Wtw Planet Prompts - Mercury - Locations / Travel

Moss and clover, Skottvång Sweden.

By: jumo.art

The First Thing You Learn in University Creative Writing Classes

I was very fortunate to major in Creative Writing when I went to college. It was a great experience, but I remember being so nervous when I walked into my first class as a freshman.

I'd been writing stories since elementary school, so I worried that this first class would teach me something wildly different than what I knew about writing. Maybe there was some secret formula to creating characters or mental exercises that immediately dissolved writer's block that you could only learn from a professor.

When my first class ended, I was shocked.

The first thing you learn in a university-level creative writing class?

Read more than you write.

It's that simple. I thought my professor had lost his mind, but the many others that followed always echoed the advice.

The advice then saved my ability to write when I was getting through each day during some of the hardest times of my life.

Pick up the good books. The great books. The terrible books that make you quit reading them because they're so bad.

They will all make your writing stronger.

You'll learn how to write fantastic characters, weave plot lines, and paint worlds with words. You'll also learn what you don't like in someone's writing so you can avoid it in your own.

Even during the periods when I wrote nothing at all, reading kept that love for writing alive in my heart.

It's the best way to reconnect with that passion if you've lost it and the greatest way to develop that skill.

Read more than you write.

Your storylines and characters will thank you later.

by 阿玫小酱当当囧

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physically go to your local library at least once. seriously.

look around. find a random book with a cover that catches your attention. read the description. read the first page. if you like the sounds of it, borrow it and take it home to read. borrow a handful of books even.

if a book loses your interest, drop it. if a book grips onto you, ride that wave.

i've struggled to read recreationally for years despite having read so much as a kid. a lot of us are frozen by the seemingly infinite choices. even when we buy books to take home, we don't read them because which book is worth reading first? we don't have to decide, we have it right here in our bookshelves, we have an eternity of never deciding.

in this past month, i have read five books, most of them i've never heard of when i spotted their cover at the library. most of them, i've ended up loving. the due date of library books maintains the ability to read a book so i can return them to the library and leave the library with more books. an even better incentive than borrowing ebooks, because i actually have to leave the house and not be a hermit.

so if you used to enjoy reading but struggle with it now, ignore the book recs you hear. go to the library, come across a book that piques your interest, and read one page after another until you either lose interest or finish the book.

then it's onto the next one.

A sea of purple heather and cloud capped mountains, my perfect piece of wilderness. Rhinogydd, Eryri National Park