Articles

The Writer's Apprenticeship

When I first began to write this article, I tried to think of the things that helped me to write better as a beginning writer. Everyone has their own way of writing, their own voice, their own style, so I tried to think about what helped me to find these things. If anything in this article strikes someone as helpful, I would be delighted.

When I first began to think about writing, I looked at genres – short stories, poetry, scriptwriting, the novel, feature articles, book reviews and so on. I began writing book reviews and articles for our local newspaper, and student study guides to Year 12 English texts. I also wrote a commissioned history of a local golf club. It was only later that I tried my hand at short stories, then poetry, then began to write a novel. I still haven’t decided on a genre. My first two books of poems have been published, I’ve had some small successes with short stories, and I’m still writing the novel. Meanwhile, a verse novel and another manuscript of lyric poems are well on the way. You do need to concentrate on learning skills in any particular kind of writing you want to try, so it’s often best to decide on a particular genre and concentrate on that. But you can write in several genres at once, providing you are prepared to take the time to learn the skills for that genre.

Learning the skills can be done in lots of different ways. Reading widely to see how things are put together is a good start – I always learn something from a book, even if it’s how not to do things. Reading books about writing is another good way to learn. Other ways include going to workshops and courses, joining or forming groups that suit your needs, subscribing to newsletters and attending events, launches, readings, talks by authors and so on. Different people learn in different ways, so you need to try things and see what works for you.

The main thing for an aspiring writer, though, is to write. Try all kinds of writing, try different ways to write, try out anything you can think of. One of the most inhibiting things for a writer is thinking that everything they write must be publishable, must be of a certain ‘quality’ or ‘standard’. If I could say just one thing to beginning writers, it would be ‘just write’. Try to shut off the voice in your head that says ‘It’s no good. That sentence doesn’t work. You can’t do that.’ You can decide later what’s working, what’s worth spending time developing, and what is just a practice exercise that you’ll put away in the bottom drawer. You won’t know until later, anyway. A writer’s judgement of something they have just written is not reliable. The piece may be much better or much worse than you think.

Don’t worry about writing badly. All the published writers I know set aside lots of pieces they have written. Not everything you write has to be published or publishable. Some of it might be very good. Some of it might be used later in some other context. Some of it might never be used. It will all be good experience. Never imagine that because you have written one good thing, you know what to do and can just keep repeating it. I believe most writers will find it a continual challenge to try new ideas in new ways.

However, almost all writing needs editing and honing into publishable work. This is another stage in the process and deserves a separate article.

This article was published in Geelong Ink, 2004.