Jerry W Stewart

I’ve started writing fiction again. If you read my previous post, My Reading and Writing Autobiography, then you are familiar with my writing history. If you haven’t had a chance to read that one I would encourage you to read it first, since this post will assume that you have.

It’s been a long time, since I made an attempt at writing fiction. I thought the words would come easy and the grammar would just work. I was wrong. Writing is a skill that requires practice to master. If you get out of practice, then don’t expect to pick up where you left off. Give it time and it will start to come back to you, but don’t expect to get right on the first attempt.

I’ve been kicking around a story for about  six months now. It started off with a single character in a setting that captured my attention. It has grown into a trilogy in my mind with intricate plots and growth of the main characters through out the trilogy. I finally decided to sit down  and put words to paper. In my first attempt that’s exactly what I accomplished – words on paper. I reread my first 1,000 words and decided that the scene and characters where there, but the writing was poor and the dialogue was forced. I started to trash it out right and start from somewhere else in the story, but I didn’t want to spend more time writing junk. I comprimised, and rewrote the first 1,000 words.The second attempt reads much better, and now I feel like I can press on.

Sometimes you have to hammer out the words to get the bad writing out. You can always rewrite, revise, or try again.