Yzabel / August 8, 2005

This post has originated from an answer to Mina in an e-mail; as I was starting to go on a tangent, I kept it short there, but then thought that I could indeed develop the point a little further.There is a lingering conception in France that “writing is an innate talent”, “writing can’t be learnt”, “either you know how to write or you don’t”. I’m not sure where this comes from; it may simply be some reminiscence from our literary past smelling of elitism. Regardless, I strongly disagree. Talent enters the game to a certain extent only; the rest can indeed be learnt and perfected through advice and practicing—and, like I’ve discovered, much to my dismay, “talent” can also decay with time and lack of said practicing!In writing like in many other domains, I believe that nothing is ever completely carved in stone. Structures change. The most popular genres change. Story organizing change as well. We wouldn’t write nowadays like novelists were doing in the 18th or 19th century—well, we could, but I wouldn’t bet much on getting successful in finding a publisher for such stories, or if people do, it would then be the exception that makes the rule. Not exactly a nice dream for any young writer to aspire to.Why pay attention to these writing books? Why spend time reading about how to write, when I could be writing? Simply because time isn’t infinitely extensible, and everything I can learn now will be as many hours that I won’t waste later on on additional editing. Yesterday, I was posting about showing, rather than telling descriptions; this kind of “technique” is exactly one that is worth learning now, rather than on the day I send a novel to a publishing house.Why, I know very well how things go! Entrenched within my story, within this world I’ve created from pebbles, I want to show the more I can of it, and in doing so, I tend to fell into heavy descriptions, wanting to do things properly. This is one of my problems; why wouldn’t it also be the problem of another young writer, why wouldn’t anyone benefit from learning good writing tips first?And so, I’m trying to focus on a few books that seemed to be useful to me. About French publishing processes, about editing, about howto make scenes more dynamic… I’m of course not looking for someone to tell me exactly what to write, waiting for me to nod my head and obey—simply for advice and examples that would allow me to recognize what I could do to improve the quality and setting of my story, and what would be to my detriment in it. There’s no such thing as a universally perfect style, but there are certainly tips that I can use to polish my writing skills. Let’s avoid jumping among the points of view of four characters in the same paragraph. Let’s work on dialog mechanics a little, so that said dialogs don’t end up being more soporific than a badly written description. Why would learning this be a bad move?We all have our strong and weak points. I know some of mine. My imagination runs rampant, and I never have any problems to create personas and relationships for my characters, while I somehow lack interest in the domain of raw description, tending to throw everything in a two-sheets block right at the beginning of a story to be rid of it early, sort to say. Well, good, now that I know that, I can work on it, build on my strong point even more, and stand corrected on the weak one. Isn’t this great?If I were to pursue an elitist path, convincing myself that I am talented, period (or that I’m a failed, talentless writer and should give up right now, without any chance of ever succeeding), I wouldn’t improve. I’d remain stuck in my mud forever, rejecting without even knowing it every chance at improving and at fulfilling my dream.And I know better than destroying my chances without even trying.books, writing