Writers' Technique

I had a migraine last night. When that happens, I'm always desperate to do anything to get rid of the pain. I took Tylenol, Tramadol and Benadryl (just in case it was sinus instead). When those didn't help, I took another Benadryl so I could at least fall asleep.

This was a mistake. I got up four hours later than I planned, still feeling the effects, and I'm still feeling them now three hours later. I'll remember what I had forgotten, don't mix Tramadol and Benadryl.  It's just the time of year where I'm tempted to do that.

I got the headache after editing and rewriting. It's hard to tell right now, but I think I'm getting better and faster at it. The edit I'm concentrating on is the first chapter of Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. I think I was just a little wordy with it, and tried to stuff too much information into the dialog and description.

So, I covered 20 pages yesterday.  Finished the redraft, started and almost finished another. Now I'm on a third, but there's not so much left to change. Next draft should be the last.

I've tried to improve my writing skills. I study grammar and style every day I can. Two books I'm reading through on the subject are The MLA's Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing by Claire Kehrwald Cook and Plain English Handbook 8th Edition by J. Martyn and Anna Kathleen Walsh. (I look up the 9th edition on Amazon and it costs $34, used!).  I recommend both these books. The first one is better practically speaking, but the second is better at giving you a complete description of the rules.

You have to perfect your craft as a writer. Whenever anybody says they want to write, it's difficult what to advise them because you don't know what their educational background is, or what level of skill they're starting out with. Such as, Stephan King was writing when he was nine-years-old, and kept it up. So, he was already an old hack by the time he was in college.

For people who didn't start out with a writer's education and suddenly decided they want to write in their 20s and 30s or later, I advise you get used to failing first. You probably have as story your writing that inspires you, except when you write. You can't understand why it looks so bad.

Don't look for promise and encouragement for your early work, because it's going to look unpromising. You're going to look terrible in anything when you just start out, with unless you're a Asperger's savant. Even then, you can't count on it. Writing takes so many distinct skills. There's the initial visualizing, there's story construction, paragraph structure, sentence mechanics and so on.

Pondering whether writers are born or made is a silly question. Of course, writers are born like everybody else. What must be done to make them will vary from person to person.