Three Things Every Writer Should Do

Three Things Every Writer Should Do

By Bill Knell

I have never been big on getting or giving writing advice. That's because, in terms of the average person (including me), there are no great writers; just great subjects and ideas. It's what we do with those things that gets us read and makes us rise above others.

I already won a couple of minor writing contests for young.people by the time I reached high school. A local throwaway sheet even used and paid me $15 for a story I wrote when I was nine, placing it among the vehicle and grocery ads. Overall, I had some wonderful subjects and ideas. What I didn't have were the best ways to put words together.

I really hated English Grammar classes. In 11th grade I had the worst one of all. My English Grammar teacher was ancient; we called him “fossil”. He made us use the worst grammar learning book ever published. It was like a summary of another book and the class was altogether boring. 

It wasn't that he was old, it was that he just stopped trying. He became one of those “read three chapters and then they'll be a quiz” teachers. He never actually explained the material. I got so frustrated that I came to class early one day with a small noose. I fashioned it to a light fixture and placed the cursed grammar book in it. 

The teacher later figured out it was me, but took no action. The school was in Florida and I had moved there from New York. My accent gave me away. Everyone thought I was some Mafia kid even though I didn't even have an Italian first or last name. Maybe it was because of what happened in my Science class?

I never got along with the Science teacher because he was a self-important snotbag who thought he knew everything. Science wasn't one great hypothesis to him, it was a gospel that had all the answers. The worst was our arguments about the existence of Alien life and how it might be visiting our planet.

A particularly heated argument started between us on a Friday afternoon when he refused to accept my verbal assignment on how Science ignored the evidence for the existence of Alien life. He told me to change the subject or receive a grade of ‘incomplete’. I finally walked out of the classroom. 

Over that weekend someone, not me, pried open the Science classroom window and threw a dead shark inside. You can imagine what it smelled like by Monday morning. Once again I was thought to be the culprit because I was from New York and they all must have seen ‘The Godfather’ too many times. If it was me, I wouldn't have used a dead shark. Besides, where could I find a real dead horse’s head on short notice? 

The Science teacher had me called to the school office and confronted me. He said, “Maybe this is how disagreements get settled in New York, but not here!” I told him I didn't dump the shark in his classroom. If it had been me, I would have gone to the pet shop, bought a bunch of live mice and dumped those in his classroom. I did that once in New York to a teacher that molested a good friend of mine. Once again I dodged a bullet.

Fortunately, a light suddenly appeared in all this darkness. I switched to a Creating Writing class during the second semester. The teacher was a younger woman and, as soon as she began speaking, I knew I made the right move. She spoke with a kind of knowledge and certainty I never heard before. Her Day One assignment was for all of us to write a three paragraph essay on anything. 

The next day she began teaching and it was like magic. She gave us three things every writer should do:

-Condense your material so that you end up saying the most with the least amount of words. Less is more.

-Keep it interesting with personal stories and observations. 

-Re-read your piece at least three times in search of errors or better phrasing.

What she said was simple, but made a lot of sense. After class she asked me to stay. It was lunch period so I was fine with that. The teacher explained that she read my essay and thought I had a lot of potential. She offered to mentor me and tutor me a few times a week during lunch. Then she told me one of the saddest stories I ever heard.

My high school teacher had been a Harvard Professor. Her older husband was also a professor. One day she discovered he was cheating on her with a student. She tried talking with him, but he had made up his mind to move out. That wasn't the end of the story.

The day after he left she received a dismissal notice from the school. Her ex had reported that it wasn't him, but her that was involved in inappropriate relationships. She sometimes tutored students. He told school officials that she was doing anything but touring them. It was all a lie and she had proof, but she lacked the tenure and influence her husband had. They chose to believe him. He also made sure it was impossible for her to get another teaching job in higher education through gossip and anonymous letters.

With him gone she lost the school housing she had. To make matters worse, he took the car they shared and cleaned out their joint bank account. She knew how to fight him in court. That would take money and she didn't even have a place to live.

My teacher's mother lived in Florida near our school. She was a retired teacher that once taught there. My teacher came to stay with her mom while things worked through the courts and academic committees. She took the teaching job at our school to make ends meet and pay court costs. A lawyer she knew took her case pro bono.

At the end of our conversation I, of course, accepted her offer of mentorship and tutoring. Who wouldn't? She left after that semester having finally exposed her husband's lies and won in court. We stayed in touch until she passed on. I'll never forget her and humbly suggest you follow her three things every writer should do.

BillKnellsWorld.com