On Writing – Part II: Practice Makes Perfect

I'm a great follower of Conan Doyle. As a kid, I read The Adventure of the Speckled Band and was scared out of my wits. Ever since, I've tried to write like him: His mastery of dialogue is out of this world.

But he didn't just pop up one morning and write The Speckled Band; he wrote thousands of other words that nobody remembers today. And that's pretty much true of all the great writers: The stuff we read is really just the tip of iceberg. I looked at the biographies of a couple of great writers and found that they wrote for years before they published their famous works.

OK, where does that leave you and me? Does that mean off to the writers' salt mine for a few decades? I hope not—some of us have day jobs. But it does mean we have to write; it's practice, just like in any other endeavor.

And there's help: Reedsy has a newsletter that asks you to write short stories on selected prompts. Good idea. The trouble was that I didn’t think I had any imagination. I would listen to round table writers' discussions and be in awe of their creativity. "Jeez, how do they do it? I can't think of anything. I'm just a drudge." Maybe I should attend a twelve-step imagination program or join Drudges Anonymous.

Anyway, drudge or not, I started writing almost every day. And surprise, surprise, things got better. When I started, finding the right words was like pulling teeth. Now, it's much easier.

And something else happened. When I read my earlier work (terrible as it was), I could actually see what was wrong. The POV was off, there was unexplained omniscience, the transitions were jumpy, and so forth.

And that is really important.

When I went to law school, we were taught to do "issue spotting," to identify the legal issues involved in any controversy. If you can't find the problem, you can't fix it. Now, at least, I can read a little like an editor. There is always the possibility of improvement.

Now, if I could only learn to spell.

Any thoughts?