The Practicing Writer

I have finished quite a few books in 2024, despite feeling lazy. A majority of them have been about writing. Few of them have been about the art of writing a memoir and others have been on the art of writing itself. Even though almost all of them have been written by established writers, none of them offered a magic formula for becoming a writer. The only magic formula they offered was telling the reader to practice writing a lot and writing daily. They also told the reader to read a lot. A few of them also offered some helpful tips and tricks but that’s about it. So, in the end being a writer is about writing and writing regularly if not daily. Specific books and fiction and nonfiction offer techniques and books on grammar, composition, style and punctuation help to make the writing technically correct. I’m not much of a non-fiction guy, and only non-fiction I like except for books on science and educational books are memoirs. And here too not every memoir is interesting. 

I write almost daily. Blogs are a great platform to write and fulfill your daily word quota until you have something good and substantial to write. This is not to say that what you write on blogs is not or shouldn’t be substantial. All my writing is towards and goal, it’s to be able to write something that I enjoy reading and to shut my inner critic up, I want to be able to write well enough so that my inner critic can’t find faults in it. And I know that it’s a very difficult thing to do but high standards are good sometimes and I have been chasing those standards for quite some time now.

I read books on writing to find out things that I missed out on. To find out if there actually is a magic formula to be a writer. All I was told by various writers was to read a lot and write a lot, something which I already was following. I have read quite a few writers by now, Stephen King, Natalie Goldberg, Chuck Palahniuk being a few of them and they have given useful tips on writing and writing life. I realise that when it comes to writing, it’s not one shoe that fits all. One has to devise or find out individualised techniques to be able to conquer one’s blocks, to make one’s writing flow and to manage one’s writing life. For example, writing in cafes doesn’t work as well for me as it works for Natalie Goldberg. So, one has to find what works best for them by trial and error.

I also read books on the composition of stories, plots, and what works in a story and what not. While these are useful pieces of advice and one can keep them in mind while writing, I also feel that a writer who overuses these tips and tricks of plotting, composition and dialogues tends to fall into the same cliches that he is trying to avoid. But that’s just my perception. I write what I want to read, and I’m quite adequately well read when it comes to fiction, so if I’m enjoying reading what I have been writing it’s good enou