The Art Of Writing

Writing is, in fact, both an art and a science. Above all, it is great fun. Here I hope to enlighten you a little about what you need in your literary laboratory as you reach for the stars.

We will take it as a given that you know how to read and write to a high standard. If you don't then you need to do something about that. On-line and/or evening classes should sort that out. Failing that some private home study should do the trick.

Moving on to the part that matters in terms of being a creative writer, here are one or two little party tricks I use on a daily basis.

First off, ideas. Ideas are like number ten buses. You stand and wait in the rain for an hour all to no avail. The minute you decide to walk away from the bus stop, caught between two stops, neither of which you can get to in time, ten buses all come at once. It's called Sod's law.

So what do you do? You go out with an umbrella just in case. As a writer who is scared to miss out on a good idea, I always have help at hand. I take my mobile phone and a pen and notepad everywhere I go.

It was a good job I did that this morning, because the mobile phone died. However, I was able to scribble down lots of ideas on the back of a shop receipt as I had forgotten my notepad. I am writing this article from those notes.

I even take my mobile and notepad to bed with me, just in case I wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea. I can guarantee you, if you just go back to sleep without writing it down, by morning you will have forgotten the idea.

Next. Be open to ideas coming to you from just about any source. Your Illumination feed, the TV and radio news, a chat with your wife over coffee and toast.

Your creative mind has to be on 24-hour call. It's what you might call 'Open All Hours.'

Next up in my toolbox of party tricks is the computer. This is great for all manner of things like researching the background to a story, the meaning and spelling of words and even looking for words that rhyme, like love, dove, glove, above, etc. It's not cheating, it's being smart. It is still you who has to write that poem or article. And of course, if you want your work to be curated and published on Illumination, you must run it through Grammarly. I am a very highly qualified and experienced writer of many years, and it never ceases to amaze me how many bloopers I make in an article.

Ok, so you now have an initial draft. Now what you have to do is edit and edit and edit.

You have to incessantly edit your way to that gem of a poem or article you were aiming for.

So, what exactly is a poem? Well, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it is just a collection of rhyming couplets. And, in a way, you'd be right. However, above all, it is a story. The rhymes have many functions one of which is, like its counterpart rhythm, to act as an aide memoir.

I think that this harks back to pre-writing times when what existed was an oral history. A poem is so much easier to store in the mind and retrieve at a later date. This was essential for what was basically an illiterate society and culture that wanted to pass on its history to new generations.

That history is, in its own way, a story. It is a story of the birth, the development and the growth of that civilisation. It is an epic, oral story if you like.

Now, of course, you are going to use words and sentences to communicate that story. However, that is just to give you the form, be it a poem or a piece of prose. There is still a lot more to it than that.

To me what a piece of writing has to have is a heart and a soul. You have to inject an infusion of your own personality, your feelings and your thoughts. The idea is to connect with like-minded readers on an emotional and intellectual level. You have to engage with your potential readers with things that interest them or things that can help them.

You have to give something of value to the reader for them to justify to themselves investing their time in reading what you have written.

Once again, when you have done all of that, you have to edit and edit until that piece shines out from all the rest other writers have submitted. Remember, there are thousands of writers who all want what you want, success with their writing.

My last piece of advice may surprise you. Above all, just try to have fun writing. I know when a writer is having fun and it is infectious.

And this is what writing is all about for me; to spread good ideas, good thinking, good feelings, good advice and a whole lot of fun. So let your writing sparkle and sing out with passion and joy.