Have Fun With Your Words

I must tell you that I have long considered myself a terrible influence; so to offer writing advice (or any advice at all) is a request I place outside my comfort zone. But that’s what being a writer is, isn’t it? Going outside your comfort zone and building a house there. Maybe your comfort zone is so warm and cushy anything outside it is absolutely freezing, and you need to build yourself an igloo instead.

So here I am, sitting in my igloo, telling you how to live your life.

I find the worst thing you can do as an artist (writers, literati and glitterati included) is to go up to other people and endlessly share yourself with them. A certain level of restraint is required, to let your second thoughts rise up to the surface of your mind, to bubble and expand, instead of letting them be diluted by the litter of society’s commentary. Modern self-preservation, if you would.

All the writers I know (and perhaps I don’t know enough) are quite singular in their ways and methods. The vocabulary, the context of their work, what moves them and the way their ideas take shape is specific to them. If you are writing to be defined simply by others’ opinions on your work, then you will fail yourself.

My earliest taste of success as a writer came during my first year at university (where I was studying business, of course). Alone and unhappy at the time, I had already been transcribing my morose thoughts into words when a friend sent me a link to an open call for new writing announced by an online magazine called Helter Skelter. The theme for submissions was ‘off the hook’. It was perfect.

I didn’t think twice when I wrote my first (now published) piece – ‘Knowing’. It was written in a single sitting, all my dour and despairing imagery poured into a short, 1500-word hate-letter to my own circumstances. A sample, if you will –

‘Dear, lay my head down to rest for a single night’s worth? And the worth of that single touch is (a) thousand charcoal slivers manifest to silver dust.’

I was unforgiving and unbiased with myself. I shared my work with no one but the magazine itself. But soon after being published I overlooked a critical detail – that the restrictions placed on me had actually guaranteed my success. Simply put, the deadline and theme were as much a part of my story as were the actual words. As time passed, I forgot this, and though my ideas multiplied, I grew aimless.

I then embarked on my first real novel at the age of twenty-one. I was convinced to take a few summer months and produce my love-letter, the early-onset magnum-opus. I told everyone about it. But the book never came to. A few months became a year and then five, but why?

This is where singularity comes in. How did I not already realise that I was the kind of writer who performed most when jolted by outside forces? And what were these outside forces? Pressure and deadlines. It was no joke. I was an A-student all through college simply because I was required to be. I was published three times further in consequent editions of Helter Skelter’s New Writing because I was provided with the circumstances (themes and targets) to cull and cultivate my own interpersonal hysteria. This worked for me.

(Is it rude to refer to your passion as hysteria? Oh well.)

Enough about my life story. Coming to the guide section of this think-piece, here’s what I understand – individual process and individuality go hand-in-hand. You, as an individual, need to look into your life and find the themes and ideas that appeal to you. A certain level of comprehension of those ideas and/or real-life experience is required, but not necessarily always. If I want to write from the point-of-view of an alcoholic carpenter or a jetlagged jewel thief (how fun) I don’t necessarily need to engage in those careers or behaviours. That said, I need to have the inkling of an interest and the willingness to learn about these people, before I start taking pen to paper (figuratively of course… I write on my laptop).

A few quick pointers I’ve picked up over the years, broken down in steps if that’s more of your thing (even though it’s not a chronological process, oh well) –

Step 1
Understand your process and don’t share it. People don’t need to understand. The only key is the deadline you set for yourself and the frequency with which you write.

Step 2
Be regular with your work (even if it’s a hundred words a day or a page every Sunday). You’ll be surprised how quickly your own thinking and comprehension of the world changes, so in essence writing throughout your adolescence and young-adulthood is a screenshot of your own growth as a person (and that is a special thing to behold, my friend).

Step 3
Don’t apologise for your style of writing, and instead – try to cultivate it and improve upon it. I am truly a flowery writer and was once told by an editor that my metaphors were too abstract. This was the example she gave me to help elucidate my problem. ‘Picture the following alternatives,’ she said –

a. I miss my wife terribly; my agony is darkness.
b. I walk into our old bedroom and find my wife’s hairbrush still sitting on the dresser, and suddenly I am reminded how much I miss her.

Both sentences contain the same sentiment but with the second sentence (b.), the aforementioned agony is practically concentrated around a tangible object and hence, grounds the entire scene. We are all familiar with every item mentioned in the sentence, and thus, a bridge is formed from the writer’s intent to the reader’s mind.

So did this mean I needed to change myself, or my style of writing? Absolutely not. Which brings me to –

Step 4
Find ways to streamline your style and articulate yourself. To this day I am still fixated on lush atmosphere (my preference) vs clear characterisations, but this is not a tug-of-war. You cannot please or move everyone. So, to put it simply - know before you start what you were trying to say, and find the best way to say it.

Step 5
Where is everyone heading? Plan the finish line for your characters, and let them get there on their own. I once read that in a fleshed-out novel every secondary (and sometimes tertiary) character feels the novel is centred around them, and that’s the only way to ensure your characters actually make choices individual to their characterisations (and don’t end up as meagre plot devices).

Step 6
Location, topography, architecture. Planning also extends to actual physical characterisation, not just the voices, faces and quirks of your characters’, but also the actual location and landmarks of the place where your novel occurs. This is my personal opinion, but a city with actual buildings, seasons and landmarks (albeit foreign) can help maintain the distant austerity of fiction whilst still engage your reader into believing everything you’re writing actually happened. (And for all you know, it actually did.)

Step 7
Finish. See yourself completing the work you started out with, and hold onto that feeling. If you feel there is a reason for your work to be out there, then that is reason enough. Let the world excite and inspire you and return to the world with your words, so you can inspire the world in return.

Wow. Super treacly at the end there, but that’s how these guides go, right?

Thanks for reading, and best of luck out there!

(P.S. If you discover nothing in the above guide relates to you or your process as a writer then I congratulate you on already paving your own individual path and I wish you success. Also, I guess this proves me right in ascertaining earlier that every writer has an individual process, so… you’re welcome.)

So, whether you inspired by this guide, or you're just self-inspired, you know what to do next.

Hint: the button is below.