During COVID, when classrooms met virtually, I was a guest speaker for a high school creative writing class. I was asked to give the young writers advice.
What an opportunity! Here was a chance to share writing guidance with younger versions of myself. It was a classic example of “If I only knew then what I know now.”
Of course, when I sat down to organize my thoughts, I had too many, but this is the outline I came up with (it’s way too much information for the time I had to speak):
1) Put in the time. When you’re starting, the three biggest ways to put in the time are these:
- Read. Most writers I know love to read. They’ve been reading for as long as they can remember. You read for language, for information, for story, for fun. It’s hard to overstate this. Writers work in language. You get language from listening to people speak, of course, and from watching videos of people talking, but eventually you have to translate all that you experience into writing for other people to read. The novelist James Michener said, “Read all the great books you can by the time you turn 20.” What you’re reading and experiencing now will shape you. Read the authors you love and ask yourself why you love them. Read the authors they loved. Read poetry. Read outside of your interest areas. Read!
- Write. I suggest keeping a journal. Anything you want can go into the journal. Treat it like a diary if you wish, but also a thoughts journal where you write ideas or titles or snippets or character sketches or letters to yourself or others. Get in the habit of writing for yourself frequently. The Latin phrase for this is Nulla dies sine linea: No day without a line.
- Pay attention to the world. Most people don’t, really. Look closely and focus your senses. What do you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste? Write it down. Be observant. This won’t just help you improve as a writer: it will help you to enjoy life more. The world is filled with little wonders and joys if you pay attention.
2) You can do these following things to continue your writerly journey, but none of them will be as effective without the top three.
- Seek the company of other artists. Writing, or any of the creative arts, can be lonely. Most people don’t do what you do. They might not understand why you find it interesting. They might even be hostile to it. Other artists will understand more and provide the kind of support you’ll need.
- Be a good reader of other writer’s work, and find good readers for your own. This might be a writers’ group or it could be just a couple of good friends who also write. Giving and getting writing feedback will make you conscious of an audience and help you to read your own work from a more objective point of view.
- Take opportunities to edit. Join the school’s literary magazine or a community one. Volunteer to read for writing competitions. Offer to read other people’s work. When you read other people’s work with the idea of giving them your reaction, you’ll be in a dialogue with yourself about what works, what doesn’t work, and why. You don’t have to find opportunities either; you can make them. You can create your own literary magazine and edit that. In the Internet world, anyone can become a publisher. You could start your own online magazine just for you and your friends.
- If you have a chance to teach writing, do it. Figuring out how to help someone else write a story or poem or song lyric will help you to self-articulate. Volunteering to help in an elementary school writing lesson can help you to grow as a writer. You could mentor or tutor another student or sibling who struggles with writing.
- Seek teachers. The world is filled with more experienced writers who are willing to share. Not all of them will say what you need to hear when you need to hear it, but some of them will. Those teachers could be in the classroom or online (YouTube is loaded with experienced writers/teachers who are sharing what they know) or in the bookstore. A good bookstore will have a whole section of books dedicated to writing advice. You don’t know when you’re going to hear the advice that clicks for you, so you have to be looking for it all the time.
3) Write with abandon.
- Writing is a lifetime activity that involves growth and evolution. Everything you write is just a stepping stone to the next thing. The last thing you wrote taught you a little so you can write the next thing just a little bit smarter. Assume you will get better because you will.
- Always give it your all. There’s no reason to ever save your effort. Try to make every piece, every paragraph, every line as good and as interesting as you can. There’s no limit to how many good thoughts are in you. There’s no reason to save them for the next project. Use them now.
- Your first audience is yourself. Try to write the work that pleases you, that make you happy to have written it, that you know no one else could have written. Always be yourself when you’re writing: no one else can do that job.
FINAL NOTE:
The only advice on this list that I followed in high school and before was 1a. and 2c. I read incessantly. I did do some writing: mostly poetry, so I did more than many of my friends, but nothing regular. I helped found the literary magazine at Littleton High School, though, so I got my first taste of looking at other writers’ work and arguing about which were worth of inclusion in the magazine.
I didn’t really get going on this list until my mid-to-late 20s. I sold my first poem when I was 34 and my first story when I was 35. I was a late bloomer compared to some.
It’s never too late to be a young writer.
James Van Pelt has been selling short fiction to many of the major venues since 1989. Recently he retired from teaching high school English after thirty-seven years in the classroom. He has been a finalist for the Nebula, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, Locus Awards, and Analog and Asimov’s Reader’s Choice awards. Years and years ago, he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He still feels “new.” Fairwood Press recently released a huge, limited-edition, signed, and numbered collection of his work, THE BEST OF JAMES VAN PELT. He can be found online at his website or on Facebook.
