What I Wish I'd Known When I Started Writing

So. We’ve made it to the future. We’ve arrived in 2024. I’ve checked it and rechecked it and the calendar is defiant. This is definitely the year we’re now inhabiting.

Big milestones like New Year’s Day always have me looking backwards. And this year, I’m looking backwards six years to January 1st 2018, a day I remember quite clearly. It was five days after my chronic illness first reared its ugly head and I woke up telling myself that I was definitely getting over the worst of it. Maybe I should go for a run. Maybe I could still make the New Year’s lunch I’d planned with a couple of friends. But what I did instead was to sit down and write a story. My main resolution for that year was to take my writing more seriously and I was determined that I wouldn’t let my “temporary” illness get in the way of that.

So, I sat on my sofa feeling sorry for myself and wrote a really rubbish story about a pair of clowns. It didn’t have a narrative arc. The characters were caricatures. And the prose was overflowing with more adverbs and adjectives than you could shake a very clichéd stick at. Naïve past-me thought it was great, of course. But naïve past-me also thought that I’d soon be back to full health. Naïve past-me also had an abundance of confidence and immediately sent the story out to The Paris Review and Granta, thinking that this would be the first step towards the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Ok, I was never THAT naïve or full of confidence!

But the point is that I didn’t really know what I was doing. And I continued not knowing what I was doing for a long time after that. Indeed, I’m pretty sure I still don’t know what I’m doing. But hopefully I have a better handle on how to write and where to send stuff out on submission than I did in that dim and distant past.

Being a writer, for me, is as much about the journey travelled as it is about the destination you finally reach. But while that journey is important to our evolution as writers, I can’t help wondering if I’d have reached my current point of understanding a lot quicker if I’d listened to the right voices from the start.

That’s why I’m using this first craft article of 2024 to amplify some of the voices I wish I’d had access to back then. I recently asked a whole raft of writing superstars what they wish they’d known when they first started writing and you can find their answers below, along with some wonderful writing prompts. Whatever point of the writing journey you’ve currently reached, there is so much wisdom here.

Stay true to yourself

This is certainly something it took me a long time to learn. I very much believe that each of us has our own wonderful voice and our unique perspective on the world. We should never be expected to conform with anyone’s view on the “only” way to write:

“I wish I’d known I could write like me and not what I thought was expected or normal.”

Amy Barnes, author of “Child Craft”, “Ambrotypes” and “Mother Figures”

No variant of English is “better” than any other. We all speak how we speak. And each voice should be cherished for what it is:

“I really wish I had known that I could write about my own reality (growing up in Hawai'i) and use my own language (Hawai'ian Pidgin Creole) to express it.”

Melissa Llanes Brownlee, author of “Hard Skin” and “Kahi and Lua”

Your style or subject matter might not be for everyone, but that’s okay:

“I wish I had know that it’s really, truly okay if my writing style isn’t for everyone, and that doesn’t mean I need to change it.”

Gaynor Jones, author of “Among These Animals”

Find your own methods

I remember in the early days of my writing journey seeing an established writer banging on about writing every day and finishing a story in a single sitting, and since I was accomplishing neither of these things, I thought I was failing as a writer. But I now know that anyone doling out one-size-fits-all writing advice is someone I don’t need to listen to. What works in terms of our approach to writing is as unique to us as our perspective and voice:

“I wish I'd known it was ok to just start writing a story with almost no idea where it might lead; I now know that not only is it ok to write like this, but that, in my experience, it usually makes for a much better story.”

Tim Craig, author of the short-short fiction collection “Now You See Him” (Ad Hoc Fiction)

“I would tell my younger self: You can’t always write something all at once, straight off - it’s good to build a story, piece by piece.”

Caroline Greene, author of “Lessons At The Water’s Edge” (a novella-in-flash)

First drafts don’t need to be perfect

At the start of this article, I said there was plenty of wisdom for all of us here, and this particular pearl of wisdom is something I need to remember myself. Often, all we’re doing in a first draft is telling ourself the story. The magic comes in the editing stage:

“Your first draft is never perfect and your stories will ALWAYS improve through editing; re-writing = real writing, polish them until they shine and don’t be lazy!”

Rick White, author of the short-story collection “Talking to Ghosts at Parties”

Be proud of anything you write. Allow yourself to fall in love with your own writing:

“What I wish I’d known before I started writing is that I must fall in love with my work before others can fall in love with it.”

Sudha Balagopal, author of “Things I Can't Tell Amma”

You never know when inspiration will strike

In the shower, while walking the dog, picking the kids up from school…

“I wish I’d known that it was okay to jump up in the middle of the night to write down a great story idea, which made no sense at all in the morning! And still believe in my creative ideas and keep on writing!”

Susmita Bhattacharya, author of “Table Manners” and “The Normal State of Mind”

Sometimes, you might find yourself lacking inspiration, and this is okay too. Your mind is like a farmer’s field. It needs fallow periods to prepare for those future periods of abundance:

“I wish I'd known that down times and fallow periods are a normal (and often necessary) part of living a creative life.”

Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018

Writing is a journey

Even though we might not realise it, we get better at writing every time we sit down at the page:

“What I wish I'd known when I started writing was that being a good writer takes practice just like playing the piano or learning how to play football.”

Finnian Burnett, author of “The Clothes Make the Man”

Coming back to the prescriptive, one-size-fits-all advice I mentioned above, I love what Jan Kaneen says about rules being “tools not rules”:

“What I wish I'd known when I first started writing is that all the rules I was being taught are actually tools not rules - tools to help writers store their ideas and narratives on the page so others can come along at any point, and understand what that writer meant to share - so learn the tools and how they work, because they'll give you control not only over how you write but also how you're read.”

Jan Kaneen, author of “The Naming of Bones”, “A Learning Curve” and “Hostile Environments”

Writing is more than publication

Okay, publication and seeing our words in print is important to many writers. If this is you, I’m here on the side-lines cheering you on. There is so much brilliant, innovative work being published - I wish I had time to read it all! But in that quest for publication, we will inevitably face “rejections” (or NQAs as I like to call them!):

“Accept rejection and criticism as part of being a writer, and remember that persistence is the only way forward.”

KM Elkes, author of “All That Is Between Us”

Some of us can sometimes be in too much of a rush to get a story published:

“It's actually quite good not to be in a rush to get published (sometimes it can feel like being sucked into something like the cartoon Wacky Races!); focus on improving as a writer and meeting other writers, take your time and develop your skills so that you have confidence based on firm knowledge of what you're doing.”

Michael Loveday, author of “Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash: from Blank Page to Finished Manuscript” (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2022)

And to finish with some wisdom from myself, I think it’s important to remember there are many other reasons to write that don’t involve sending a story into the world. Writing has purpose in and of itself:

“There are many reasons to write; writing isn’t just about publication—it is also about enjoyment, catharsis, discovery, self-examination, and self-improvement—the more you bear that in mind, the more fulfilling writing becomes as a creative pursuit.”

Matt Kendrick, author of nothing (at least, nothing book-length; at least, not yet…)

Prompts to light your creative spark at the start of 2024

I gathered the above wisdom as a surprise for a group of young writers and I’m very grateful to all the authors and editors who took the time to respond. The above is only a small selection of their wise words. There is a whole PDF on my website called “What I Wish I’d Known When I Started Writing.” This is available to download along with plenty of other free resources.

These superstar writers also provided a selection of brilliant prompts, and to help light your creative spark for the new year, I’ve shared some of these below:

• Write a short story and include the following words somewhere in the text:

  hula hoop, smartphone, thunderstorm, clown car, and lightbulb. (Dan Crawley, author of “Blur”)

• There’s a boy in school whose mother brings him lunch every day, sits

  beside him peeling an apple or an orange while he eats, hugs and kisses

  him before leaving… (Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar, author of “Morsels of Purple” and “Skin Over Milk”)

• Think about a place you know really well, one that’s a big part of your everyday life. Maybe it’s your bedroom or your classroom. It could be outside, like a sports field or a store you go to a lot. Perhaps the bus to school. Someone - or something - totally unexpected suddenly steps into that place. Who or what is it? What happens next? How different is that place afterwards? (Sharon Telfer, author of “The Map Waits”)

• Write a story loosely based on an argument or fight you’ve had with someone – a family member, friend, classmate, stranger. But write it from the other person’s point of view. (Damhnait Monaghan, author of the novel “New Girl in Little Cove”)

• Choose one letter from your name and write down 5-10 words that start with the same letter. See if you can use all of those words in your next story. (Laura Besley, author of “100neHundred”)

• It’s the year 7444. In time-traveling class, your teacher announces that you’re visiting the year 2023. You’re allowed to bring one of the following: (1. a letter for the people of 2023, describing the pitfalls of time travel—and also the possibilities / 2. a letter to reassure the people of 2023, describing a problem they currently have that will be fully solved by the year 7444, and how / 3. a letter of warning for the people of 2023, describing a catastrophic event in their future that they have no idea will occur / 4. a letter for your own ancestors, describing who you are) Write the letter of your choice. (Kristen Loesch, author of “The Last Russian Doll”)

• Take the first line of a book you've never read, and use it as the last line of your story. What happens to lead to that last line as an ending? (Lindz McLeod, writing coach and author of “Turducken” and “Beast”)

• And they all lived happily ever after … until … (Jupiter Jones, author of “Gull Shit Alley and Other Roads to Hell”)

Happy writing!

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