Write, write, write, write, write. If you’re alone, write while the kettle boils. On a bus or train, write some more. Coffee, lunch or tea break, write something else.
The only way to become a fluent write is to do lots of it. It doesn’t have to be part of anything specific. It’s not likely to be part of you master work. While the kettle boils, what do you think about? Your plans for the day, your dreams of the night before, something on the news. How’s your foot, what’s it thinking? On the train or bus, how you’d like to go and tell that person that you don’t have to shout when you are on the phone and why, oh why, did they have to play that music? The music… did it remind you of a particular event, person or emotion. There’s dew on the grass, you can’t find a parking space. Write about them.
Not a lot – three sentences, 50 words. Capture it – concisely, as succinctly and creatively as you can. Creative doesn’t mean flowery language, long words, it just means original or unusual and you can use any form of the language you like. If you stray over the 50 words, it matters not. You may feel you are on a roll and the piece grows. As soon as you feel the idea has run its course, stop. That 50 words about a lonely passenger on a train may find its way to being more. Great. Even better if you have written a piece of dialogue and you have created a voice for them. The voice will inform their views, their emotions, their place in life, their glories, their hardships or their joy. It’s your story from your imagination. Write what you like.
Any spare moment, pick up a pen and write those 50, 100, 500 words. You’re doing it (apart from enjoyment, I hope), you’re doing it so that the actual process of putting words together and committing them to paper becomes a habit – as soon as you can write without being conscious that you are writing, you can concentrate on what it is that you are writing about, what you are creating.
It’s not a bad idea to capture all these ‘writings’ in one notebook. When you go back and re-read them, and you will, you will inevitably dismiss most of them. Your internal editor may scoff at some of your early attempts, but there will always be some gems in there. It may be the idea, the character, just a turn of phrase, but it will stick with you. You may want to develop an idea into something more substantial, but crucially you have written something out of nothing.
