Words Make a Writer

Learning from Mistakes

When you begin the journey of writing, you begin to see how much words can influence your writing.  It a lot about you, and a little about everything else.

I am a big fan of novels, and in particular, Terry Brooks and Harry Turtledove.  I enjoy their writing, and I find a good deal of relaxation when I’m reading.  I love to write, but I also need my reading time.

The problem is the fact that words make a writer.

I am a big fan of Ernest Hemingway, but I will admit I am not as big a fan of much of his actual writing. I like the classics, but I don’t read them as much as I could.  I know them, I like them, I am not a fan of them, unless one includes L.M. Montgomery as a classic author.  Hemingway, is not a writer who used to grab me, until I began to truly read his work.  It’s about the word choice.

Words.

Words. All too often I am influenced by the words other writers use, and if I want to improve on my writing, I’ll need to look at other writers.  I’m not saying I’d give up on my favourite writers, but they have an influence on how I write, and that is a challenge for me.  Why I write the way I write is because of who influenced me, and they are the wordsmiths I read.

I’m not saying I shouldn’t read them, but I am saying that words make a writer, and when I look at what I’ve written, I can see the influence there, and it will take a great editor to fix a lot of my mistakes.

I’m not saying there won’t be challenges with writing, but there will be changes in my writing when I change my reading habits.  Words, and how another writer uses them challenge how I am writing.

Learning from my mistakes means over time, I will be able to work through more on my blog because I will see what needs fixing a lot sooner, and I will find more joy and passion in my writing because I am learning.

Words make a writer, and part of this is to expand what I read.  It is important to my writing just as it is important to my growth as a person.  I can only ask so many “what if” questions before I learn that the answer isn’t what if, but rather “why did I do this?”

The reason is because of the influence of the words I read.