You disappoint yourself sometimes, don’t you? Is it because you are not trying? No, of course not. Trying leads to disappointment, sometimes. We don’t know how always to avoid disappointing you. But we keep trying. You have to keep trying not to disappoint yourself too.

What counts as writing: moving your hand across the paper or keyboard and letting words out

No way. Here’s why that idea is wrong, and how you can prove it to yourself.

Getting better takes practice and time. But the only writers that really practice with the right mind–one that is open for change–can profit from the time and practice. I mean, I could practice for 50 years and never be Shakespeare, but I would be 50 times better than without the practice.

Prove this to yourself by trying to imitate Alice Munro. She is all short stories. She can do more in a paragraph than most writers do with a whole book. Seriously. She can communicate an entire personality and make you feel like you know everyone in the story before she’s written two full pages. It is amazing. And while plenty of good writers do that well, Alice Munro is a master of it.

Her stories keep everything moving right along but the reader is learning so much about the characters that make them
real at the same time. In these days of short, to-the-point writing–Faulkner would never be published today–it is a key skill, essential to getting your fiction (and non-fiction as well) the attention it deserves, both from traditional publishers and readers. Your writing will feel more fresh and current if it steps with the times, if it feels like it was written today or tomorrow instead of ten or a hundred years ago.

So if you want to get better, try to imitate Alice Munro. And watch how time spent copying her style pays off by improving your own work.

I don’t expect you to know what everything means in some sense of cosmic significance. You don’t have to be a third person narrator God. But you do–at the very least–have to see what is happening. If there are tears in the corner of her eye, just there, write about them. Who cares if the reader doesn’t need to know that once the story is finished? That’s why God made editors, and why He gave you time for cutting and rewriting. If it’s unnecessary later, it’s gone.

But if it’s not, if it is really the little glimpse of something coming only later, after some big reveal or expected twist or unexpected turn of phrase, then congratulations! You just became the master of foreshadowing. And a more interesting writer.

But that doesn’t happen if you don’t know your characters. Knowing them means watching them. Looking through their scrapbooks. Reading the labels in his shirts. Studying how she applies her make-up. And then writing it down. Significance–and vital, living writing–comes from this.

Your voice has been crafted by every experience you’ve ever had–all those repressed moments of disappointment, every experience that lifted your heart into your throat, all the pain that squashed your joy–everything that is yours is also no one else’s. No one could have had, and no one else has had, your life.

Write as only you can. If you write like others, you will be ignored, and rightfully so. I can pick up hundreds of books in any bookstore where authors are trying to write like someone else.

Can’t you find your voice? Here’s an exercise I discovered years ago: imagine you have one chance to speak to a large crowd gathered to meet you. One sentence is all you’ve got. After that sentence, the crowd will decide to stay for one more sentence, or to leave. Over and over again.

If you waste the chance trying to sound like someone else, they’ll find someone else. But sound like yourself, put effort into the opportunity to have their attention focused just on you, and you’ll keep them.

Now go write.

Your competition aims for mass appeal and gets it. But you should aim for a more discerning audience, and must intend to, because you want to write for a smarter, more selective audience. Let your competing writers get away with more because his audience has a pallet only for what is commonly provided. Soar above what is common.

And it is moments like this where literary trivia can be useful, even buoyant, that make my day worthwhile.

Sometimes when you write about your ideas, the words get in the way. When the words you use distract the reader, they are not letting your ideas flow. That is a problem. That is a problem that an editor can help with.

A good editor can help you get the words down on the page. For many of my clients, knowing that I am there to help filter out the words that aren’t working is freeing knowledge. A good editor is like a safety harness–you take more chances knowing that missteps will not kill you. And when you take more chances in writing down your ideas, your ideas get better.

And your writing gets better. Better writing attracts the best readers, who give you great comments, improving your ideas even more.

So if you want to have better ideas, hire an editor. It’s not an intuitive relationship to most people, but once you see the connections, it’s hard to refute.