Committing to the Prose: Tips for the Writer

There are the moments when we have found ourselves going through the motions as writers. We forget the power or prose. We think we are blocked-the ideas just aren't coming together as they once were. All writers face this dilemma. All writers voice their concerns over it. But, the simple solution is this: We must continue down the road to being a writer. It once was about making money, but now it is about survival. Artists need to practice art. This essay will detail why we must commit ourselves to the prose, work out the kinks as we go, and allow ourselves to fail.

By committing ourselves to a novel, we commit to the long haul. This is not working at McDonalds, but the pay of that food chain makes us weary. Will we be stuck in some job where we're working for minimum wage? Are we wasting are time? Novelists by profession work for the long term, and that is why the doubts are much worse for them. Just writing the novel that makes us proud could take years. That is a long time for something that may never pay us, or only a few thousand dollars. The short story writer is in a different boat. Writers of the shorter form can see the money faster, but the amount will look like a pittance compared to the novel. We must commit ourselves to the prose which casts a light on places we want to see. Without that light we are nothing.

We do not write the masterpiece on the first try. "Moby Dick" was not a first draft of prose. Feature films leave many scenes on the cutting room floor. We empower ourselves by continuing, but working out the kinks in the process of writing. We may think that we make the same mistakes again and again. That is the bane of the writer's profession: We work hard, but sometimes we have to evolve to improve. We will eventually find the right comma placements, when to put a semicolon before "but," and will stop writing query letters full of misspellings.

Julia Cameron, a marvelous writer of inspirational books, once wrote that in order to write well we must first write poorly. Hemingway could not spell his way out of a paper bag. Stephen King has trouble with endings to this day-and look what happened to him. We will improve only if we, the writer, continue down that road. Submit that short story for the hell of it. Write a novel that is so poor you want to burn it, and, as long as you have fun, there is nothing wrong. The freelance writing could follow these guidelines as well. We must commit ourselves to words, try to improve, and be willing to write some of the worst stuff imaginable. That is the road to being a writer. And when we evolve, we will look back and wonder why we gave ourselves such a hard time.