we’re going to start with an exercise. i want you to get a clock with a second-hand. a watch is fine. a stopwatch is better. a computer is decidedly ok. but what you need to be able to do is know when minutes are over.

now that we have that on the table, get a piece of paper and a pen. check to make sure that the pen works. it’s easier to write with ink than with an empty pen. that simply gets more difficult than it needs to be. and we’re going for easy here.

i want you to take each of the following topics and write whatever comes to mind for one minute each. don’t erase, read back, correct mistakes, or stop writing until one minute is up. got that? here are the topics. there are only three.

• pineapples
• moose
• umbrellas

now i want you to go back and count the words in each one. what happens to the numbers? do they increase?

i can guarantee that they do. you are getting more comfortable with the pen and the paper. i know i said that computer-based writing is good. but we have to start somewhere and this gives us a lack of distraction. now i want you to do the same thing for three minutes each with the following five subjects. i’ll talk about why these particular subjects in a moment but, for now, simply trust me that i know where we’re going and write some words down. they don’t need to make sense but you can’t stop for three minutes. that’s fifteen minutes total. yes, writers can add. sometimes.

• carrots
• diamonds
• pencils
• kittens
• caribou

now count the words. the increase is normal. and the subjects are getting more difficult. but you didn’t stop because you had to keep writing. now i want you to do the exercise one more time. five minutes each. and the subjects will be more interesting. they’ll even be sentences. which is exciting.

• mangos are the source of inspiration.
• carpet is a happy place for dinner.
• the telephone is the end of knowledge.

there you have it. we’ll talk about it in detail next time what you’re going to do with this skill that you don’t know you’ve developed yet. but it’s a start. until next time.

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myth ten — writing is about finding the inner self.

if it’s inner, there’s a reason it’s inner. it’s because you stuck it in there and built a brick wall.

don’t let it out.

write what you want people to see, not your hidden secrets. if you share those things with people, you will regret and it will take you forever to get them onto the page.

like i said, write what you don’t know. it’s fast, it’s safe, and it’s far more fun. watching films is about escapism. so is writing. only you get to make the decisions.

that’s enough myths for now. there are many more and we shall return to this later. but we must move onward and upward.

next time, we actually write.

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myth seven — you must write what you know.

my first novel was about two young girls accused of a terrorist attack in ireland. i’ve never lived in ireland. i’ve never been accused of terrorism. i hope. i’ve never committed an act of terrorism. and i’ve never been in the police force, irish or otherwise. i have never experienced a suicide bombing. or witnessed one in person.

but somehow i managed to write a book about this. and about a plane crash. and the fall of the berlin wall. just as examples.

writing what you know is a fantastic way to produce boring diatribes filled with minutia that nobody is interested enough to read. we call them academic journals. write what you don’t know. there’s a reason we call it creative and not journalism.

myth eight — don’t write like you speak.

write like you speak. it’s more natural, it’s faster, and it’s easier to read it if you can think of it being pronounced aloud.

you’re not james joyce. please don’t try to be. don’t write like other people speak — write like you speak.

if you don’t like how that sounds, fix how you speak. then write. don’t fake it.

myth nine — use a pen. it’s more natural.

it’s not. use the damned computer already.

it’s faster, it’s easier, you can write many things at a time, and backups can be fast and even automated. so it’s safer. and you can edit, share, and comment. instantly.

if you don’t have a computer, there’s nothing wrong with using a pen. there’s nothing wrong with using a pen, even if you have a computer.

but don’t be afraid of the keyboard.

it’s not sacrilegious to write creatively on a machine. shakespeare would have done it. i guarantee it.

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myth four — shakespeare is dead.

he is. but writing isn’t. there is plenty of good writing to be done and much of it is of better quality than shakespeare. you can think of the bard as a historical example of what you may one day become. shakespeare is not the be-all and end-all of writing quality. he was a master in his field. and there are many more.

don’t let anyone tell you that all great writers are dead. or white. or male. or english.

actually, for that matter, don’t let anyone tell you that shakespeare was those things. except dead. we’re pretty sure he’s dead. but there’s no reason he couldn’t have been a group of french women, for example. unlikely. but we can’t lose hope, can we?

myth five — if you write, you won’t have sex any more.

writing is a solitary act.

so are many things. sleep is a solitary act. using the washroom is a solitary act. for most people, driving, walking, eating, and thought are solitary acts.

just because you do something alone does not make you a person who has no friends.

don’t worry. simply becoming a better writer does not make you unpopular. i have discovered that unpopularity is simply a function of luck. pick up the pen. love letters had to come from somewhere, right?

myth six — writing comes from the heart.

it can. most doesn’t. writing comes from the head. if you haven’t been acquainted with this particular part of your body yet, i suggest a speedy introduction. it may make you a sadder person but at least you’ll be aware of it.

self, meet brain. ah. nice to meet you. long time no see.

more myths next time…

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i don’t know how to get started.

not surprising. in school, they tell you that it’s ok not to know how to write in elementary school. then you get to high school and they assume that you already know how it’s done. and you progress to university and they expect your innate ability to write creatively and critically to have developed. overnight. or at least over the summer between high school and university.

it doesn’t.

unless you have been lucky and, like those people who draw, paint, or sing naturally, have been able to create writing out of the air, you have been left completely alone in the wilderness of an art form and instructed that it is a skill that you were given at birth, leaving you to feel inept and incomplete, deficient as a human and angry at the whole discipline of english for making you feel this way.

i blame your teachers.

i can say that. i’m one of them. not yours, perhaps, but other people’s. i teach english literature and creative writing methods to secondary and college-aged students.

we’re going to start with the myths of writing. it’s difficult to grow a tree on a dead stump; you will now be given the chance to unlearn everything that you have been taught about writing. and that, as they say, is a good thing.

why, you ask? it will leave us a clean slate for new learning about how to write creatively without any of the dead wood lying limp and albatross-like around our collective necks.

myth one — writing by numbers.

writing is simple. that doesn’t mean that it’s in any way associated with arithmetic. one plus one is two. it is today, it is tomorrow, it will be two until the earth melts into a fiery ball and descends into the sun. and after that, it will be two but it will cease to matter much. i believe that you get the point.

there are some things that you learn and some things that you experience. and writing is an art. there is no manual (especially not this one, although i do write books on how to write and, if that sounds contradictory, we shall deal with that later). i can help you to do it. i can even help you while you do it. but i cannot tell you the answer and have it come back at me as good writing. there is a process inside your mind that must exert itself on the words or we simply have repetition. and that’s not writing.

myth two — writing is a gift.

it’s not. you are not born with the ability to write. we have language at birth, it is true, but that is a far cry from creative writing. just because you can think in words doesn’t mean that you can write in them. you can communicate. but, once again, i emphasize that communication is not writing.

you learn how to write. whether it be from your parents, from your teachers, from your friends, from me, or from trial and error, there is a learning process. so give ye not up hope if writing has not come along with a sharp stick and struck you across the head. writing is no more a gift than the ability to add numbers. it is a learned skill and you are capable of it just as much as anyone else.

myth three — writing is slow.

it can be. but it is far from a requirement. i wrote my first full-length novel in three weeks. including editing and publication time. and don’t think that i’m special. thousands of people every year participate in national novel writing month. that’s a month where you produce a complete novel. in a month.

i am not going to tell you that you are a bad writer because you write slowly. but it’s a good sign that something is wrong.

write quickly. edit later. there is only one way to get better at writing. and that is to write more. quantity is good. we can work on quality later.

more myths next time. remember, have to get rid of the stump before we can plant the new tree.

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welcome.

i’ve never been here before and neither have you. i know this, since this is the first post and i am slightly nervous. i have been journaling online for years and publishing books for almost as long but when it comes to combining the two, i am a relative incunabulist. but we shall learn together.

i have taught creative writing and what you see here is going to be a journey from she who does not write into she who does. not me, of course, since i have been writing for public consumption since i was but a wee babe. you.

let’s start with the ground rules. you obviously want to write or you would have given up on this several paragraphs ago. that tells me something. it doesn’t mean that you have something in particular to say (a vast misconception, equating the desire to write with the existence of a story to tell) but it means that you desire a forum in which you reach out to others in a way that only words do. secondly, you don’t know how to get started. if you did, you would already be writing. that’s not to say that this is not going to be helpful for those people who already write but that’s not my specific goal.

in my classroom, i hear two things. first, i don’t know how to get started, is the blatant cry for help. second, my writing sucks, follows quickly on its heals, typically from another student.

we’re going to start with fixing the first. then we’ll move on to the second. seems reasonable, right?

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