I’m a great follower of Conan Doyle. As a kid, I read The Adventure of the Speckled Band and
was scared out of my wits. Ever since, I’ve tried to write like him: His mastery of dialogue is out
of this world.
But he didn’t just pop up one morning and write The Speckled Band, he wrote thousands of
other words that nobody remembers today. And that’s pretty much true of all the great writers;
the stuff we read today is really the tip of icebergs of work. I looked at the biographies of a
couple of great writers and found that they wrote for years before they published their famous
works.
OK, where does that leave you and me? Does that mean off to the writers’ salt mine for a few
decades? I hope not, some of us have day jobs. But it does mean we have to write; it’s practice
just like in any other endeavor.
And there’s help: Reedsy has a newsletter that asks you to write short stories on selected
prompts. Good idea. The trouble is that I don’t have any imagination. I would listen to round
table writers’ discussions and be in awe of their creativity. “Jeez, how do they do it? I can’t think
of anything. I’m just a drudge.” Maybe I should attend a twelve-step imagination program or join
Drudges Anonymous.
Anyway, drudge or not, I started writing almost every day. And surprise, surprise, things got
better. When I started, finding the right words was like pulling teeth, now it’s much easier. I still
don’t have any imagination, but there’s always hope.
But something else happened. When I read my earlier work (terrible as it was) I could actually
see what was wrong. The POV was off, there was unexplained omniscience, the transitions
were jumpy, and so forth.
And that is really important.
When I went to law school, we were taught to do “issue spotting,” to identify the legal issues
involved in any controversy. If you can’t find the problem, you can’t fix it. Now at least, I can read
a little like an editor. Like I said, my stuff is still drudgy, but then nobody’s perfect, and there is
the possibility of improvement.
Now, if I could only learn to spell.
Any thoughts?
