Where did you learn HOW to write?

Jeb, Papa told you not to go near Boo Radley's house.

 

In grade school, by doing it and doing it and doing it some more. And then again in high school, same thing. And then at the college paper. And then at every job I've had since, with the help of a lot of good teachers/editors/colleagues along the way. Hopefully I can get paid to keep learning how to write for another 40 or so years. That'd be a nice life.

FWIW, most of the very best writers I know didn't go to j-school. They found another way in to this business and learned the reporting tricks on the job. But they know how to tell a story from their gut, and they know how to use the language from their ear. And they work hard at doing it the best they can.

 

My writing lots of letters, stories, journaling, etc. I majored in Communications and Literature in college. And I read constantly.

 

I was allowed my fervernt and sometimes weird imagination to go wild during a very fortunate English class in seventh grade. We had to spend 10 minutes of every day writing on a topic posted on the chalkboard.

There was creativity in what I wrote, but it was so unpolished, it took years of writing and hard work to improve it. And I still never got where I really wanted to be.

 

By reading the good stuff, imitating and then eventually finding my own voice.

Then I lost it. I've spent the last 10 years or so trying to get it back.

 

I read a lot when I was younger, but found writing easy and fun at a young age. J-School helped me fix up some things I needed, and helped me understand the formats of things, and the ethics of things. But I really with writing you either have it or you don't.

 

By reading lots and lots of newspapers, big and small. I caught on pretty early to the style in which stories should be written -- and how they SHOULDN'T be written. From that point on, it was just a matter of tightening up the prose and honing fact-finding skills.

 

Haven't. Yet I don't want to stop.

 

I am totally self-taught.
For better or worse.
Yes, I went to J school, but I took only some basic writing courses. I thought HS composition classes were the WORST places to teach you how to write. Funny, but I used to get Bs and Cs in those crap courses -- I'm still trying, 30 years later, to figure out what the hell a "topic sentence" is -- and I've been making a living as a professional writer for 25 years now.

 

I learned very little about writing from my J-school professors.

What I did get were some valuable lessons in j-law, AP style and ethics, but anything I learned about writing was from doing it at the student newspaper and in a English creative writing class.

 

You ring the bell often here, WB. No wonder you're one of my favorite posters.