Learning to be a Writer

“Have Gun – Will Travel.”

Paladin was the first to grab hold of my fertile imagination and inspire me to go out West and face those bandits just like he did. Every Saturday night, in stark black and white, the old man dressed in black faced down his opponents and always won the gunfight. If I couldn’t be him, I could at least tell his story. Or so I thought.

It didn’t work out quite that way.

Writing long hand on that yellow legal pad wasn’t the same as my trusty LC Smith typewriter that came years later. So, after toiling for weeks, I ended up with a great story (or so I thought in my 7^th grade imagination) but no idea what to do with it. Paladin ended up with a stack of other disjointed attempts at storytelling and was forgotten by the challenges of 8^th grade math.

After Paladin grew stale and went nowhere, I turned to the jungle and tales of Tarzan. He then morphed into Conan, the Barbarian. Unfortunately, none of these super heroes (before there were real super heroes) ever came to fruition. They all withered away on the vine called distraction, lack of patience and total ignorance of this thing called the craft of writing.

After youthful efforts at cartoon drawings, poetry scribbles, comic book rough cuts and very short stories, there came a long period of nothingness. Then, after entering the real world of work, I ever so slowly began adding writing projects to my side hustles. Most of them were educational television scripts. They proved useful fodder for conversation when I met my future bride who was an education major in college. Gradually more writing projects became a standard part of my own video production business.

Fast forward many years and I found myself giving workshops on ‘How to Become a Writer.’ After years of stumbling around the world of writing, I was finally getting a grasp on the task ahead if I wanted to cross the Styx and add the handle of ‘writer’ to my mantle of achievements.

Statistically, something like eighty-one percent of the population would like to write a novel. In reality, only six percent ever finish the task. There are many and varied reasons why so many people fail. I try to emphasize in my class that it’s really just a series of simple steps to climb that Everest called writing.

First and foremost, remember that writing is a craft, an art form, a learned skill, and a discipline. Like anything else worth pursuing, it takes time and effort. There are no shortcuts or magic pills to take. You need three things to become a writer:

            Desire…you won’t know if you have it unless you try.

            Perseverance…you won’t know if you have it unless you try.

            Talent…you won’t know if you have it unless you try.

Believe it or not, writing is one of the easiest things to learn to do no matter if it is a novel, a play, a screenplay or anything else. You just need a process / a routine / steps-to-take to do it. Too often, beginning writers focus on the end result and are intimidated by the thought of completing a novel, an essay, a blog or even a short story. As the old Chinese proverb goes, a long journey begins with one small step.

Where can you get your ideas if you have no idea what to write about? The caveat here should be: what is your passion? what drives you? what topic would make you want to get up each morning and write? Remember, you are not writing for anyone else but yourself.

The source of ideas is endless: newspaper and magazine articles, books, movies, television, conversations, people you know, your past experiences, other people’s experiences, things you have witnessed, etc.

So then, how do you organize your ideas?

First step, find a place to write and only write. It will become your magic place and will set a mindset for you. If you can set up a time schedule, a routine, that’s great. But just having a place (only for writing) will help adjust your mind to the task of writing.

When I began writing a long time ago, I had an office in the basement of my home. At the time, I was working fulltime for public television, running my own business, managing two apartment buildings and trying to be an involved father. That office was where I conducted my business. But right around the corner in the laundry room was a countertop and that was my writing area and I only wrote there…nothing else.

Everyone has their own body clock. Only YOU know when the best time for YOU is to write. This has to be the best time for you (and not someone else). My most creative time is early in the morning or at least by 9:00am after my quiet time and breakfast. When I was still working fulltime it was whenever I could find the time.

Organizing your ideas is the next step.  Begin by just putting ideas, phrases, dialogue, facts, etc. on paper or the computer screen. Two things will happen:

1.      First, you will have captured your thoughts and ideas. Do whatever research is necessary.

2.      Secondly, they will organize themselves.

Then build a Treatment / Outline. Once you have enough information then begin to organize it with a beginning, middle and end or by chapters, or chronologically, sequential order.

Take that treatment to final written form.

1. Once you have an outline you are ready to begin.

2. Begin by filling in each scene with your notes already written.

3. Once that’s done, let it cool off. Walk away for a period of time then go back to it.

4.  ALL writing takes place in rewriting, not the initial first pass at writing.

Surrounding the art of writing are universal standards and truisms:

It’s all about story-telling

The essence of good drama is conflict

Focus on the story itself and character development verses sets, casts, scenes

Don’t preach (be very careful with your message or you’ll turn off your audience.

So far, over a period of roughly eighteen years, I have written: 14 novels, 2 novellas, 18 plays, 8 movie scripts, 2 children’s books (each in four languages), a comic strip, a book of poetry, 700 blogs and 9 original songs (for one of my plays.) Now comes the hard part. How do I get my product out into the ‘real world?’

Writing is step one, sharing it with the world is step two. Yet, even if I am not able to produce more plays (eighteen so far) or expand my reach of novel readers, I still have to soul-soothing satisfaction of knowing that while Paladin got away, I’ve corralled a whole lot of other stories and they’re pretty darn good, if I say so myself.

Good luck on your journey of becoming ‘a writer.’