I had no technique. No discipline. No routine.
I also didn’t believe I was a writer. It was just something I felt like doing.
I showed my stories to my father, who liked them and started printing them now and then on his local newspaper. My column was called E daí? (So what?)
I showed some of them to my professors at University and they provided me some good feedback.
People talked to me on the street about how they resonated with the stories I wrote. (I lived on a very small town).
With the help from a friend I self-published a collection of short-stories at my old University press.
I spent a year in one of the most peaceful, beautiful places I had ever seen and I didn’t write a single story. I had a lot of free time and not a lot to worry about. Why didn’t I write? I lived in an effin tower right next to an effin castle, for god’s sake!
Maybe that hibernating time was necessary.
Now I write again and I gradually became more serious about it. I realized that writing is something I will always do, no matter what. I also admitted that I needed to improve a lot and this is what I’ve been trying:
- Write more.
- Read more.
- Read about writing.
- Talk about writing.
- Ask friends to beta-read and give feedback.
- Re-write (Seriously the most important thing I’m learning right now.)
- Treat my writing as a job. Don’t schedule anything after I set that time for writing.
- Implement techniques like this one.
Truth be said, I didn’t spend all day and I didn’t come up with one novel idea. I sat down for a couple of hours and in the end I had a series of ideas for short stories or novellas. They are placed right in front of me on my desk and whenever I finish a story I have a beautiful list to choose the next one from.
How about you? Are you working on that big dream? Are you giving your talents a chance to flourish?