• Learn by doing.
• Learn by reading.
• Learn by studying.

But why do you have to do all this in order to write?
You could just go out and write, but the writing will be junk.

No one who writes can say they do it because they are a natural writer.
There is no such creature.

To call it, a different way, when you read the great writers, you will begin to understand what makes them tick. You will understand the times or the era in which they wrote. The writing they did in the grammatical style they preferred is a big part of how they portrayed the words that are put to paper, and how the reader picks up the story and imagines it.

If you read Steinbeck or Hemingway, you will experience a great story and some of the very best writing ever put to paper. If you truly READ and analyze any of the great authors, or your favorite writers, of whatever genre you prefer, using both sides of your mind, the creative as well as the analytical sides, your brain will kick in and only then you will begin to see and fully understand how and why they became great.

Nigel Hamilton, a famous British Historian, and Biographer stated once, in regards to writing: “If your reading audience doesn’t understand what you’re saying, then you are talking to yourself .”

It’s true! If you take each story that has ever grabbed your imagination or evoked emotions in you and that story has been able to conjure up visions and places and things without any difficulty then that writer has successfully accomplished the goal of constructing a great piece of writing.

I have had many students say to me: "I don’t like to read because it will corrupt my writing style."

You cannot even know what a writing style is until you have read some of the very best.

Reading, either as enjoyment or a study tool, is never a waste of time, especially for writers. And if you think you do not need to read, you will always be an amateur. In the ever-growing category of the Wannabe Writer, it is the "Could Have Beens," or “If I Only Hads,” that seem to be the believers in the misconceptions that reading corrupts writing style or influences storylines. Not only will you be ignorant about the craft of writing, you will also NOT be published to any noted degree.

To read is to grasp hold of the greatest of words placed to paper. To read is to journey through time's ever-changing world.

So as a writer, to gain style, and be able to place your kind of panache into every piece you write, remember it has nothing to do with what type of machine you use, or what type of paper whiteness you prefer, it has to do with learning from the masters.

Read their works. Read the works of those who have influenced your mind in a positive way. Read everything! Read things you would not normally read.

The skill and craft of writing are an ever-changing, ever-evolving process, but the way we learn as writers is and has been the same for centuries. When you read you will gain your style. The more you increase the amount you read, the more you will gain in the writing craft.

 I tell my students
“There is elegance in the eloquence!”

You will never know and understand style until you have experienced it from reading the best.

© T E Watson

First drafts are an essential part of my process when I write. If anything I do makes it, as a little friend in the first grade said, “a first giraffe,” then I know I will continue with it. He then asked how many giraffes does it take to make a story? I told him as many as want to come along for the ride.

How many giraffes, or drafts, should a writer do?

We have been taught in school, unfortunately, that we need to get things done fast and as instantly as possible by the sheer lack of time many curricula insist on. They do this by saying you get an assignment on Monday and need to have it done before Friday to hand in. Now there is nothing wrong with deadlines, however, to write anything well and complete as possible it takes time. It also takes many more drafts than we often expect.
 
How many? It takes as many as it takes until the work is done. Seldom does a good work happen in only in three days as is often the case in schools. It is difficult to teach that real-time writing is a mythological kingdom where time holds no bounds, but is a difficult taskmaster when it wants to be.

First drafts are just that, a draft. A draft is an incomplete account or beginning of a work in progress. Drafts are then polished and need constant revision. They demand constant attention. Changes occur so often they will make a new writer want to quit. Why? Because they get stuck in the idea they have written the great novel everyone will read.

Not so. Never so.

The new writer will hopefully, realize that writing is hard work. There have been works of my own that I have re-written so many times I cannot count them. There have also been some that have needed little, not zero, just not 80 or so. A revision is an act of creativity in which the writer will make the work better, until such time, it flows when read.

How do you know?
How will you know when a piece is finished?

It will tell you.
It will tell you by saying and showing you that no matter how many times you correct a word or rewrite a sentence it was better the other way round.

You put it away for a time. Whatever that time is, is up to the writer. Then go back and re-read it, if it sounds fine,  be happy, it is complete, at least for now.
If not, then you have more work to do.

Drafts are and always will be the marble in which a writer sculpts the writing. Chipping and carving away at the medium they use to bring forth a work all the world can like or turn away in disgust. It takes time or as the great Children's Author Roald Dahl wrote in his excellent book Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, "It takes a long time to put a million pieces together."

It is those million pieces that are the puzzle you as the writer need to look after and make sure no parts are missing before, during, and afterward. This is the craft of writing a draft. 

Plan, map out, outline, everything you can think of when writing a first draft. The more planning you do the better it will be and the final writing will be better for it.

After a time you may abandon the outlining method, but during the years, and yes it may take years, you need to stick with the planning technique in everything you write.  

First and foremost get the words on paper and if the words make no sense that's okay.
You have begun.

This article is an excerpt from: Light & Stone, Essays on writing and the realities of publishing by TE Watson
To learn more about this book please visit its page LINK here.

On November 8, 2018 the Paradise Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise and my home, home office with it.

You can easily find out more about that horrible day and the aftermath that we are all going through and likely to go through for quite some time.

As for me, I don't want to write about it.

I don't wish for anyone to ever have to go through something like that.

Stay safe.
Be aware.