Becoming a Great Writer: The Price for Admission
‘Fake it ‘til you make it’ is about confidence, not about technical skills. Or that’s what it was originally intended for. Today, it seems to have a lot broader application. But if you’re trying to improve your writing skills, this isn’t something you want to embrace, which is probably contrary to what you’ve seen elsewhere.
Elsewhere...which was an example of someone applying ‘fake it ‘til you make it.’
What’s necessary for greatness
A brief internet search led me to this definition for ‘Technical Skills:’
Technical skills are specialized knowledge and expertise required to perform specific tasks and use specific tools and programs in real world situations.
Your mind may leap to some form of technology on hearing ‘technical skill,’ but ‘technical’ is related to technique, not technology. So, it might be better to look at it as ‘specialized skill.’ In order to grow more proficient with specialties, you’re going to have to do more than turn out volume.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, as well as Geoff Colvin’s Talent is overrated, we take a look at the practice needed to become truly great at something. They claim that it’s not talent, rather a deliberate effort that all great performers/musicians/athletes/minds have put in, accumulating 10,000 hours of work before attaining their celebrity level of achievement.
The key take away here is deliberate. It’s not enough to roll your forehead across your keyboard day-in-day-out, because generating volume alone is not enough to improve your writing. This is what’s required:
- You need to be analytical.
- You need to learn as many writing rules as you can.
- You need to reference the work of others.
Referencing the work of others
All three of these things are important, but I gained the most from the last one. I joined a reddit writing community and participated in their discord. They have a broad range of skill levels there which includes some very knowledgeable writers.
Initially, I participated in several of their weekly events, because they each have opportunities to receive feedback on your event related story. I got a lot of great feedback, which helped to some degree. I learned several ways to improve my writing. But during these discussions, we take turns giving feedback to each writer in the group and I noticed something. There were several writers who received the same praise each time they shared a story. Praise such as:
“I just love how you do dialog.”
“I just love your setting details.”
“I just love your XYZ theme.”
You get the idea. But there were many storytellers among us that always received praise for something they were known to do well. After hearing this praise for them, I don’t know how many times, I decided to look through their stories to see if I could determine what it was that others were being drawn to.
If you do nothing else, do this. It doesn’t matter who the author is. If there are knowledgeable readers saying a writer does XYZ well, try to look through the writer’s work to see if you can identify how the writer is doing XYZ.
I think your best option for this is with joining a writers group because you also need to be sure the reader is credible. In a writers group, the readers are writers too and you should be able to pick up on who the knowledgeable ones are. So, figure out who’s knowledgeable and listen to their advice... even if that advice is for another author.
The reason you want to do this is because of the deliberate effort I mentioned. Your writing skill is at a particular level. You have your way about doing certain things and hearing advice on your writing is mainly going to help you improve what you’re already doing. The reason you want to reference the work of others is because you then learn how to do things you’re not doing.
When you learn new techniques, your writing skill gains more surface area, which allows future lessons to more readily take hold and make sense for you.
Writing rules
On writing rules, the main reason those are important are for readability. There are going to be some rules that you choose not to follow and that’s fine. You can develop your own style by not utilizing certain rules. But you at least need to know of them so your practice is deliberate.
It’s often as straight forward as the differences between ‘they’re, there, and their.’ This is grammar related but it’s still a writing rule. Their proper use is obvious and if you unintentionally use the wrong one, it’s going to shine like a beacon for your reader. There’s no faking it is a deliberate choice and it’s the same for other rules. If you’re ignoring a rule or are unaware of it, readers will see it and it will distract them from your story.
Be analytical
Lastly, you have to want to improve. If you only desire to call yourself a writer and have people read your writing, that’s not going to take you very far. You need to be open to the criticism from others, and you need to be continuously looking over your work to see how you can improve. This continuous part isn’t referring to reviewing what you’ve done before, rather what it is you’re writing with each new piece.
As your skill grows, there are going to be times where you do things incorrectly just because of the whole ‘you don’t know what you don’t know.’ So, you won’t know everything immediately, nor should you try to. Just keep seeking to expand what you do know.
Eventually, certain concepts will just make sense to you. Then, you’ll likely look at your earlier writing and facepalm. But know that’s what we all experience. It’s just part of the process. Instead of cringing about mistakes made, try to remember that the only reason you’re able to see these past mistakes is because you’ve improved as a writer. Acknowledging that you’ve grown should be all the encouragement you need to keep chasing that next improvement.
If you’re able to remain open to criticism, open to learning new writing techniques, and analytical of your own writing, I’m confident you’ll see considerable improvement in your work.
Until the next one, happy writing!
JT
