On Writing – Part I: A Ball of Emotional String

I wanted to share my own experience as a beginning writer and some of the tidbits I found while researching my books. So, here goes.

I was never much good at writing. My university advisor once read my thesis, pulled his glasses down, and said, "Mr. Amos, are you sure you can write English?" I was disheartened, to say the least.

There is a joke that goes: "They laughed when I sat down to write."

That was me.

Then I decided to write a book. When I first sat down, I had no clue what to do. I think all of us have had the same experience. The blank screen of the iPad just stared at me. The words wouldn't come, and the grammar was incomprehensible. Also, I discovered that I didn't know how to spell. So I took all the online classes I could find. Wow, I was hopeless. I never heard of stuff like POV, third-person close, or first-person narrative. And what was this business of "show, don't tell" all about?

Every time I watched a podcast, I was in despair. I remember one budding author saying that when she started, she didn't know anything about grammar. I knew the feeling. Podcasters would read excerpts of writing, and I would think, "There's no way l can write something like that."

I had done a lot of academic writing, but that was no help. Academic stuff is “flat.” It is supposed to appeal to the reader's intellect, not emotions. The sentences are long and filled with words nobody ever heard of before.

Definitely not cool for a novel.

Then I watched a lecture from a staffer at UNLV. She said, "Words have emotive meaning. They conjure up images in readers’ minds. When you write, think of the images you want the reader to experience."

I never thought of that before. She was spot on, but how to do it?

So I thought about it; I suspect all of us who write have thought about it. And here's what I came up with.

You have to get into the reader's head, and that's really tough if you're just using words on paper. I think doing it takes a combination of imagination and lots of writing until it becomes second nature. For me, creative writing is like taking a piece of string and turning it into a ball. The string is flat and boring; you have to roll it up into an emotional ball, so it takes on meaning. Learning how to do that takes time and a ton of practice.

But it's also a lot of fun and very satisfying. So, let's start the journey.

Any thoughts?