The Writing Life
The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that’s not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we’ve sounded like a lot of other people. – Neil Gaiman, “Make Good Art”
I’m sometimes told my writing style has a distinct sound to it. I suppose it does, but it’s taken years of writing to arrive at it. My style did not emerge fully formed from my head. It took work.
In a recent e-letter, I made a distinction between reading critically and reading for entertainment. I’m of the opinion that good books meet both demands, but I also recognize that one type of reading can occur in the absence of the other. I can read to be entertained. I can read to learn. I can read to be both delighted and informed.
If you’re a writer, you have to work on your craft. You have to learn the mechanics. You have to study language and dialogue. You have to read other people’s work – both the classics and the contemporaries. You have to develop what Dean Young calls a “critical sensibility” that guides how you read and write.
Reading has always played a large role in my life, but the first book I recall infiltrating daily life was Where the Red Fern Grows. My mom spent a summer reading the book to my brothers and me. We wept when we learned the fate of Big Dan and Little Anne.
What does it take to be a writer? It’s a simple, yet hard answer: hard work.
One of the final steps in preparing your work to be published is having it copy edited, which is to say that there are other steps. For example, your work needs to be revised. It needs to be read by beta readers, preferably ones who read critically. It needs to be read by an editor who will provide structural feedback.* It will then need to be revised according to the feedback and reception received. Then and only then is it ready to be hacked to pieces by the copy editor.