I have a day job, and I’ve been in that job for ten years at this point. I like to think I’m pretty good at it. Do I know everything there is to know about that job? No, but I’m always trying to learn more, not so I can know it all, but just so I can be better at it, and in turn hopefully not get fired for incompetence. The same rule applies to writing. Or any creative art, really.
I’ve heard of seasoned, road-weary guitarists learning new licks from fellow musicians, and visual artists who study the work of others in hopes of learning new techniques. As a writer, you’re never done learning.
“But, CDM,” you say, “I’ve been published. I’ve written five novels, and some of them sold. I know how to write.”
Hey, I know how to write, too; I’ve been doing it for over 30 years as of this writing. But I still read every book with an eye toward figuring out how the author did or did not succeed in creative believable characters, an intriguing plot, or in writing prose that carries me along and makes me forget I’m reading fiction.
Ray Bradbury said, “Success is a continuing process. Failure is a stoppage. The man who keeps moving and working does not fail…. If you write a hundred short stories and they’re all bad, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. You fail only if you stop writing. I’ve written about 2,000 short stories; I’ve only published about 300 and I feel I’m still learning.”
There was a quote from THE Harlan Ellison, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, hands down, no questions asked, no doubt about, no argument to be made, where he said that after decades of writing, he was “just learning how to do this.”
You have many jobs as a writer, and one of those jobs is to NEVER stop learning.
I’ve met writers over the years who had that earlier mentality where they assume that, because they found an editor willing to publish one of their short stories in a “for the love” magazine where their payment is two contributor copies, they’ve learned all they need to know as a writer. And they never progress any further than that point, churning out the same stories with the same mediocre prose and the same stereotypical characters over and over. Sometimes those stories got accepted, sometimes they didn’t, but those writers never ever matured, their style never changed, and NONE of them ever achieved the level of success I KNOW they hoped for.
There’s another quote, this one attributed to Albert Einstein who said, “Once you stop learning, you start dying.” That absolutely applies to writing. When you’ve reached a point where you think you know all there is to know about writing, you are creatively dead. You may continue to write, but everything you produce will be stunted and weak. Only by continuously learning new methods of storytelling and world-building, new ways to structure a plot, or even just to use the language we all use, can we truly become the writers we all WANT to be.
By 1992, I’d read all the Stephen King there was available to read, but it wasn’t until I read Clive Barker that I started to understand that poetry and prose could be interchangeable, or that sometimes it’s ok to show the horror, that it doesn’t have to be vague suggestion, the monster can be there on the page.
It wasn’t until PULP FICTION that I learned how to successfully tell a story out of order.
The Prince song “Housequake” taught me that, we all use the same words, it just depends on HOW you use those words, and the really successful ones will use it every way they can.
Clive Barker, Quentin Tarantino, Prince, all voracious learners willing to push themselves to keep getting better, and the ONLY way to get better, to progress, is to NEVER STOP LEARNING.
How? First, read everything you can. Everything you read will teach you something, even if it’s a terrible book: you’ll learn what NOT to do. Second, write. Every day. And if you can’t, do SOMETHING writing-related every day, even if it’s just thinking through a story you’re already working on, or want to start. Churn it over, explore the plot, get to know the characters, look for those plot holes before you write them. Third, get to know other writers, talk to them about writing. Writers LOVE talking shop with other writers, and that’s a back and forth you want in your life, believe me.
While I do believe some things just can’t be taught, that you either have it or you don’t, why stifle yourself and your growth by not even TRYING to learn? And writing is a marathon, not a race. That means it’s never too late to start. So start now. Find a writer you love, open a book, start reading and learn all you can.