Nov 11
1
For Writers, Maturity Matters
Probably a great writer...
“If you don’t have awareness and an analytical understanding of what worked before, you can’t build on it.”
When Seth Godin wrote this in a blog post, he noted that the CEO of Palm had never used an iPhone. That’s just stupid. You can bet the CEO of Yahoo is looking at Google every week, that whoever is in the running for a sports championship is watching every move on the field from his/her competitor. Great actors have watched more great movies than you or I.
For writers, painters, and musicians, it goes deeper than that. Picasso learned to do well in every style before he obliterated them all and created a whole new one. The Stones and Zeppelin listened to stacks of old blues albums (and learned to play the songs) before they filled up stadiums with their own sound. There’s a great section of The Week magazine where current book authors point to eight books they think people should read, things that they learned from, books that inspired them to create their own bestsellers.
Whether you’re writing about food, politics, business, or travel, you need the kind of maturity that can only be gained through two things: lots of reading and lots of writing. The latter is important because it’s hard to improve and gain confidence without a whole lot of practice. Practice without guidance, however, can just lead to reinforcement of bad habits.
Thankfully you have more teachers at your fingertips every day than could ever be imagined just a few decades ago. Classic books are available for free for your Kindle without you even dragging your lazy butt to the library. You can find used copies of almost anything online, even if the book is out of print. You can subscribe to most print magazines now for a buck an issue or less. (Or get them with leftover airlines miles and keep your account active.)
Well-written stories are always just a mouse click away, on serious magazine sites, great webzines, and Byliner.com.
If you want to up your game, learn from those who are already knocking it out of the ballpark.
[Flickr Creative Commons photo by "w." ]
