Writing: First Words

 You may be born with a talent. Writing is a skill you can develop

 

Skills are developed and maintained with practice. 

            As an aid to improving your writing skills you can keep a free-writing diary as a practice tool. You may also find that it is a great source of writing ideas.

            Keep your free-writing in a private diary, journal, or notebook. No one but you need ever read a word you put there. In that private place you can write whatever you want in any way you want to.
 

            "Free-writing" is writing without judgement or criticism. Do no editing, corrections, or rewrites. All there is to it is to do it.

            Do not throw away what you have free written. You can use it to discover subjects you can enjoy writing more about.

            In your notebook, journal, diary, write. Produce a finished piece of writing. Keep a topic in mind. Digressions are okay, but when you find yourself digressing in this practice bring yourself gently back to the topic.
 

            Digression are to be honored and respected. After all they do come from your beautiful mind. 
                

            The idea in this practice is to keep writing. Do not stop writing. Do not stop for anything but the most serious and urgent reason. 
            

            You may say to yourself "Let's remember the topic," but do not let a little digression of yours bother you.  Gently practice the discipline of keeping the topic in mind as you honor and value your digressions. 
            

            It does seem that we writers are very much about digressions. They may lead us to our best writing. Still we do not want them to keep us from finishing a piece of work. 

            As an aid toward helping myself to finish a piece of work I have told myself to write down everything I can think about the topic at the moment.                     

            Later you can look for your digressions in you work above.  Do another writing exercise based on your digressions. Let your digressions enrich your writing. Your  digressions may give you topics that motivate the real you.

             Peter Elbow's book WRITING WITHOUT TEACHERS has inspired me know that it is truly possible to write better with appropriate practice and Useful attitude. 

            Use the "comments" section below to contact me. Do so by clicking on "comments." If you see "no comments" click on it.

            Thank you for reading.

            Keep writing.

 

                                                                             rcs

                                                                                                 

A Book: Writing Without Teachers, an Elbow Work

  Peter Elbow, on editing, assertions, inspiration, and a way to better writing.             

                 Some notes of mine from a book by Peter Elbow about learning to write without teachers I am rediscovering that he seems to be a very good teacher and writer. I am learning from these old notes. Maybe you can learn from them too. I intend to publish some posts dealing with them. This particular post is about editing one's writing.

                Mr. Elbow's book was published by Oxford University Press in the early 1970s. It is entitled: Writing Without Teachers. You may want to find a copy for yourself.

                From my earlier reading and from my present notes I have come so familiar with Peter Elbow I feel I can call him Peter.

                    According to Peter, you may come to a point when you say, "I see what I have been driving at; I see what I have been stumbling around trying to say."

                When you agree with Elbow, ah, Peter, that editing means figuring out what you really want to say, getting it clear in your head, getting it unified into an organized structure, and then getting it into your best words, and throwing away the rest; at that point you are ready for some editing That seems a bit much and not completely clear. Maybe you ought to read Peter's book.

                Time to struggle for the exact phrase, cut out he dead wood. If you find yourself in trouble, it may finally be time to write out an outline.

                A useful outline is a list of full assertions - one for each paragraph. Assertions are complete sentences pointing to a real configuration. The list of assertions logically progress to a single assertion. Having done this you have worked your way up to a point at which you can work down through your editing.

                When you are interested in improving your writing or just a little inspiration for your writing go to Write With RCS at URL address: https://wwrcs.blogspot.com

               



                                                                                                                by Richard Sheehan