Randall Silvis brings us yet another list, a "10 Easy Steps to Becoming a Writer." If we compiled all of theses and similar lists, we'd have a few thousand "simple steps" to writing. That doesn't sound so easy to me.
What makes lists like these valuable is that they're not absolute, and that they're not completely right. These lists are anecdotes, mere collections of "here's what worked for me." If writing were a science and had a foolproof checklist one could go through and mark off, it wouldn't be an art.
Because of that very fallibility of lists for writing, I like them. They are more helpful, I'd say, than something I know to be completely empirical and fact-based.
Silvis' first rule of advice: "Be born strange, weird, abnormal, or any combination of those" is both a humorous and very real and impossible piece of advice. It not only points out some of the avenues that lead to great stories, but it goes a step further and okays our oddities, even indirectly praising them as a sort of black gold of writing.
This list, I must admit, is the best one I've seen. At least when it comes to writing. It's humorous, but true. Helpful, too, I'd bet. Of course, I haven't had enough time with these tips to see any changes in my writing, but I want to keep this one on hand. This would even be fun to list and hang behind your desk, where you can see it while you sip tea, listen to jazz/classical music, and pull out your hair while trying to get that perfect paragraph.
My favorite tip, by far, is step 3: "Live life." This is the mantra that passes through your head and makes you get into that stranger's car, or sit next to that homeless man, or order your food by clucking and mooing because the restaurant owners in that other country don't speak English. This tip isn't just good for writing, either. It's good for education, for experience, for roundness, for being whole. This tip, if you follow it, may not make you rich. But when you start sharing the stories that are important to you, the stories that you chose to live instead of read about, you won't care one bit.
-Alexander Hirata
I like what you said about compiling all of these "easy steps to becoming a writer" lists. I'm pretty sure we could sum up a good deal of the them and there always the two or three that overlap someone else's list, but there would still be quite a few steps to follow, not all of which are as "easy" as they say.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me think it would be interesting to see someone read all of these lists and then make a comprehensive one and see what things writers generally agree on as good advice.
Justyne M.