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Q&A Real, serious and based on personal experience idea, but no previous practice. Where to begin?

I really don't have any special advice other than to just write. Don't worry about the quality of what you put onto paper, just commit it to paper. People will say "it's probably better than you th...

posted 10y ago by NotVonKaiser‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T03:04:03Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8830
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar NotVonKaiser‭ · 2019-12-08T03:04:03Z (over 4 years ago)
I really don't have any special advice other than to just write. Don't worry about the quality of what you put onto paper, just commit it to paper. People will say "it's probably better than you think it is" but the fact is that it will probably be pretty bad. That's okay. Everybody's first draft is bad. Writing quality prose is all about rewriting.

If you're worried about grammar I recommend the "Little Book" by Strunk and White (the White, by the way, is E.B. White, the writer of _Charlotte's Web_; this is not just some book written by an English prof that has no application to the real world). That being said, I have to go back to what I originally said: if you want to learn how to write forcible, meaningful prose, you have to just write prose.

Writing is hard. If it was easy, everyone would be writing and publishing their memoirs. There are no magic insights I can really impart to you outside of two maxims: 1. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. 2. If it's worth doing well, it's worth doing badly for a while.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2013-09-09T00:52:41Z (over 10 years ago)
Original score: 2