Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Gary Hayden. I'm a writer and
writing teacher with more than 20 years
professional experience. During that time, I've had my share of successes
and failures. I've learned a few
things along the way. In this course. I'd like
to share with you some tried and tested strategies
to improve your writing. And when I say tried
and tested, I mean, quite literally that
I've tried them all, tested them all and
found that they've made me a better and
more successful writer. So check out the course, fast-track your own
writing progress by learning from my experience, my failures, my successes. See you inside.
2. Project: In this course, I'll
offer lots of tried and tested strategies to
improve your writing. Your project is to
zero in on any of them that you find particularly
helpful or inspiring. Give them a go and then share your experiences,
thoughts, and ideas. Let me and other students know what has and hasn't
worked for you. What you're eager to try, or any hints and tips that you have on becoming
a better writer.
3. Harness the Power of Habit: Harness the power of habit. Practice makes perfect. So they say, well, that's not entirely true, but practice does make better, a whole lot better. When I was young, I was
a keen squash player. And while playing
squash regularly, I certainly learned about
the power of practice. I discovered that if I played squash three or
more times a week, then my squash got
better and better. If I only found the time
to play twice a week, my level of skill
remained about the same. And if I dropped to
once a week or less, the standard of my
squash deteriorated. And the same was true when I played chess and when I tried
to learn to play the piano. And when I was a young student, studying mathematics, practice makes you
a whole lot better. And lack of practice will
prevent you from improving. The same is true for writing. Unless you acquire
the habit of sitting down and bashing out
words on your keyboard, you'll never become a writer. You will always
remain a wannabe. Paraphrasing the French
existentialist philosopher John Paul Sartre. However good a writer
you think you could be, and how however much natural
talent you think you have. You'll never actually be a writer unless you
produce writing. Lots of it. Furthermore,
irregular writing habit will keep your
mental pump primed. You'll find that the more
regularly you write, the more freely or words
and ideas will flow, and the better those
words will be. Of course, it's not always
easy to make time to write. Most of us have jobs, families, housework studies, and
other commitments. Not to mention other
hobbies and interests. But if you want to be a writer, you somehow need to
make the time to write regularly just
to inspire you. Let me tell you about
Anthony Trollope. Anthony Trollope was a
tremendously gifted, successful, and prolific Victorian writer whose works are still
red and admire today. In my opinion, Here's one of the Holy Trinity of
classic British writers, alongside jane Austen
and Charles Dickens. Well, Anthony Trollope
was a busy guy. He had a full time high
level post office job. Fun fact, he invented
the postbox, but he made time to write. In fact, he wrote for 3 h
every morning before work. He was so committed to this
writing habit that if he finished a novel partway through his daily
writing session, he'd reached for
a fresh sheet of paper and begin the next one. Of course, Trollope was a genius and it's
perhaps on reasonable to expect osmium mortals to match that level of mental
energy and discipline. But we can all take
inspiration from his example and set aside
regular times for writing. I'd say that three longish, uninterrupted sessions
each week is the minimum. In conclusion, if you
want to be a good writer, heck, if you want to be
any kind of writer at all, then think about
your weekly routine and pencil in some quality, uninterrupted writing time,
build a writing habit. It's the foundation upon which every successful writing
career is built.
4. Connect with the Reader: Unleash your inner artist. The next tip may sound a
bit abstract at first, but bear with me. It's a belter. It can totally
transform your writing. In his 18, 97. But what is art? The great Russian
writer Leo Tolstoy, defines art as an
expression of a feeling or experience in such a way that the audience can share that
feeling or experience. Here, Todd, I had in mind all forms of art
including painting, music, sculpture, and so on, as well as writing. But let me unpackage
that idea for you specifically as
regards writing. And let me explain
how an appreciation of this idea can make
you a better writer, a much better writer. I currently live
in Tokyo, Japan, where I teach classes
in creative writing, journalism, and
academic writing. Tokyo University of
Foreign Studies. In the first lesson of
my writing courses, whether fiction or nonfiction, I always draw the
following diagram on the board for my students
and explain it to them. To write, well, you begin by looking inside
yourself On thought, feeling, idea, or experience that's
deeply important to you. Then you dwell upon
it for awhile and lead it really take hold of you. Finally, you put all of your
creative powers to work, to put that feeling or
idea into words that will plant the same feeling or idea into the mind
of your readers. Now, that may all
sound a bit abstract. So let me give you a couple
of practical examples. Many years ago when I was first getting started as
a freelance writer, I got a commission from the
Times Educational Supplement. Write them a two-and-a-half
thousand word feature about ancient philosophy. Now this was a very big
deal for me at the time. It was my first big, well-paying project for a well-known and
well-respected publication. So I did a lot of
research and then I wrote this article about
ancient philosophy. I got back some feedback
from the editor and it really taught me something important about writing
that I've never forgotten. He said, Gary, it's great. You've got lots of facts, It's well-researched,
it's interesting. But worse, the passion
you've chosen to write about this topic because it's a topic that you are passionate about. Here's your chance to
make the readers of The Times Educational
Supplement passionate about it, to go back, edit it and
bring in the passion. I did it and it became
a much better feature. That edit to edit a taught
me what Tolstoy were saying that you have to look inside yourself
when you write. Ask yourself, why is this
topic so fascinating, so interesting to me? How can I communicate that interest and
fascination to my reader? Another simple example. Sometime after that, I remember writing my
first book length project, which was pop music quiz book
containing 1,000 questions. I was really overjoyed to
be writing that it was my first book length project and I love pop music, so great. But I remember talking
to my brother about this pop music quiz
and saying just how long it was taking me
to write the questions. He said, well, why not? Just make simpler questions? When was Paul McCartney
his birthday? When there's Freddie
Mercury, his birthday, etc. But what he didn't
understand not being a writer was that
if you do that, you're only thinking about
your needs as a writer. And your need is to churn out questions as quickly
as possible. You're forgetting the
needs of the reader. Why does a reader pick up by
and read a pop quiz Bach? Well, to enjoy the fun of testing their knowledge
about pop music. But also because they want
to learn lots of new quirky, interesting facts
about pop music. So just having questions on the level of when is Paul
McCartney's birthday. That's a writer
who's not trying to communicate with the needs
and interests of the reader. I love pop music. In that book, what
I needed to do was find lots of quirky,
interesting, fascinating facts and
then share them with the reader so that they
felt the same thrill. To conclude, writing is
about communication. It's about taking stuff that's important and meaningful to you. And then finding a form of
expression that will make it important and meaningful
for your reader. When I'm teaching one
of my writing courses, I always get a feeling of pleasure when I see
a student pause with the pen in their hand and their eyes gazed
up to the ceiling, obviously grappling
with how best to communicate their thoughts,
ideas, and experiences. So try it. Whenever you write and
whatever you write, ask yourself, why
am I writing this? Why is it so interesting
and important to me? And then grapple with that idea, grapple with the words
you use to describe it and communicate your
enthusiasm to your readers.
5. Write Tight: Right? Tight. Early drafts are almost
always too wordy, too loose. So it's necessary
to build a habit of eliminating clutter
from your first drafts. I learned this lesson very
early in my writing career. I remember sending one of
my earliest attempts at a short story to the
popular UK magazine, take a brakes fiction feast. And I received a reply from the editor saying that
she liked the story, but then it dragged a little. It moved along too slowly. So could I please cut
the word count by 20% without losing
anything important? And then she'd buy it. Well, I wonder how the
heck I could cut so much from the story without
losing anything important. But I went back to the
story and I hacked away, and I hacked away and I chipped away a little bit here
and a little bit. And I repeated the process
the next day and the next. And eventually, I managed
to prune the word count by the required amount without sacrificing anything
that mattered. When I compared the
old bloated drafts, the new leaner fitter won. I was surprised and delighted to say that I'd improve
the story no end. It zipped along at
a cracking pace, was much more likely to
retain the reader's interest. In his book on writing the successful horror
and thriller writer, Stephen King tells
a similar story about an editor who described King's first draft of
a piece of fiction is puffy and instructed
him to lose ten per cent. That advice changed
kings writing forever. And for the better. The rest is history. Writing tight as this process of trimming the fat
is known is one of the most important skills that you need to learn as
an aspiring writer, whether you write
fiction or nonfiction, or even your company newsletter. But writing tight, maybe
a new concept to you. So here's an example. First, you will see a paragraph written by one of my
journalism students. It's from a piece
that they wrote about incorporating Japanese
furniture into Western rooms. Then you'll see that
tightened version, which I've trimmed away the fat. So take a few moments to study, pause the video,
take a few moments to study both versions
and then continue. Notice. In this example, there, although the word count as
being significantly shortened, there's actually no
loss of information. This is writing tight. Writing tight is a big topic and it's one that could have
a whole course to itself. And perhaps I'll find the time to make that course
and other time. But in fact, you can get a
long way towards learning this skill just by setting
yourself an arbitrary amount, say 10% or 15%, or even 20 per cent, by which to reduce all
your first drafts. Then just keep
snipping away a bit at a time and don't give up
until you reach your target. In conclusion, get
into the habit of cutting and pruning your work
until it's nice and tight. I guarantee that it
will be better for it.
6. Redraft, Redraft, Redraft: Redraft, redraft, redraft. If there's one thing
I've learned in more than 20 years,
professional writing. My first draft are
always rubbish. I sit and write for
an hour or two. Then I read back what I've written and tinker
with it a bit, and everything seems fine. Next day I returned to it and I realized that it's not
remotely up to scratch. My expression isn't clear. It's all too wordy. The rhythm is all wrong. It's ugly. So I edit it. Then I put it aside
for another day, and then I redrafted again. And I continue this process until it satisfies
me for this reason, it's important whenever
possible to finish any writing project a few days in advance of the deadline. Because if what you submit for publication is
your first draft, it's very unlikely to be work
that you can be proud of.
7. Your Inner Voice: Listen to your inner voice. Joining my writing career, I've written for traditionally published non-fiction books. The third of those, a book called
Walking with Plato, which combines travel writing
with philosophical musings, was one for which
I had high hopes. The book recounts
and experience, which moved me very deeply. A three-month walking track
from John Snow Grouse in the Northeast of Scotland to
Lands End in the southeast, southwest corner of England. As I said, had very high
hopes for that book. It was based on an experienced that I'd
found it intellectually, physically and
emotionally stimulating. And I felt confident
that I could convey that experience
to my reader. Furthermore, it was
being published by a well-known and well-respected
publisher whose books had recently taken the
prestigious Booker prize two years in a row. In the end, the book
performed okay, but not nearly so
well as I'd hoped. Now, with the benefit
of hindsight, I feel confident that I
know what the problem, or at least part of
the problem was. When I sat down to
write the bulk, I made a decision
that I would mention, albeit briefly, every
place that we pass through and stayed overnight on our three month journey
across Britain. And consequently to
frequently in the narrative, there are dole paragraphs that consist mainly of a
litany of place names. I should have listened to
the inner voice that kept insisting these bits
are kind of boring. But I didn't. I kept them in perhaps because I bought at
the idea of putting in all the extra work that removing those sections and reshaping
the narrative would involve, the BOC definitely
suffered as a result. So learned from my
bitter experience, listen to your inner voice. If you feel that there's
something missing, you're writing something
not quite right. Or if you feel that
there's something missing, follow your instincts. Put in the work, make it better.
8. Start Small: Celebrate small successes. When I embarked upon
my career as a writer, I decided to start small. My immediate goal was to see my name in print
pretty much anywhere. So I began by writing
Readers, letters. Lots of magazines and
newspapers encourage a sense of community by including a read
his letters page. A place where readers can
comment on the contents of the publication and can share their own thoughts and opinions
with like-minded readers. Sometimes readers get paid for those letters and
sometimes they don't. They didn't much matter to me. My first goal as a writer, my first step on
what I hoped would be the ladder of
writing success was merely to write something of sufficient quality that an
editor would publish it. Fee or no fee. And in fact, writing, read his letters is a great way to get
started in writing. Why? Because they usually very short, they give the writer a very limited space
in which to amuse, entertain, educate, or
inform the readers. In a previous lesson
in this course, I discussed the importance
of writing tight and read his letters at a fabulous
exercise in writing tight. My first appearance
in print was on the reader's letters page of a popular UK women's magazine. I'd done a bit of market
research and realized that this particular
publication light to post stories involving Don, things that men say and do. So with my wife's permission, I submitted the following
effort in her name. It became my first
published piece of writing and earned me 25 pounds. A modest, but nonetheless
welcome faith. Sometimes those seemingly
insignificant fillers lead to bigger and
better things. E.g. I. Once had a reader's
letter published in the Times
Educational Supplement, which is an offshoot of the famous British
newspaper, The Times. It was a mildly amusing
little story recounting one of my experiences as a primary school
substitute teacher. I earned 50 pounds for
that little letter, but far more importantly, it got my foot in
the door at the TES. The features editor
liked my style. Asked, would I be interested
in contributing a feature about the pleasures and
pitfalls of supply teaching, substitute teaching, as
it's called in the US. Of course, I wrote back
to the editor and said that I definitely
would be interested. And that was the beginning of a very fruitful relationship. I ended up
contributing dozens of feature articles to
the Times ed Ts, and earning quite a few
thousand pounds in the process. So my advice would be, don't be afraid to start small. Starting small is a great way to cut your teeth
as a writer and to hone important skills like connecting with your
reader and writing tight. Of course, many great writers
have not taken this route. They've hit the literary
jackpot by diving straight into a
full length novel or something of that sort. So starting small is by no
means a hard and fast rule. But it's worth considering and certainly not to be despised.
9. Climb the Ladder: Have a career plan. When I started out in writing, I had a long-term plan. It was like a ladder
that I wanted to climb. This plan worked well for me. It meant that I always
have a goal to work towards and that I could
keep track of my progress. It kept me motivated. It meant that I never settled down and
got stuck in a rot. Perhaps most importantly, it kept writing fun and exciting. I never quite made it to
the top of the ladder. I got onto the next
to last wrong, but not the final one. Nonetheless, I like to think
that I didn't do too badly. Of course, songwriters don't
bother formulating a plan. They shoot straight for the
top and some of them succeed. But for many aspiring writers, I think a plan can
be a good thing. If it suits your personality. I encourage you
to give it a try.
10. The Craft: Study your craft. Ever since I was a child, I've fancied myself as a writer, partly because as a
fanatical reader, I loved and admired
writer so much. And partly because I believed that I had a talent for writing. When I was at school, teachers often
praised my writing and occasionally they would read my stories and poems aloud to the class or send me off to
show them to other teachers. One teacher presented me with
a beautiful blank book with the title Collected Poems by
Gary Hayden on the cover, suggested that I should feel it. All of this meant that
when in my early 30s I decided to produce writing
intended for publication, I felt somewhat arrogantly
that I could make it on talent alone without
having to study the craft. Nonetheless, being of
a bookish disposition, I did check out a few
bucks on the craft of writing just for interest's sake and to see what was in them. And I was so glad that I did. I remember learning a lot of
useful stuff that I hadn't already known from the
penguin guide to punctuation, I learned a lot of
seat of your pants. Practical advice on writing from Stephen King's classic on
writing a memoir of the craft. And I got a ton of
inspiration from Anthony Trollope,
an autobiography. I also got a lot of inside information about
getting published in magazines and newspapers from books like the writers
and artists yearbook. I remember one time
struggling on successfully to sell my first rather pathetic
attempts at short stories. The UK women's magazines that bought fiction and paid
well for it. Back then. Then I came across
a book about how to write short stories that
sell to those markets. Unfortunately, all
these years later, I can't remember the title
of the book or who wrote it. Sorry. After that, I never looked back. I became adept at writing compelling magazine stories
and I sold dozens of them, sometimes to multiple magazines
in different countries. Anyway, the point is, it really does pay
to study your craft, even if you feel
you're unnatural, I guarantee that you can still learn a lot
from other writers. And while we're on the subject, let me encourage you to use the discussion section
of this course. Asked me anything you like about writing and I'll do my best to help you or to point you in the direction of
someone who can.
11. Learn from the Best: Learned from the best. Although I've written a lot
of short stories in my time, I've spent most of my writing
career writing non-fiction, often writing about philosophy, psychology, and occasionally about
science and mathematics. Explaining philosophical,
psychological, scientific and mathematical ideas simply and succinctly can be very,
very challenging. I know three writers who
do it extremely well. The 17th century Scottish
philosopher David Hume, the English 20th century
philosopher Bertrand Russell, and the popular
children's writer and Christian writer CS Lewis. I've always admired
those writers, not only for their knowledge, creativity and intelligence, but also for the
uncanny ability to explain complex topics
with brevity and clarity. Whenever I need to explain a
complex topic to a reader, I always have these three
writers, as it were, peering over my shoulder, urging me to be
clear and concise. I also make it a habit to dip into their
writing frequently, so a little of the
style rubs off on me. I urge you to do
something similar. Whenever you write, in
whatever style you write, cultivate the habit
of reading works by the very best
authors in that genre. Learn from the best.
12. Don't Give Up the Day Job: Don't be too quick
to quit the day job. Next, a word to
those who've already climbed a few rungs of
the writing ladder, and it'd begun to make some worthwhile
income from writing. I'd advise you not to
give up the day job, at least, not to be too eager
to give up the day job. I started writing because
I'd always loved books and stories and because I enjoyed
expressing myself in words, writing was a source of
pleasure and self-fulfillment. And the hours that I
spent writing with time put aside for creativity, mastering new skills and
for self-expression. But as I gained experience
and some success, writing became
something else to, it became a source of income. That was all well and good. And in fact, it was marvelous. I had a hobby that paid well. But when I decided
to quit my job and write full time,
things changed. I began to feel pressures
that I hadn't felt before, the presses to produce
and the pressure to sell. Furthermore, it's
notoriously difficult to make a full-time living as
a self-employed writer. I started to experience some
financial worries as well. Gone was my steady paycheck, which I'd learned working part-time as a primary
school teacher. And in its place, Where's my somewhat
precarious writing income to be perfectly frank. And what's the
pipe B being here? I'm not writing became
in some way as a chore. If I had my time again, I'd have kept my nice little
part-time teaching job and continued to do my
writing on the side. Then writing would have
continued to be a pleasure, as well as a very nice
extra source of income. Remember Anthony Trollope, I spoke about him in
an earlier lesson. He worked full time in a
high level position with the British Post
Office and still found time to become a prolific
and famous writer. So bear him in mind
if you ever reached the position where
you're seriously considered going full
time as a writer. It isn't necessary and it may
not be advisable to do so.
Gary Hayden
