The Art of Writing

Writing is a wonderful way of relieving your mind of stress as well as an art of weaving words into sentences that make interesting reading. A writer should be able to represent society by portraying it correctly, and arousing human interest, be it in science fiction of or a personal memoir. A writer should be a master of observation. He or she must be able to see what everybody else does not see, what other people do not consider important. One however must learn to discern between a creative writer and a non-creative writer. The latter is like a news journalist whose role is to present the facts as they are, never mind how well they present those facts to draw the interest of the reader, the core fact is that the writer must tell the fact the way it is, or else it ceases to be news. The creative writer has a different purpose - to produce a piece of work which will fulfil the reader’s desire to experience a satisfying emotion. When you pick up a book, start reading, get glued and experience the emotion of curiosity trying to find what happens next, to be hooked to the story and to be transported into the life of the characters therein, then the writer has succeeded in his art. A work of art is an expression of the artist’s emotion; this ‘expression’, in the form of a novel or painting or song, communicates the artist’s emotion to the public. An artist should not seek popularity in their writing; instead popularity can come to the writer because of their writing. Writing for fame is seeking fame and not writing for its own sake. In fact in literary circles, writers who do popular fiction aiming squarely at being a best seller are most of the time frowned at by the literary community. That is the reason why such writing wins no awards though it may bring in lots and lots of money. This is one of the reasons why a writer should be clear in their mind about what they want to achieve and in what genre of books they want to lie before begin the process of writing. For that reason, many writers will choose to use material which is personal, which derives from their own experience, and which seeks to create in the reader the same sort of emotion as that experienced in life by the writer. There are lots of talented people about who are not successful and, conversely, there are lots of writers whose talent is barely discernible but who are very successful indeed. A story in The Author Magazine mentions a man who had written ten complete novels between the ages of 18 and 34 without selling any of them. Then he took up meditation, which he claimed did wonders for clearing his mind, and finally he did manage to sell his eleventh book. This man evidently had some talent, and an enviable capacity for hard work, but the two together were not immediately effective. Writing is more than just talent and hard work. It is about learning the art and the craft. For example if you want to write a good science fiction you should read lots and lots of science fiction. That way you learn the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ways of writing science fiction. You even begin to find your own style of writing or the vice that appeals to you. When you read a book and you begin to think, I could have written this then you have begun to find you writing style. A writer should not read a book like any reader. They should read a book for the sake of entertainment but with a critical eye on the mechanics, the way words are used to portray messages. P.D. James, a successful crime novelist, recently told the BBC on the programme, Talking Books, that she liked detective fiction like a girl and loved the structuring of the novel – the beginning, the middle and the end. Therefore, a good writer must be a profuse reader, over and above the average reader in order to understand first the techniques of writing and then appreciate the importance of putting a story together from scratch into a full book then go back to revise it several times, cutting here and adding here until a semblance of small world where a reader can indulge in while reading your work, becomes clear. Ends