Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail. —Ernest Hemingway
In November, I threw myself into the NAOWRIMO challenge: write a 50,000 word novel in one month. I had to write approximately 1,666 words a day, whether I felt like it or not (and many days I did not). Through this exercise, however, I learned a lot about myself as a writer—my strengths, my limitations, and my keen ability to find a way around limitations. I’ve always been a little tricksy; I became a little tricksy in my writing.
*Limitation #1: I am not so good at writing fictional characters.
*Way Around #1: I probed, stalked, eavesdropped on, and literarily dissected real people, grafting in their language, manners, and feelings throughout my fictional people. The real people knew and were kind enough to say yes when I asked, “Oh, can I use that?”
*Worry #1: Did this method make me less of a writer? An artist friend named Melinda Dabbs explained to me that this was like a portrait painter capturing the likeness of his subject on canvas.
*New Strength #1: I discovered I am a portrait fiction writer.
Of course, some of my limitations do not become strengths in the end. For example, I am a weak speller. This weakness is something I have to work on throughout my editing phase.
Writing every day may seem like the craziest challenge, especially if you can find a million excuses, as I did, to avoid the task: I have a toddler and have to wait until he goes to bed, after he goes to bed is the only time I have alone with my husband, I teach writing and am constantly grading papers, I need adequate Facebook time, and if I stay up late I will be apt to add a fourth meal to each day (something my waistline needs not).
Excuses are everywhere. And yet, trying this exercise for a set period of time may be the best way to evaluate your style. If you cannot write daily, write once a week. Set a time. Keep to it.
If you want to be a writer—write.
If there is something in your heart to tell, whether fiction or non—tell it. The Beatles say, “There is nothing you can say,” and yet writers keep writing. A good writer may not say anything new (for Ecclesiastes 1:9 says there is nothing new under the sun anyway), but he will say it in a way no one else can. That is what you have. Your voice. Your perspective. Your style.
If you want to be a writer—write.
Possible Writing Challenge
1) Set a goal for the month: make yourself write every day. Remember, in the words of my father, “You can do anything for a month.”
The Beatles. “All You Need is Love.” Magical Mystery Tour. EMI, 1967. iTunes. < http://allspirit.co.uk/allyouneed.html>.
Ecclesiates 1:9. n.d. Biblegateway.com. 1 March 2011 <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ecclesiastes&version=NIV>.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Writing-1.” n.d. nsrider.com. 1 March 2011 <http://www.nsrider.com/quotes/writing.htm>.
10 Elements of My Writing Style
1) my eager-ready hyphen use
2) my love of playing with punctuation: specifically the colon and dash
3) my rare (and therefore hopefully powerful) fragment
4) my obsession with parallelism
5) my need to use humor
6) my referencing other people
7) my affinity with alluding back to something previously stated
8) my preference of threes (language, manners, feelings…Your voice. Your perspective. Your style.)
9) my mixing of longer and shorter sentences
10) my enjoyment of appropriate alliteration
