There’s a big gap between your skill and your vision.
Be patient.
Someone asked for my best advice to beginning writers, and this is it:
Be patient. There’s a big gap between your skill and your vision.
It’s true. We all start out with big, bold, beautiful visions of what we’re going to make. That elegant literary novel, where character and theme are beautifully balanced on the fulcrum of style. The page-turner of a thriller, that will keep readers on the edge of their seat. The article that goes viral and gets you a thousand subscribers. The short story so perfect, the New Yorker is calling you.
But between you and that perfect finished piece is a big, big gap.
You know what you’re trying to do. You have it in your head. But you don’t know how to get there.
For years, I struggled with my stories. I’d begin them in a blaze of inspiration and passion and by the end of the first page I’d be stuck. I didn’t know how to make things happen in my writing. I didn’t understand how to leave out the boring bits. How to create intrigue. How to get my characters from one scene to the next.
It was so frustrating. I had great ideas and powerful visions for my writing. But I had no clue how to turn those ideas and visions into stories, and bring them into reality.
