4. Just Write--Even When It's Hard
Once every couple weeks or so on the old blog, I'd start a post by saying something along the lines of, "I was going to write something else, but I'm too tired/I don't want to, so here's this instead."
One time I actually wrote, "I really want to post something else right now, but I don't have the energy or the motivation to start on it. [. . .] This post is just filler until then. Sawdust in the meatloaf."
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| Nasty. Image credit: Lady Goo Goo Gaga |
The thing was, I still wrote something. It was often just a random stream of thoughts, but I ended up producing more than if I'd taken the day off. And usually by the time I finished, I found the motivation to start working on whatever I had planned to write before.
Writing is an exercise. Some days you need to take more time to get warmed up before a run. Some days you work different muscles than you're used to working. But it all serves to make you stronger.
5. Make Time for Your Goals
Another common opening line on my old blog basically went, "I know I promised so-and-so I'd go to bed on time tonight, but I just got this great idea/spark of energy at eleven-freaking-o'clock, so I'm gonna post about it then get to work."
Yes, I took the time to write an entire blog post just to tell the world that I was up at an ungodly hour when I could have not told anyone and used more of that time to actually work on stuff. I don't get it, either.
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| This is how it's supposed to work. Image credit: OwlyCat95 |
But young, crazy Nathan was on to something. I had goals. I had ideas. And I knew that if I wanted anything to come of them, I had to carve out time to make it happen.
With three kids under three, sleep has become a luxury I can't afford to sacrifice. But there are other ways to carve some writing time out of my day. For example, the rough draft of my novel is going down in a spiral notebook so I can take it everywhere--breakfast, the bathroom, the freeway, you name it. Because nothing says "go-getter" like one hand on the steering wheel and the other on a notepad.
Those are just a few ideas I've gleaned from my old writing. Have you discovered any others from old projects of your own? Tell me all about them in the comments!
No, Nathan, don't text and drive. It's still wrong, even if it's in a spiral notebook.
ReplyDeleteI prefer to think of it as texting and *being driven.*
ReplyDelete