Writing is above all an exercise to improve oneself

You always learn something from your mistakes. From mistakes in writing you learn to write better and methodically.

You learn to write by writing. Writing itself is the best writing gym, the greatest teacher, obviously combined with a healthy and honest self-criticism.

I thought back to when I wrote as a boy, when I rocketed off to write poems and adventure or science fiction stories, to start and never finish novels and what I learned from those mistakes, from that amateurism that was naive but full of love and passion for writing.

And I discovered 4 important writing lessons that made it easier for me to write stories and also articles for the web.

1) Non-writing is as necessary as writing

Designing stories, designing books, sketching plots, jotting down ideas, documenting yourself: all this work is not really writing: rather it is non-writing . But it is work that is not only necessary, but also facilitates the entire creative process of the writer. It falls under the so-called prescription.

When I started writing stories, I just wrote: I had a vague idea and I started writing. Some will say that this is exactly how it is written.

It's actually just a method and, as such, it works for some and not for others. It didn't work for me: my first stories are illegible, full of gaps, of narrative ingenuity, with approximate characters that make them not very credible, with multiple writing styles coexisting in the same story.

It's all about finding your own writing method . I feel comfortable writing with a preparatory work behind me, with ready material.

Documentation, above all, for any book you want to write, should absolutely not be overlooked: reading books and articles on the subject of the text we are writing generates ideas, stimuli for further study. Studying, deepening, above all getting to know the places better, allow you to enter more deeply into the subject, offer more room for maneuver and an expansion of the subject matter.

2) Know your own productivity and exploit it

When are you most productive?

Answer this question before you start writing.

Of course, productivity in writing must find a way to express itself outside working hours, school or university: therefore let's say that in a certain sense, productivity for writers must be concentrated in free time.

But we can always find a time frame in the day when we are most productive, when we can write both freely and profitably. For some it is the night hours, for others the very early morning, before dawn, for others still the late afternoon or evening, for others only the weekend.

Knowing when we are most productive allows us to write more consistently, but above all more quickly.

In the evening I wouldn't be able to write, because after 7-8 hours on the computer (writing) my eyes are tired. Working in an agency, I can carve out "spaces" in the day to devote to my writing, even if not always. Certainly not in the morning, which I always devote entirely to work. Before, I often wrote at night, now I mostly write on weekends.

3) Good writing habits are a discipline to be imposed

Nobody likes impositions, as many are unaccustomed to discipline. But discipline is nothing more than an “ordered way of behaving”. A “standard of living”.

Good writing habits are therefore an orderly way of writing, a way of proceeding in the work of writing. Everyone has to find their own, so that it gives the desired results.

Why build writing habits?

Habit has a particular and curious meaning: it comes from dress, which is not the dress, but is also the dress. Dress is the way of being, what characterizes us, the qualities that are always present in us, which we carry with us every day, just like clothes.

Habits are habits: that is, habitual ways of operating that have by now become a sort of rule.

And aren't rules impositions?

4) Let the story guide the writing process

How many times have we heard or read “the novel wrote itself”? It is an expression that has always sounded absurd to me, not true. It is the writer who writes the novel.

I could then rephrase the common expression by saying that the story, in a sense, guides the writer from beginning to end.

When I decided how to write the plot of the chapters, I compared different methods and found the one that worked best for me: a short list of the most salient facts of the chapter. Despite this, I've never quite complied with that list in my novels.

Why? Because history often took me elsewhere. The creative process of writing is unstoppable and cannot be confined. When writing, it often happens that an event that has just been narrated generates a different plot development than expected: almost always better.

I have therefore learned that it is better to let the story guide the writing , which does not mean that the story writes itself, but only that as we write it it stimulates turning points and continuation.

And what writing lessons have you learned over time?