Guest blogger Daryl Hajek discusses a writer’s journey.<\/p>\n
I was taught to learn to read and write at a young age, even before kindergarten. My parents\u00a0had told me, because of my deafness, they were determined that I was going to learn to read\u00a0and write. That was the beginning of my journey into reading and writing.<\/p>\n
As Stephen King says, “Read a lot, write a lot.” \u00a0I do this by reading two or three books (or ebooks) concurrently, but that’s a quirk of mine.\u00a0\u00a0I also write at least one hour a day, up to eight hours, depending on my mood or how I’m feeling.<\/p>\n
Learn as much as you can about writing.\u00a0 Take a writing course or two.\u00a0 Get how-to books on writing.\u00a0 Join a book club.\u00a0 Network with other authors\/writers online via social media.<\/p>\n
Get a professional editor which is an absolute must, no exceptions whatsoever.\u00a0 Otherwise, unedited works show and may cause long-term regrets and embarrassments.\u00a0 It’s most important to learn from your editor, as well.\u00a0 I gained a healthy bit of edification from my editor\u00a0such as\u00a0eliminating redundancies and not repeating the same descriptive adjectives or adverbs in your narration, especially within the same sentence or paragraph.<\/p>\n
Keep expositions to a minimum so as not to drag the story down and bore the reader.<\/p>\n
Omit\u00a0 the following\u00a0dead\/boring\/over-used\u00a0words:\u00a0 was, actually, literally, quite, virtually, got, things, stuff, just, really, very,\u00a0a lot, and action verbs ending in “-ing,” such as “running,” “skating,” “dancing,” and so on.\u00a0 Instead, use action words like “he ran,” “she skated,” “they danced,” and so forth.\u00a0 The reason is that these words weaken the author’s writing (in the narration), but it’s okay to use them in character dialogue because that’s how people talk.\u00a0 Equally, leave out clich\u00e9s, idioms, and slang from the narration except for character dialogue.<\/p>\n
Another thing to cut from writing are speech tags, such as “Gary muttered quietly,” “Melissa said bitterly,” and “Carl barked angrily.”\u00a0 They also make for weak writing.\u00a0\u00a0Stick with the traditional “he said\/she said” way of writing.\u00a0 In fact, “he said\/she said” is practically invisible to the reader’s eye.\u00a0 If\u00a0the author needs to use speech tags, I’d recommend using them sparingly.<\/p>\n
Avoid\u00a0clich\u00e9d characters, such as the typical black-cloaked villain with\u00a0those smoldering eyes or the golden-haired Miss Goody-Two-Shoes.\u00a0 Rather,\u00a0make your characters realistic, like the average person, such as the guy next to you.\u00a0 But, don’t make those characters boring.\u00a0 Give each character a little something intriguing,\u00a0add a certain idiosyncrasy (i.e., a nervous\u00a0tic)\u00a0or a\u00a0condition\u00a0(i.e.,\u00a0deafness or Asperger’s\u00a0Syndrome).<\/p>\n
As a first-time deaf author of general mainstream mass-market fiction, if\u00a0I <\/em>can do it, so can you!<\/p>\n Daryl Hajek is the author of Blood Blossom<\/em>.\u00a0 He is currently at work on his next novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Guest blogger Daryl Hajek discusses a writer’s journey. I was taught to learn to read and write at a young age, even before kindergarten. My parents\u00a0had told me, because of my deafness, they were determined that I was going to learn to read\u00a0and write. That was the beginning of my journey into reading and writing. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[104],"tags":[619],"class_list":["post-2553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-daryl-hajek"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-Fb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2553"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4834,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553\/revisions\/4834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}