How Honing Your Craft Can Stop You From Writing

Hooked on books about writing? Beware! This post is about how honing your craft can keep you from writing and what you can do about it.

Hooked on books about writing? Beware! They have the power to keep you from writing altogether! This post is about how that happens, why, and what you can do against it.

How Honing Your Craft Can Stop You From Writing

We all love books about creative writing. No wonder – they talk about the most wonderful activity in the world, right? And all of us writers want to get better at it. Those books help us improve.

There are other ways to hone our craft. How about attending workshops, lectures, and conferences? And using the latest tech to get to ‘The End’ even faster? There is so much to learn, and these things promise to help us become better writers. But does that always happen that way?

The Dosage Makes The Poison

I have met a few fellow writers who got lost. They started with all the right intentions. They bought books, invested in tech, and attended workshops. And never got another line done. The desire to hone their craft was what stopped them altogether. How can that be?

How Can Honing Your Craft Be Bad?

The amount of advice out there to help writers can be overwhelming. It can be so much for us that we don’t have the time to take it all in, to digest it, and to sift through what we, as individuals, truly need.

What happens is this: people buy the books, but don’t read them. They get fancy software for plot arcs and character development, only to find that each software has its own language. It takes so much of our time to learn how to use it! At lectures, we take notes diligently only to put them in the bottom drawer of our desk. We’re overwhelmed.

But still, collecting all these wise ideas about writing makes us feel so good!  How can that be bad? Let’s find out.

Collecting Wisdom Doesn’t Make You Any Wiser

Listening to others and trying to learn from them isn’t bad at all. But if it turns into hoarding, that will have a few side effects.

First, there’s so much wisdom out there that it’s hard to stop. There’s always someone smarter than you who can teach you new tricks. And you never learn it all. Collecting wisdom turns into hoarding.

Even that makes us feel good about ourselves because we think buying that book, the mere act of owning it, passes that wisdom on to us.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case at all. Psychologists call it intellectualisation. It’s a defence mechanism. Essentially, we try to solve a problem by brooding on it, turning it one way or another – but mostly gathering information on the topic. That’s what book hoarding does.

We do this because it allows us to avoid our emotions (about how hard writing is). Instead, we trick our minds into believing we have solved the problem. And we have, haven’t we? Theoretically, we have all the tools in all the books, all the workshops, and all the tech. Theoretically.

Here’s the thing: talking about creative writing won’t do the trick. You need to write. Buying books on writing doesn’t turn you into a writer. Only writing does. You must apply all the good advice to learn the lesson.

The More You Learn, The Less You Know?

But it’s hard to know when to stop buying the books and when to start practising. After all, there’s no end to the advice! And the more you learn, the more critical you look at your writing. It’s easy to think that you don’t know a thing. That’s you’re a fake. That you are not a writer.

The amount of theory can even scare published writers into believing they aren’t truly writers. How could they be if there’s always another writer with more published books and more public recognition? I hope you notice the downward spiral of these thoughts.

Spirals never end. They keep you from writing. It’s all an elaborate mechanism to procrastinate.

Procrastination – What To Do About It

Now, procrastination isn’t all bad (here’s a blog on what procrastination can do for you). But ultimately, you must decide between endless procrastination and writing. If you choose writing, I have four suggestions to get you out of it.

• Change your approach.

Writing starts in the brain, yes, but it’s an activity. It’s a craft and it needs to be practised! In this sense, it’s no different from carpentry, pottery, or sword-fighting. You need to learn the tricks of the trade by doing it. There’s no shortcut.

• Only take theory in bite-sized chunks.

It’s impossible to digest the amount of theory around. So don’t even try. Take bite-sized chunks and get started with that. Fiddle around with it. Be playful. How big or how small that bite-size is, that’s your decision.

• Every pearl of wisdom is a prompt.

Wisdom isn’t something you put on a pedestal. You need to apply the theory to your writing. Use all these writing theories and tools as prompts to get you started.

Here’s how to do it: think about why a particular passage in a book appeals to you. Could it address something you struggle with? Then work with it, try including that pearl of wisdom into your writing. Chances are that your text will change. And you’re writing!

• Think of who you want to become.

Stop thinking about whether you’re a writer or not. It doesn’t matter. It matters who you want to become. Becoming is an activity. And you become a writer by pursuing another activity: writing.

You might not end up where your teachers want you to go. That’s a good thing! Because then, you will have found your way.

The Last Word

So … is honing your craft a bad thing? No, not at all. Self-improvement is something all artists need to pursue. It’s part of our nature. So, yes, buy all the books you want, attend all the lectures, try all the new software – as long as it gets you to sit down at your desk and write.

Becoming a writer is a journey. It’s a story only you can write. Have fun with it!

By Susanne Bennett. Susanne is a German-American writer who is a journalist by trade and a writer by heart. After years of working at German public radio and an online news portal, she has decided to accept challenges by Deadlines for Writers. Currently she is writing her first novel with them. She is known for overweight purses and carrying a novel everywhere. Follow her on Facebook.

More Posts From Susanne

1. Reverse Engineering For Writers
2. The Sound Effects of Poetry 7: Pure Sound
3. The Sound Effects of Poetry 6: Rhythm In Poetry
4. The Sound Effects Of Poetry 5: How To Create Harmony Without Rhymes
5. The Sound Effects of Poetry 4: How To Make Rhyme Patterns Work
6. The Sound Effects of Poetry 3: How To Run Your Rhymes
7. The Sound Effects of Poetry 2: How Sound Creates Meaning
8. The Sound Effects of Poetry 1: The Basics
9. Bad Poetry Day (18 August) – A Truly Liberating Day For Writers
10. 10 Terrible Tips For Writing Bad Poetry

Top Tip: Find out more about our workbooks and online courses in our shop.