So You Think You Want To Write…

The first step: Write!

There is no magic recipe, you just need to start. 

To give a bit of background, I’m dyslexic and words can be hard for me. I spent most of my school career avoiding anything that dealt with words, which was mostly English and history. I always thought I was bad at these topics. I knew I wasn’t horrible, but I also thought they weren’t my forte. I could understand the classes, but struggled with showing the teachers, instructors, and eventually professors what I knew. 

I was lucky. One of my moms would always look over and edit my work. I would hand her my papers–back when writing was done on this crazy by-product of trees called paper–and a red pen. When I got my work back, the pages often resembled a crime scene. 

This leads me to a valuable piece of advice. Check your ego at the door when you ask someone to critique your writing. As my son would say, when someone critiques your writing there is a good chance they’ll beat it to the ground, but like a phoenix it will reemerge better. No writer is perfect at everything. Every writer has readers and editors who help them clean up their story. When people give you suggestions, edits, and criticism–assuming it is constructive–thank them. You can always decide their suggestions don’t work for your story, but if several people make the same suggestion, then they may be on to something. 

What makes criticism constructive? After I wrote my first book I had no idea what to do. I joined a writers group. Some of the people in the group were amazing and helped me grow as a writer. They challenged me in structure, word choice, plot, and my purpose in writing things the way I did. Throughout my year and a half of being in that group these people were supportive and helpful.

However, there were also people in that group who weren’t as helpful. There was one member whose specialty was poetry. I remember during the times when he shared that many of the group remained silent. I tried to comment once or twice, but poetry is hard for me. My genre was hard for him, as well. He told me that. One comment stuck out in my memory. On my last meeting with that group, over zoom because of the pandemic, he said, “Your paragraphs are like soggy oatmeal.” This is not a constructive comment. I don’t really know what that means. I don’t know how to fix that. 

What it did was get me to look up facebook groups. There are several out there for writers. The one that supported me the most was Fantasy Writers Critique & Support Group, though I joined others as well. On that site, I found a member who was also a professional beta reader. She read the selection I had been critiqued on that week. She not only said that she disagreed, she agreed to beta read my full book, as well. Since then, she has become a good friend. You can find her writing at www.katherinedgraham.com. 

Another of the people in the writers group did two things which I would call hurtful, especially to someone who is dyslexic. First, he told me I had to get my work pre-edited. He said my writing was too hard to read and the group would have a much easier time helping me if an editor went through it first. Ironically, I don’t think my offerings had the worst grammar. I found a fellow writer who was willing to help with editing. You can find her work at www.cycleoftehara.com. 

But the group member’s lack of empathy didn’t stop there. A few months later, he returned my submission with highlights. At the top he left a note saying it was my job to puzzle out what was wrong with each highlighted section, and then fix it. It could be a spelling error, incorrect grammar, an extra word, anything really. The thing is, being dyslexic, such an undertaking was beyond my ability. 

I wrote him a letter explaining that this type of editing was beyond my abilities. I had a learning disability and if he wasn’t going to fully critique my work I would prefer that he didn’t edit my work at all. I had two people look over and edit the letter, and then I sent it. Well, for a couple of months it looked like he had decided to refrain from critiquing my work except  during our meetings. Then, one day, I got an email with four of my submissions, and each was topped with the same kind of notes. He’d done it again and again.

When you are writing, you want to find someone who will help your writing become the best it can be. A person or a group who will make suggestions to help you improve your writing, not make you doubt yourself. There are amazing groups of people out there who will help and support you if you are willing to search for them.

But first and foremost, if you want to become a writer, the first step is to start writing.