Writing Takes Time

    Back in August, I had an absolutely absurd goal. Publish a collection of three short stories by the end of the year. I quickly learned that it is a lot harder to write a short story than I once thought, so I decided to instead just try and finish one. It is now late October, and I am still far from being finished with my first story, "Me Myself and Someone Else." This is because writing takes time, and I am a procrastinator like many authors seem to be. 

    I have learned through this process that if you want to be a writer, you have to write, write, and write some more. Look at Stephan King. The man is a machine when it comes to producing books, and that's because he writes all of the time. Keep in mind when I say write, I don't mean write, edit and rewrite. This is where a lot of newer authors falter. They don't write. Instead, they rethink and edit every sentence. I am guilty of doing this. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of just writing, but I'm learning that writing, editing and rewriting should all be different processes. 

    I had a chat with Dr. Clark, a published poet and an English teacher at my school, and he told me that his most successful students are the ones who write first and edit later. His students will end up changing or taking out almost everything they wrote when the editing phase does come along, but the more you write, the better your writing will be. I'll make a post later going into more detail about my interview with him, but since this was a relevant piece of advice, I decided to include it. 

    My new goal when writing is to put everything I have in my mind on the page, then after an hour, I will go over what I wrote to see if it's what I wanted it to be. Although I haven't been doing this as often as I should, I have tried it a couple, and it has worked wonders. This strategy has already made me a more confident writer. I don't second guess myself nearly as much as I used to, and because of that, I end up writing a lot more than I would before. I am still far from mastering this new skill, but the more I try it, the easier it gets. For all the aspiring authors, I urge you to try it out for yourself.