Harriet Griffey - Write Every Day: Daily Practice to Kickstart Your Creative Writing

For Marisa Januzzi, kindred spirit.

Getting started

Whether youve only ever written a shopping list or a work email, thousands of words in your head but never on paper, writing is always the manifestation of some form of storytelling and, at its simplest, thats what writers do. They create stories, whether in fact or fiction, and this is one of the ways we organise our thoughts, respond to and make sense of the world in which we live. The earliest stories, nursery rhymes and fairy stories heard as a child, all help the process of working out what we think and feel about our lives, our friends, ourselves. In his book about childrens fairy tales called The Uses of Enchantment, psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim wrote, Each fairy tale is a magic mirror which reflects some aspects of our inner world, and of the steps required by our evolution from immaturity to maturity.

Whatever writing you want to do poetry or prose, fact or fiction it will afford you the opportunity to enhance confidence and expertise in using words to good effect, to make coherent your thoughts and to develop self-expression, all in an individual way. To do this takes exploration and discovery, time and practice: daily practice. And however creative you are, you still have to craft and wield those words and find your own voice. This writing is one which feels true to you and recognisably you by others, that can adapt and accommodate whatever form you choose to write in, and in which you feel confident that you can work and explore your own ideas. For Anne Frank, her journal was exactly this, about which she said: I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.

Many famous writers from E. M. Forster to Joan Didion have expressed the view that, as novelist Stephen King said, I write to find out what I think. Increasingly one of the ways in which many people choose to express themselves creatively is through writing. And many aspire to share their creative writing with others through publication, but thats not the only benefit. Writing for ourselves is a wonderful way to explore personal creativity and this practice can help formulate thoughts, create personal narratives and increase our self-understanding. It is also the first step toward writing professionally in some way, if thats an outcome you want to pursue.

I write because I dont know what I think until I read what I say.

We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. Writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. We should write because writing is good for the soul. We should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.

Write every day

Developing confidence in our own individual voice is helped by a daily writing practice. Keeping a notebook or daily journal is a powerful and useful first step towards the confidence you need. William Zinsser, American writer, editor and author of On Writing Well, said: You learn to write by writing. There is no way around this. If you want to write, you have to get on and do it. For some, this is a burning raison dtre and for others its a slog, but write they do and in the writing some alchemy of thoughts and words emerges on the page.

The aim of this book is to focus on what might make a tangible difference between wanting to write and actually writing. It provides some useful ideas and tools with which you can grapple that will help yield content that others may even want to read, but mostly for yourself. This involves considering not just content, but what informs that content, how it is structured and voiced and its story told.

At heart, write always for yourself, not for family and friends, for admired teachers, for reviewers or publishers; but make sure you write from your real self, not that one besotted by vainglorious dreams of a future self. One day you will realise that the true rewards of writing lie inalienably in the writing itself.

If you want to write a book, even 200 to 500 words a day will enable you to complete a first draft of something you can work on (otherwise you have nothing to work with) within six months. It doesnt matter if you reject in whole or in part what youve written because the process is never wasted: it is part of your creative writing practice. Time is not the issue here, there is always time that can be made. Anyone who ever said, I could write if only I had time, is lying. Fiona Mozley, author of Elmet, that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2017, wrote much of her novel over four years, sentence by sentence, on her smart phone on her daily commute to work.

Dip-in

Unless youre actively engaged with writing poetry at the moment, you might not think that exploring this creative writing form has much to offer you. Or, you may want to write fiction and believe it is all made up and requires no research. Think again. Any writing form prose, poetry, fact, fiction all lends itself to your writing practice overall. It is all useful when it comes to exploring what and how you want to write. For example, you want to write fiction which is all made up, right? But the veracity of fiction can lie in its truthfulness and some of that rests with lived experience, the facts of your life and experience. The same is true of poetry, as its lyric possibilities, use of rhythm, metaphor and descriptive terms are all aspects of well-crafted creative writing.

There is nothing to be lost, and everything to be gained, from a daily writing practice, whatever its form. This is what makes an authentic writer; their commitment to their task, exploring writing possibilities and developing their own unique voice through its practice.