What Guides Me..

In the past, writing always seemed to me to be more of a chore than an enjoyable activity. Mid-way through high school this changed. The particular English class that I took that year had a lasting influence on me as a writer, and many of the personal rules and regulations that I now hold myself to emerged because of it. The “A Completely Idiosyncratic, Slightly Off-Beat, and Potentially Helpful Collection of Writing Advice” worksheet that our teacher Christine Stephenson gave us lists many of the rules that I already adhered to.
Rule #1: The better you understand the rules, the more liberated you are from them.
In the English Composition class that changed my ways as a writer, the first thing that our teacher beat into our heads was the proper use of grammar and language in our writing. At first, the amount of time that we were spending on it seemed obnoxious, but in hindsight, her way of teaching made sense. Before you can truly blossom as a writer, you need to know the simple do’s and don’ts of language. Then, and only then, can you use your creativity to its fullest and most uninhibited extent. It was no coincidence that after she felt that our class had a good grasp on the rules, she then sought to emphasize the second portion of Rule #1. Thanks to her method of teaching, I now firmly know the regulations imparted by the English language and can creatively stretch the rules in order to allow my writing to have a larger impact on my audience.
Rule #2: Heed this gruesome advice: murder your darlings.
This is another very important rule that I hold myself to. The more and more I’ve worked with writing and language in general, the more I have come to understand that one should always strive to achieve “quality over quantity”. Economical use of language is hugely important, because not only can you get to your point faster, but the point that you are trying to make is made more effectively because of it. It is indeed true that “culling your hard work may be the toughest of [them] all”, but it is without a doubt worth the time and effort to perfect your craft. When this idea was first imparted to me, following its principles was a tough task to say the least, but as anything else, the more one practices, the better one gets. This has been true for me, and I look forward to improving even more as time goes by.
Rule #3 Read!
To be perfectly honest, this is a rule that up until the point, I haven’t adhered to. It has always been something that I’ve wanted to do more of, and I put this as my number three rule, because I am making it a goal to go out of my comfort zone and read on a consistent basis. I know for a fact that if I stick to my pledge, my writing will improve. The more one reads, the more he/she is exposed to as far as different writing styles go. I believe that to improve one’s craft, one should observe others who have already become successful in their field. It’s just like job shadowing. The more you observe others, the greater knowledge pool you will have from which to draw your own ideas and conclusions.