These words popped out of my reading and
I thought this is the term that describes me.
I am no longer a dreamer, I am a writer.
I am no longer a beginner, I am a trained writer. I have been trained by my efforts and I do
know certain things. I won’t claim to be
a polished, seasoned and acclaimed writer, but I have earned the term
diligent. I have been introduced as a
diligent blogger. I am not lazy with my
short story writing either. I work hard
at this writing business and as I train myself, I find that I work smarter as
well.
I don’t need someone else to tell me
that ‘something has to happen’; I am trained to write fiction that way. I can recognize certain flaws and I can correct
them. I know when I slip out of tenses,
or when I use passive phraseology. I
have trained myself to build stories that have plot, characterizations and
settings. I am trained to edit and to
revise and to submit diligently.
One of the more recent developments in
my training has been a relaxed approach to the stages of story
development. There is a process that I
go through and I can expect something similar for each story. I know that I will fill a few pages before the ‘spark’ of the story arrives. I know that story decisions will be fluid at the beginning, until I decide who the story belongs to and how they want to tell it. I know how to gather enough material so the story has weight and warmth. And because I know these things are part of writing the story, I accept the work involved. And I don’t get tense about it.
The biggest reason that I know I am a
trained writer is that I no longer despair about all there is to learn about
writing. Instead I find delight.
