Learning To Write Hack #5 - Every Day

After a long absence, I return to my reguritation of Mark Lee's excellent series of Songwriting Hacks modified to fit standard writing. As I've noted before, I'm not trying to just copy his work or anything - in fact, I refer frequently to the source of the material. By regurgitating and modifying his stuff, I learn the lessons better. I have to concentrate on what he's saying in order to be able to rewrite it to fit regular writing. And so far, the lessons have crossed over fairly easily, though I have a sneaking suspicion that may change in the future.

Today's hack is Ev'ry Day. I think I know why it took me so long to get back in this series - this is going to be the painful one to write about, because deep inside I know it's true and I have such a hard time making myself do it.

As I'm sure you can guess from the title, he stresses doing something every day. Even if it's something minor. It can be intimidating thinking you need to crank out several paragraphs as you make your way through your first million words. But his point is that you don't have to sit down to write every time. For songwriting, sit down and study some music. Pick out one little section and figure out what makes it good. The same applies to writing. Find someone else's writing you really enjoy reading, and study a small selection. Study how the sentences are structured, what the voice is, the phrasing, etc. What about it makes you really enjoy it? What can you learn from it?

I'd like to say I've been doing that. Well, in some way I'm sure I have as I have been doing a lot of reading, but I haven't really stopped and reread things several times to understand what I really like about it and why.

I will make an effort over the next 30 days to really study some writing I enjoy and figure out what makes me enjoy it so much.




*Note: Link goes to the general Creative Process category, as some permalinks seem to be broken on his blog now.