By Elizabeth Gates
We all have to write sometimes. We write business letters, reports for work, academic essays, articles, speeches, sermons, journals, even our life story. Some of us write well and engagingly. What we write could be described as creative non-fiction - but rarely is. It's just something we do.And, there are those among us who write to discover more about ourselves, who we are, what we want from life, how to achieve it. We may hope to write novels, short stories, poetry - all the known and some unknown forms of creative fiction. This writing can express authentic truth about ourselves. It can give ourselves and others pleasure. Writing will certainly make us physically and mentally healthier and it can help us to grow so we become the best human beings we can be.
Whatever the purpose behind writing, the processes of writing are the same. Writing involves:
• Preparation - of yourself for your task
• Organisation - of your material
• Writing - the first draft
• Editing - polishing your work to your idea of perfection
• Sharing - public readings and/or the route to publication.
To fine-tune these processes, my advice is:
1. Read a lot - novels, poems, fairy tales, anything that appeals. If the first page doesn't grab you, move on to the next book. As a reader, life's too short when you've left school to waste time on anything which doesn't interest you.
2. Create a safe environment for your writing - comfortable, confidential, friendly.
3. Address the issues of your writer's life which - when badly handled - can make a writing project fail. These include:
• Finding inspiration
• Motivation and keeping going
• Procrastination
• Blocks
• Taming the Inner Critic and self-confidence
• Handling feedback and rejection
• Wellness
• Time management & methods of working
• Relationships and boundaries
4. And develop some awesome persistence.
Elizabeth Gates is an experienced published writer who coaches others writing for professional or personal development. She specialises in writers' creativity and well-being and the routes to publication. For more information, please see her website, http://www.lonelyfurrowcompany.com and read her blog at http://lizziegates.blogspot.com































