Learning to Write

Exactly how do you become a writer?  Well, if you have a passionate desire to be a writer, first of all I'd advise you to read---read everything you can get your hands on. Learn about words, what they mean and how they can be used for different effects; study grammar and punctuation---all these are the tools of the trade. Then learn what works in your writing and abandon what doesn't. Don't think everything you write is a gem. We all write an awful lot of sheer drivel.

Pay attention to people. Try putting yourself in the shoes of everyone you meet. Develop empathy. Observe how people act and speak. Try to make the characters you invent "real"; they must live and speak and feel until they almost become flesh-and-blood. What happens to them must matter to you, and through you, to your readers. With these characters, you experience their suffering, their sorrow and their joy, and work through their dilemmas. That's what writers mean when they say, "My characters wrote this book!"

This is true. I wrote Judgment on Tartarus; my characters then wrote True Son of Tartarus and Ransom of Tartarus. I just helped them along the way.

That's all for today,

MRTighe