Tips on Writing from the Experts

One of the many advantages to attending college is my opportunity to rub shoulders with many great authors and professionals who have experience in the field I'm interested in and are perfectly willing to share some good advice. Today was the BYU-I Pre-Professional Conference for the College of Language and Letters. Two authors were flown in for the event: James Richardson, a poet and a professor of creative writing at Princeton, and Nicole Mazzarella, a novelist and a professor of creative writing at Wheaton College.

James Richardson was the Keynote Speaker and he entitled his address, "All Work is the Avoidance of Harder Work." As he spoke to the congregation of students, it was clear to all by the glowing expression of his face and the delighted chuckle that occasionally bubbled into the microphone that he loved the subject of creative writing. His remarks were mainly addressed to aspiring poets, telling us that poets have the job of "thinking about stuff" and he warned that no one gets rich off of it. When he calculated all the days and months and years he'd put into his writing and compared that to how much money he's made, his paycheck came to about eleven cents an hour. But this was alright with him because he didn't do it for the money, he did it for the pleasure of it. Besides poetry, he is also the author of over 800 aphorisms--shorter even than a poem, these are one-liners that proclaim a profound message. Two of his own that he shared with us were, "Despair says, 'I cannot lift that weight.' Happiness says, 'I don't have to.'" and "No one ever writes a novel by accident."

Nicole Mazzarella expounded in her remarks on the latter aphorism of the above. Her talk was so chalk-full of incredible advice, I had a hard time writing it all down. Included below are some of the choicest tidbits for those of us who aspire to be writers but have not had a lot of official training and do not have a lot of extra time:

• Pay attention. Characters can emerge from people around you, random questions, and even stray comments. She gave an example of a friend's father who kept a box in the attic titled: "String too short to use." This immediately got her wondering what sort of person would keep a box like this--what life experiences would have prompted him to create such a box in the first place? These are the sorts of questions we must ask ourselves; the creative juices will take care of the rest.
• Create Space. You will never have more time to write than you have right now. Each season of life will have its demands and will always provide you with excuses not to write. This means that you must make the conscious decision to write today and then make time for it--whether that means staying up later or getting up earlier. Nicole told a story of a surgeon who said, "I'm going to write a book when I retire," to which an author replied, "Oh sure, and I'm going to become a surgeon when I retire."
  
• Be prepared. Keep notecards in your pocket and a notepad by the bed. You never know when inspiration will strike.
• Free Write. This means writing about the background of your characters--What is an average day in their lives like? What kinds of preferences do they have? You might do a lot of free writing that never goes into your story but it will help you realize that the character lives a fuller life than the moment we've stepped into.
• Commit. Develop a habit of regularly writing with and without a deadline and finish your book or other piece of work even if you feel it's not that great. You may fail a lot, but it will be good practice and that's the only way to improve.
  

When Nicole sat down to enthusiastic applause, I glanced back through my notes and realized that I had a lot of work to do before I'd ever even get close to becoming a great writer--where could I even begin? But Professor Mazzarella had some advice for those of us who feel that way too: "You cannot stare at a blank page and say, 'I'm going to write a novel.' You must begin one scene and one moment at a time."