WHEN you first start writing for a living, you can get so caught up in the desire to produce "perfect pieces" that you end up writing, rewriting and rewriting again. I dread to think how many perfectly serviceable articles I have screwed up and thrown away. It wasn't until I started writing for newspapers and faced deadlines every working day that I began to hand in copy that, in my eyes, needed a good polish. But trying telling a crusty old news editor, "You can't have this piece yet because I haven't quite thought of the perfect word to describe the challenge of climbing Mount Everest." Let's just say he wouldn't be best pleased!
One of the most valuable tips I ever received was from an old reporter who had been working since he was 16.
He told me, "Just get it all down on paper while it's fresh in your mind. You can always change it later."
When I started doing that, the ideas and the words flowed. I often found the article needed very little changing. It invariably needed tightening up and maybe a few paragraphs had to be rearranged but the building blocks were there to work with.
Since leaving newspapers and writing all kinds of pieces, from fiction to non-fiction, from fillers to books, I have found that advice still holds true.
Faced with a commission and not sure how to start, I sit down and start to write. First, I write anything about the subject that comes into my head, without censorship. It doesn't matter if it's worthy of the Pulitzer Prize or fit only for lining the cat's litterbox, down it goes.
When you give yourself permission to write anything at all, you free yourself up. You don't hold yourself to "completed" standards, and the words begin flowing out of you much more fluidly. The greatest thing about being a writer is that you can always go back and fix it later. So why do you keep beating yourself up over the quality of your writing? It's not finished yet.
Sometimes it's only by writing rubbish, by getting it out of your system, that you find out what works. Discard the rubbish and you are left with what is good. Okay, so it probably still needs a lot of work, but you have made a start and the structure of the piece will be clearer in your mind.
I'm off now to write an article about global warming. It's a subject that's constantly being written about these days so for my article to stand out I need to find a new angle or a snappy intro - something to grab the reader and make him or her want to read on. I haven't a clue what that angle or intro is yet but I'm going to fire up a new Word document and start writing.......
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