Write Now!

We'd like to welcome as a guest blogger a good friend a great writer, Amanda Von Der Lohe.  Amanda is finishing up her MFA in Creative Writing at Hollins University in Virginia and teaches English and Drama in Draper, Utah.  She is currently working on a YA novel. 

So you want to be a writer and/or improve your writing skills. Excellent! You have come to this site looking for advice and I would love to pass on some of the best writing advice I have received. Here it is, plain and simple: If you want to be a writer...

Write!

Musicians compose, artists create, athletes train. Professionals become good at their craft because they practice. If you are serious about becoming a writer, writing has to be more than a “one day I’ll get around to it” thing. Start writing now.

Setting Writing Goals and Planning for Success

As I mentioned yesterday, I've recently decided to expand a paper into a book.  It will be a non-fiction cultural analysis of the myth surrounding the band Joy Division and their enduring impact on contemporary popular culture, thirty years after their lead singer Ian Curtis committed suicide.  The paper I wrote is 4000 words and provides me with an expandable introduction and a rough outline of how I want the book to fall into place.  Now, all I have to do is write it.  Then revise it.  Then revise it again.  And while it is not the thing that concerns me the most at this point, I'd also like to have it published. 

This is all new to me, and I'm learning a lot as I go.  Haley, who has been publishing for the last 6 years has a bit more experience and is helping me along the way, and she's told me that I need to set writing goals if I want to have a finished product within my lifetime. I've taken her advice and done some research and am now ready to set those goals.  Here's what I've learned and what I plan on doing. 

Setting Writing Goals: What's the Point?

I recently wrote a paper for one of my PhD classes about a favorite band, Joy Division.  The research was fascinating, and the topic was one I'd been thinking of writing about for years now, but had never had the opportunity.  I didn't want to stop researching or writing, and I felt that the final paper was more of an outline for a book than a self contained essay.  So, with Haley's encouragement, I've decided to expand it and turn it into a book. 

I'm not really intimidated by the thought of writing a book, but I think it's because I'm naïve and have never written anything longer than a master's thesis.  I mean, how hard can it be? Isn't it just like writing ten 20 page papers?  Haley informs me that no, it's not like that.   She also told me that I needed to start setting writing goals if I wanted to actually start writing the book, let alone finish it.   But, why would I need writing goals, I asked her, can't I just write when I feel like writing, when I have some spare time?  She laughed at me.