What shall I write About?
I have 60 years of living an interesting life to look back on so I have no shortage of writing ideas. I’m not going to exhaust those ideas very quickly either. I have many experiences and ideas to call on – sometimes choosing can be a challenge. Don’t be discouraged by this if you are quite young just launching your writing career. Even young writers have a wealth of experiences to dig into to discover those little gems to write about.
I read the following quote a few days ago:
‘If you’ve survived adolescence, you have enough to write about for the rest of your life.’ Flannery O’Connor.
How about a few hints and ideas to get you started?
- Write about your most successful achievement so far.
- Write about a time you were very angry with your parents or siblings.
- Write about the time your parents were very angry with you.
- Write about your most embarrassing experience.
- Write about your proudest moment.
- Write down a list of your strengths and weaknesses.
- Write about your goals, ambitions, dreams and even fantasies.
- What needs to change for you to become a writer?
- Write about the person you admire the most.
- Write about the person who has influenced your life the most.
- Write about the things that inspire you.
- Write about the things that anger or disgust you.
When you have written several paragraphs using one or more of these ideas, think about how you can turn this into an article for a magazine. Perhaps you might use your piece of writing as a starting off point for a fictional story.
For example, say you wrote about your proudest moment. Take that experience and turn it into a short story. Because this will be fiction, you can change the details. Also change the names of people involved – to protect both the innocent and the guilty parties! Let your imagination soar. Give your character problems to solve, crises to survive or conflicts to resolve before that ‘proudest moment’ occurs.
Good writing.
Related articles:
- Short story starters – heaps of articles with dozens of ideas for short stories.
- Writing hints – plenty of articles giving hints and tips for writing.
Being a professional writer
“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” Richard Bach.
The big difference between an amateur and a professional writer can be summed up in one word: persistence.
There are several other words I could have used, words like perseverance and patience.
Writing is a long-term activity; very few – if any – successful writers are overnight success stories. Even the so-called overnight success stories are, in reality, the end result of many months and years or even decades of never quitting.
So good writing – and be persistent, persevere and patient – and never quit.
The value of books
“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog it’s too dark to read.” Groucho Marx.
I agree.
I love books. I have a large and ever expanding library of books. I collect them. They are my constant companions. I have piles of them alongside my favourite reading chair in my office. I have a pile of them alongside my bed. I constantly have four or five or more on the go at once. I have many more that I regularly refer to in my daily activities, especially in relation to my writing, books such as dictionaries. Others I dip into at random, enjoying a page or two as the mood or occasion takes me. I take books with me when I travel. Hardly a day passes without me having read something.
More recently, since getting back into study again, the local public library and the university library are frequent haunts. The regular stream of overdue notices are not a sign of tardiness; it is a reluctance to give up wonderful books that oh so briefly come into my life. In this context I rarely if ever borrow book; parting with them is such sweet sorrow.
I live to Read, and I read to Live.
Good reading.
PS: The bit about the dog is a mystery to me. This is a typical Marxism: not having ever been inside a dog, I couldn’t even begin to imagine that world. It must be terrible though. Imagine NEVER being able to read.
An endless fascination with people
“An endless fascination for others is a prerequisite to being a novelist – despite the common view of novelists as egocentric and self-absorbed. The self-absorption comes when you are at your desk writing. The rest of the time, you need to be pathologically curious.” from A Novel in a Year by Louise Doughty.
I like that.
“Pathologically curious” about people. A novel needs to be occupied by people. Sometimes lots of them. You can’t write about people unless you know about people. Unless you have a curiosity about people you will struggle to portray people effectively in your novel.
Take some time out to visit the local shopping centre, coffee shop or any place where people congregate. Observe the people you see. Take a notebook with you and write down some descriptions of people. Write a sentence or two about a dozen or more people you see. Who are they? Where did they come from? What are they doing here? What hardships have they endured? Why is that person bright, happy and bubbly? Why is that mother frustrated with her child? What events have impacted upon that stooped old man hobbling along the path? Why is that young man walking with such an aura of confidence?
Give the people you see a story. It may be far removed from reality but that is the power of imagination. Use these story outlines as the basis for characters in your novel. If you can’t fit them in, or they are just plain wrong for your plot, don’t despair. They could well be used in a short story, or even a poem. Never throw away any draft writing; you never know when it can be used.
Good writing.
Further reading:
What are you prepared to sacrifice?
Think what you you are prepared to sacrifice. Writing a novel takes many, many hours, and those are hours you could spend planting roses, raising children, earning money – or even just having a nice life. What, in your life, is going to disappear, to allow you the time to write a book?” Louise Doughty in A Novel in a Year.
Ouch.
That hurts. It is also the reality about writing a novel or a non-fiction book. It takes time – lots of time. Some books can take hundreds – even thousands – of hours of research before even a single word is written. Do you have what it takes – the discipline to see it through day after day, month after month? Do you have the time away from all the other demands on your life?
Sacrifice
For most people attempting to write a novel, something has to give. Will it be your social life? Perhaps you need to give up television, or going to parties or going to see a film. Is it the garden you will totally neglect – or the cleaning, ironing, washing and dishes? Something will need to be sacrificed.
Alternative method:
Of course, you may not be prepared to make any sacrifices at all. You may take the easy road and only write when you have a spare hour here and another there – perhaps an hour or two a week. In that way you should be finished your masterpiece in ten or fifteen or even twenty years. The choice is yours.
Good writing.