I remember writing a grumpy, angsty post about how most writing advice is bullshit, but this bit of advice applies to me, as I’ve always thought that getting a job in which I wrote for a living was ideal, and that it would make be a better writer.
I was wrong. It didn’t make me a better writer; it made me good at copying another person’s style. While learning how to write in different styles is required of many media and creative agencies, it doesn’t necessarily train one to learn how to write better.
I suppose learning different writing styles means that you’ll be taking note of language and studying it more closely, but when you have a deadline all the time, you have to do is hunker down at your desk and tap away until you’ve hit the required word limit. Then, you’ll wait for feedback from your editor and make the necessary edits. This process teaches you to be thick-skinned and to not be so attached to your words (it is, after all, just commercial work) but the writing I do is a far cry from writing fiction.
Fiction is different. It’s about crafting your own style, thinking about plot, dialogue, and it’s a far cry from sitting down, and switching on that bit of your brain that lets you write like a lifestyle magazine writer, a style blogger, or a brochure writer. It’s a type of writing that doesn’t really have anything to do with fiction writing at all, and the only helpful advice you’ll get is how to avoid a hanging clause or facepalming because your editor is pointing out your grammar mistakes.
After doing that for a while, I started asking myself if this was helping me write fiction, and it wasn’t. I was just learning how to write for a magazine and/or write for clients. I was tired every day, I didn’t get any new ideas, and I was sick of using this inauthentic voice I was starting to develop. I reminded myself that people would love to write for a living, and that I was living the dream, so I was just bury my head in work.
Here’s the thing: I thought, at some point in my adult life, there would come a time when I would be officially acknowledged as a writer in my career, because my job title would say so. I certainly didn’t expect fanfare and fireworks like in video games, with pixlated text going, “Congratulations, you’re a writer!”, but I did cling very much to that sort of silly, superficial thing. I was a writer, I was getting paid, what else did I want?
Freedom, apparently.
Two weeks after I hung my hat as a magazine writer, most of my sanity came back. The ideas came back. I finally had some breathing space and I could listen to the hum of ideas within me. I could focus on all the things I wanted to, instead of writing for that bit of money so that I could eat another day.
Writing for a living didn’t make me a better writer; listening to myself and my needs did.
Image from Brian Wong