Well, many people think that writing stories is as easy as ABC. But how mistaken they are! Writing a captivating story can be as challenging as learning calculus or computer programming.
Personally, I am not a born writer. I have had to work hard to improve my writing skills. Most of that hard work has entailed reading avidly and doing lots of writing practices.
My efforts have been paying off given the feedback I have received from my blog visitors who inform me that they have enjoyed a story on this blog. Just last Monday, I got a message from a lady called Sierra Ann who encouraged me to keep up the great work I am doing on this blog.
I also believe that I have grown into a competent writer because I have been pleased with virtually all the stories I have shared over the last seven years since I rebranded this blog to what it looks like now. That's unlike in the past when I used to cringe after going through what I had written to friends.
As I was rereading some of my blog stories recently, I discovered several shortcomings in the stories. First was my tendency to overuse the hyphen, even when unnecessary. When talking of "hard work" for instance, I would write it as "hard-work".
Second was my proneness to using the wrong prepositions, perhaps due to my laziness in consulting the dictionary. In one blog story for example, I wrote that I heard something "in the radio". We should say "in the radio" when we are talking of the resistors, capacitors and transistors that make a radio. Otherwise the correct way to say it is "on the radio".
Third was my use of capital letters when unnecessary. A few weeks ago while taking on the internet a crash course in capitalization, I gathered that school subjects such as math, physics and geography shouldn't be capitalized like I was fond of doing.
The last shortcoming in my past stories was my failure to correct obvious mistakes before sharing the stories on the internet. Mistakes such as using the wrong words: "that" instead of "than", "a" instead of "I" and "her" instead of "him". Mark you, I have left those mistakes uncorrected even after proofreading the stories more than three times.
Despite those shortcomings in the stories I have written over the last seven years, I must say that I have been impressed with how much I know. And I owe that wealth of knowledge to my love of reading.
If you are also an avid reader, I implore you to take up writing as a hobby or as a career. Just to get you started, let me share with you the following "Thuita's 6 rules of writing" which I have drawn from my writing experiences:
- Avoid plagiarism: Don't plagiarize other people's writings as that will turn you into a fool. Write original stories. By the way, plagiarism is a dirty word in top American colleges like Yale and Harvard.
- Get rid of unnecessary sentences: A well-written story should have no unnecessary parts, just like a well-engineered machine. Therefore, be content to leave some things unsaid.
- Be wise: To be a top-notch writer, not only should you be knowledgeable but also wise. Don't reveal other people's secrets in your writings. Neither should you write something you'll be embarrassed of later. Write what will not offend your soul or your readers.
- Don't overquote: It is said that you can tell how lazy a writer is by the amount of content they quote from other writers. The more they quote, the lazier they are. So if you want to be known as a diligent writer, use your own words and quote other writers sparingly.
- Love people: As author Dale Carnegie observed, to be a great storyteller, you must love people. Since writing is mostly about sharing stories, you need to love people so much that you want to share your writings with them.
- Tell the truth: Unless you are a fiction writer, cut out any statement in your writings that's untrue, no matter how nice or funny it sounds. That's the way to build trust with your readers.
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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed the above story on "Thuita's 6 rules of writings", you might also enjoy another one on "Benefits of Writing" which I penned a couple of years ago. Just click on that link in blue to dive straight into the story.
