8 Secrets I Wish I knew About Writing While I Was In High School

via flickr Creative Common License thanks 

1. Keep writing! Writing is more of a compulsion than a passion. Don't bog yourself down by holding it in. The more you write the better you will get.

2. Your writing is not perfect especially if no one else has had a chance to critique it. In my teens, I'd spend all my time writing ignoring school, friends, and family For the record, this is not a healthy way to live. While you should definitely carve out time for writing in your life, doing it at the exclusion of all else is going to close off experiences and knowledge. In retrospect, it set me up to feel like my writing had to be at a certain level just because of all the other stuff I moved to the side. No one needs that kind of pressure. Trust me, first attempts are going to flop don’t give up a good Algebra grade for it.

Don’t be more interested in arguing how good what you wrote is than listening to constructive feedback. The person reading your work is only providing input because they see something worth refining. Critiques signal that the reviewer found value in your work. Get out of your own way and be open to what people were suggesting.

The first copy you show people, no matter how polished, is STILL A DRAFT. Entering with that mind set is going to be unspeakably helpful to receiving critique and to improving your work.

3. Remember all writing is collaborative. I was and am really into Emily Dickenson and she was a hermit! She never had to speak to or be reviewed/corrected by a single soul, surely I could expect the same. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Ms. Dickenson wrote solely for herself. She never had any intention of publishing, it was only after her death that her family wanted that for her writing.

• When her work was first published someone else edited the living heck out of it so it would conform to poetic standards of the time. We read the original today, but for a long time a stranger, with no input from the author, decided what was meant by the work and how best to present it.

• Ms. Dickenson wasn't around to see her work thrive.

Dive into the community by:

• Joining a local writers' group. This will give you a group of objective people to critique your work. It will also give you a chance to be the critic. You may be more able to avoid common writing traps now that you've seen it in others' writing.

• Get a Blog. This creates a potentially worldwide presence that establishes you as a writer with experience in X style. Weekly posts will show others your discipline and commitment to your craft.

4. Start building a portfolio. Any peer reviewed, relevant final work can go into a portfolio, but it will carry more weight as a high graded paper, a contest winning work, or a published work. This will increase your community engagement, prepare you to apply for work, and help build your confidence.

• Submit a piece for publication. Check out if you school has publication opportunities. Look into magazine submissions and online posting opportunities. It is never too early to be published or to learn about the submission process. DO NOT let fear hold you back. Life will go on with either a “yes” or a “no” and there is a lot to learn from both answers.

• Submit your work to writing contests. Do a little research and make a splash in the writer's community by becoming a contest winning author!

5. Get some references/testimonials. Talk to your English teacher, writing coach, or even a peer and have them write a review for your work. Even if you are not a contest winner , a reference from a creditable person about your talent can go a long way in helping you get what you want.

It's great practice telling people what your goals are and asking them for help in getting what you want.

6. Don't let “no” scare you off. I expected everyone to just acknowledge my literary genius. Really? It was conceited. I expected all the doors to be open. Hearing “no” was particularly crushing in this context.

There are going to be a million “No's” to your writing BUT it's not a rejection of you or your talent. “No” is a business decision for that group at that time. It could mean their budget was cut, it could mean your work is right for five or six future things but not this one thing right now, or it could just mean competition was fierce and there's more work for you to do. Nobody automatically thinks an actor, dancer, or singer is bad when the hiring team says “no” to them, writing is very much the same way.

I've found going in and expecting “no” helpful. It makes me look for reasons people would say no and build arguments against it. It also makes hearing “yes” amazing while making “no” just so much background noise.

7. Be open to a lot of directions with your writing career. Career day showcases a lot of traditional career paths. How to be a police officer or a small business owner is a pretty clear to most people. Even how to be an actor, musician, singer, or novelist, while a hard path, is pretty well understood by the general populace. The options as a writer are a little more obscure.

Freelance work is really a broad and varied world. Do you want to run a blog, do you want to be a technical writer, do you want to pitch creative ads and marketing techniques, do you want to professionally write reviews, do you want to run e-courses and coaching sessions for other writers, or do you want to do something else? There are a lot of options for creative innovative aspiring writers and the formula to get there is pretty fluid.

8. Consider community college. I'm not going to say college is a waste to the aspiring writer, because it's not. I made my greatest improvements to my writing style in college. If I'd had a greater sense of purpose, I would have made some amazing networking connection in college. I'm pretty sure I have my day job because I hold a degree. College DOES earn you some things. However, what I got out of the experience does not validate the price tag for my four year degree. If I could do it all over again, I would have gone to community college and worked. I would have had less debt and would have taken advantage of more opportunities while I was there. I would have had more time and experience to learn what I needed to do to get the most from a four year degree program.

There is a lot of pressure to go to college and get a traditional 4 year away from home experience. I know the college “experience” has been elevated to an almost mythical status through our cultural narrative. Although the opportunity for education and growth may still be unparalleled by a traditional 4 year college, you have to know and take full advantage of almost every opportunity presented to you to make up for the cost.

Does your opinion differ from mine? Did I leave something out or put something horrible in the list? Leave your own advice and feedback to would be writers below!

Area to Focus in and Becoming a Niche Writer—Come Again?

I'm impetuous and often fling myself head first with passionate abandon. I rarely let the full framework of idea fall into place. I dove into blogging like a salmon does the steam of it's birth to spawn. Three days in to my plan and now I worry that like a spawning salmon, I'm only heading enthusiastically to my own demise.

Writing is so natural for me. It feels like returning home. In a world where there are countless books and web posts about how to find your voice, how to keep the ideas flowing, and how to stay passionate in writing. All these posts are alien to my experience as a writer. I've never been 'out of ideas' or lacked a clear strong personality in my work. I don't lack the ability to spin imagery or metaphor. 'Surely', I thought, 'if these are the main struggles to keeping a blog, then it should be simple for me.'

From there I build a basic plan on what to call the blog, what to write, and how to market me. It felt good, like popping a pimple. All the bitter puss runs through the page, leaving oily ink stains. My problem is: destroying the pimple doesn't get rid of the underlying skin condition and creating a blog doesn't mean that I have contacts, clients, readers, or focus for my writing.

My blog right now is like the Jersey Shore Reality TV show. We're following me around my daily life and hoping that I create some TV gold. It's strange that I hate this premise of almost all reality TV, but still enjoy reading/writing blogs of the same premise. Is this proof positive that everything has more depth in writing vs video?

To me, I have a focus: my career status. I'm sharing what I currently do and some secrets of the food service industry I've picked up. I have a lot to share about guests I've served over the years, bosses and hierarchy structures, co-workers with their messy lives, and what my training tells me regarding how other establishments are functioning. Hospitality and retail industries are multi-billion dollar markets. I have seen the cogs as they turn smoothly, but I've also been present as they break down. I have very strong opinions on how is best to run a business, how to treat the staff, and how ideally client customer interactions should go.

My second focus, the less bitter one, follows me looking into the prospects of becoming a freelance writer. This side of writing is more open ended. It provides me an opportunity to discuss what I'm trying and how my experiences go. I can talk about my own skills and what I've learned.

While I'm new to freelancing, I'm not a new writer and I'm familiar with many varied styles. Specifically in my networking focuses I want to find other aspiring writers whom I can give tips to make amazing ideas read cleanly and compellingly. I love digging into others writing, after all, who doesn't like being a critic? Unlike a lot of critics not only can I tell someone the very moment my interest was piqued or lost, I can say why and I can offer feedback to build on that bit. Editting and critiquing is one of the few areas where a skill like that can be helpful instead of exhausting or annoying.

Writing about my freelance writing adventures also gives me a platform to discuss what suggestions other writers have made. This whole conversation for example, is inspired by this post on how to land clients with a blog  by Elna. She suggests that the best way to get clients through blogging is to “focus on your niche”.

I was concerned that perhaps my blog and writing doesn't meet the niche requirements. Perhaps in my enthusiasm, I had made my blog's reach too broad or too narrow. Does my writing fit into a category, and if so what? I panicked. It won't be the first or the last time. I'm impetuous after all and will back slide into my fearful, insecure self as naturally as I draw breathe. If only I could push it out of my brain on the next exhale.    

Networking: Would doing it Any Other Way Seem Less Desperate?

I spent the first half hour of my morning writing session looking to network. I know zero people (I am literally a social hermit) so “social networking” involves desperately searching for people who may have common interests online. Worse thing about networking is that finding people is supposed to be the easy part. After all, there are hundreds of freelance writing groups, blogging groups, and writer support groups. I just click the join button and allow the influx of media to wash over me. This has not previously been a successful strategy for me. Maybe I pick too many groups.  Maybe they aren't the right groups. Whatever the reason, any serious attempts at networking usually result in me completely unplugging from net for months at a time.

I've done the blogging thing before. First I wrote a personal journal on livejournal.com and in the wake of the livejournal vs fanfiction / mass deleting of accounts, I left that platform and moved over to insanejournal. Doing this was awesome for my personal blog because it forced me to act and talk with the larger livejournal community and the eventual insanejournal community. For the better part of a year I had fifteen or so internet friends. The insanejournal gig couldn't last. People swapped over to dreamwidth(?) or lost interest in writing/blogging. I suppose that's around the time facebook, youtube and other new forms of social media started becoming more mainstream. I think a lot of them left or refocused their energy on these newer models. After all why write with friends when you could face to face talk? My own account slowly went dark as all the people I used to speak to winked out and I could write in a vacuum on my own pc without ever publishing.

I very briefly tried a photography business and a blog with zero success. I have some natural talent in composing shots, and my ability to edit is respectable. I have very little in the way of technical terminology or logistic advice. While my pictures are lovely and I have quite a few amazing shots, writing wise I have nothing to offer this community.

I ran a Mary Kay blog when I was trying to sell it. I wrote (and never published) more posts about how the promotion techniques were troubling, the product was limited, or how terribly these women treated other women. My puff pieces that made it on to the blog were acceptable but lacking in real heart. Also, they were way too long, instead of trying to appeal to one group, I worked on appealing to all groups in one long post—not a smart strategy. What's most surprising to me is that my three page posts somehow garnered 69 page views.

My most successful blog was a personal religious one I wrote. This one has/had a lot of potential. My networking roots were good. I was knowledgeable and passionate about the material. I wanted to reach out and participate in the community and I had some people reaching back and participating with me.

The first problem here is that I am too verbose. I wrote 5-10 page posts, and these final posts were edited down from 20-30pages all single spaced mostly a wall of text. It takes a lot commitment to write that kind of work and even more to read and respond to it. I was posting, but by the time I was getting my thoughts out, they were no longer timely.

I started to get the impression that a lot of the people I was working with were there to increase subscription and page ratings and not to discuss or actually dig into our faith. Once that thought blossomed, I could see how the language in a lot of the posts was intentionally inflammatory to force response. Even people in the scene who were bridge builders and unity champions, had posts which seemed to be there just to generate greater page hits. I might have struggled on writing my mini-novel posts, but I was too disheartened by the nature of the conversation along with the length of time it took me to respond to push on.

So present day what have I learned from previous blogging forays?

1. Keep it short 500-1000 words. This is a HUGE challenge for me.
2. Keep it current and regularly updated. I have updated daily in some of my past blog projects and they were hands down the most successful at reaching out. While I am one person and I don't want to over produce as that can be annoying on someone's feed, I also don't want to be bumped off the page views either.
3. Controversy will happen naturally. I don't need to troll internet rage to be seen, and if I do, I probably don't have anything worthwhile to say.
4. Be authentic, people have always seemed to respond well to me, and I need to trust in that.
5. Network, Network, Network! What I need is a support group of people, reading, commenting, and possibly connecting me to work. I have skills that make me a great friend to have. I'm a good editor. I'm very passionate about projects I take on, and I have diverse interests/ knowledge base to work from.
6. My base is very limited but it might be time to reach out to friends and family.

What about you? Are there any tips on how is best to network? Are there any thoughts on the best way to make friends/contacts? How do you like to reach out? What was your most successful networking experience?