Stepping Stone

Chinua Achebe

“I believe myself that a good writer doesn’t really need to be told anything except to keep at it.” — Chinua Achebe

The first book on writing I ever bought was a small, 32 page pamplet like thing called Arrow Writer’s Handbook. I bought it at a school book fair sometime in my fourth grade year, and got in huge trouble for it. I can’t quite remember what I was supposed to spend the money on, but I spent it on this little guide book instead. I still have the little book, all these years later; it sits on my shelf between a copy of The Norton Anthology of American Literature Fifth edition Volume 2 and The Bedford Reader (which I got from a professors free book box during my BA years and which is missing most of the title page and is held together with OD green duct tape). It’s far from being the best of any genre, but by god did it create a foundation of my outlining skills.

I’ve had worse books as textbooks before, expensive ones that some professor always seemed jived about, but I certainly never got anything out of it. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace was a book I bought for the class and rarely opened, even for the class. Books on writing are great, and some really have helped me as a writer. On Writing Well by Zinsser and Master the Craft of Writing by Wilbers are two of my favourite go-to references for when I get stuck or just want some help. Without a doubt, though, is that my writing never got much better from reading these reference guides and self-help books. What helped was writing. Writing in NaNoWriMo for nearly a decade (it’ll be ten years of NaNo this year) has helped me with shoving through bricked up writers’ blocks. Taking a course in my Junior year of an English Lit degree that required a 500wd essay due in class three times a week alongside four 2000wd essays and a creative writing final, that’s what markedly made me better as a writer. I wrote more in that semester than I did in my entire college career.

My last year in college, I shoved a small school desk into my bathroom so that I could force myself to find time to write, even if it was while I was otherwise occupied. If the toilet desk could work for Martin Luther, it could work for me. And it did! There weren’t any distractions in the bathroom and I could knock out hundreds of words of drafts in there. Everyone may laugh at such methodologies, but if it’s stupid and works, it’s not stupid.

Reading helped my writing, but reading helps every aspect of life, regardless of what you’re using those books for. Fanfiction helps, despite its reputation. Look at 50 Shades of Grey. It started off as a Twilight AU fanfiction and is now a bestseller with movie deals! Discovering Chaucer was the highlight of my BA studies. The professor was always ridiculously enthused to give the lecture, the students were into everything, because Chaucer is relatable, forgive my French, AF. Chaucer is the OG of feminist studies. He wrote for females in Court and then he wrote for the People. He survived religious purges. He belonged to a newly developing Middle Class. The Knight’s Tale, the first of the Canterbury, has two knights imprisoned in a tower where they lust after the maiden free down below. It’s like reverse Rapunzel! Chaucer wrote some of the best fanfiction of all! God knows the poor man couldn’t get enough of his perfect in every way, Mary Sue of a Hector. All of his early works, though, led up to the Canterbury Tales. His writing does get better, stays on task, as he progresses from writing dream visions to writing his epic (even if he didn’t finish before he died, the lousy quitter).

At the end of the day, books are great, but it’s writing that makes the writer better. Setting goals and writing nonsense until your eyes are bleeding just looking at how much you know you’ll have to edit later, that’s what makes the writer. Even if the only writing you can fit in is the writing you have to while you latrinate, get it done. There’s always some time in your day to write. You just have to find it, and utilize it.