The First Step to Writing Well...

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You can always tell when I'm swamped with work. Either I don't manage to post on this blog or else I offer writing advice.

For today's writing advice, I'm going to tell you the first step to writing well. And that is writing badly.  This is absolutely essential. William Gibson once observed that the first duty of a writer was to overcome a perfectly justified loathing for the sound of his or her own voice. Similarly, in order to write well, you must be willing to put down words on paper in such dreadful combinations as you would blush to let anyone see.

There are two distinct stages to this dreadful writing. The first is when you're still unpublished and unaccomplished. You must write and write and write even though almost everything that flows from your mind/pen/fingers is loathsome. This is, alas, the only way there is to learn. And, as an adjunct, you must treasure every paragraph, sentence, phrase or word that comes out well.

The second stage is when you're published and have a career going well. You must write as well as you can, of course, but that's rarely going to come flowing out of you in final form. So you have to be willing to write badly and then correct/improve/rewrite. It's possible to raise your standards for yourself so high that you never publish anything again. I've seen it happen.

But, no, I'm not going to let you see one of my first drafts. Are you mad? No.

End of sermon. Go thou and sin no more.


Above: My desk at the current moment. There are no conclusions to to be drawn from the tidiness or lack thereof of an author's desk. Everybody has their own style. Gregory Frost's office is as neat as a pin. And yet he writes beautifully. Go figure.

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