Here is a piece that contains advice for young writers! Hoping that you find this useful in your writing journey!
Advice for young writers – not an easy one to write, but here it is!
I don’t know if it’s too early to write this piece for me, but since I want to help younger writers out there, my tips are as follows (all based on my personal experience):
- Find a community that will embrace you: Whether it’s your Wattpad group, creative writing classmates, or simply a group who will read, give feedback, help, and embrace you – go and have one. Writing is already lonely as it is, so get all the support and love that you can!
- Read all the books that you can find: This can’t be emphasized enough. As Stephen King illustrated perfectly, “Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.”
- Pick up lessons from the books that you read and reflect on your writing: This takes time. These two come together hand-in-hand: You have to know yourself, know where you’re coming from (literally and figuratively), and know your influences to be able to create a distinct voice of your own.
- Get and participate in all the opportunities that you can: It doesn’t matter whether you’re rejected 100 times along the way. A single publication under your name makes it worthwhile.
- Practice whenever you can: Some say that you should stick to a disciplined routine. Others say that you should make time for it. Still, there are others who say to write when you feel it and edit when you can. It doesn’t matter what you choose or how you do it; what matters is you write, you don’t forget your body and soul along the way, and you keep at it!
- Discipline and mental resilience: This comes handy when you are writing longform texts, novels, and in the field of professional writing. But don’t forget to take care of yourself – health is wealth, especially in the world of writing!
- If you have the money, buy books, invest in your craft, and travel the world: Buying books allows you to expand your vocabulary and add to your latent knowledge, among tons of other things. Investing in your craft (getting an MA in Creative Writing, buying a laptop, having Grammarly Pro, etc.) adds both concrete and figurative. Finally, travel is the most foolproof way to experience the world, see new things, learn other cultures, and take notes on human life in general (after all, don’t we say that good art is both a reflection of/on the human condition and a product of its time?)
Hoping that you find this advice for young writers useful! Good luck in your respective writing journeys!
