by Elton Gahr

Created on: April 23, 2009

One of the most dangerous things that can come from reading a masterpiece is the belief that you could never write anything like that. You look at works of beauty with powerful ideas and characters that you truly care about and know that it is beyond your ability. There is some truth to this. Just as you wouldn't expect to perform open heart surgery the day after you decided to become a doctor or step onto the space shuttle the day after joining NASA it is unreasonable to expect to match words with professional authors the day that you begin. But how do you move past the intimidation of those masterpieces and begin?

You must first demystify the authors of these books. This comes in a variety of ways. It is useful to remind yourself first that they have writing for a long time. They didn't simply pick up a pen and words began to flow. They have often spent decades perfecting a craft. This isn't to say that there is no talent to writing, there are many talents that go to make a good writer, but the one talent that no writer can be truly successful without is the ability to work hard. Also important in this demystification is the understanding that what you are reading is not the first draft of the story. Ernest Hemingway once said "The first draft of anything is shit". This is a true statement so trust that just because what you put down isn't good it can't become good.

Once you understand that other authors are simply people it is time to understand what it is that you bring then. You will never write like Shakespeare or Hemingway. This is not a question of talent but of personality. The world already has a William Shakespeare and it isn't in any desperate need of another. You have unique experience, unique points of view and a voice that no one else will every fully capture. Not everyone is going to like any of those but with practice and effort you can become good enough to find an audience.

Moving all of this into some level of practice, the first thing to do is to write. Keep a journal if you can't bring yourself to do anything else. Short stories are even better. The perfect thing about a short story is that it lets you test style and voice without a huge commitment of time. This helps to eliminate the intimidation of writing an 80,000 word novel. It may also be useful to write something that is intentionally bad. This may seem odd advice but sometimes putting all of those things you are so worried about out can purge them of their power. You may find that they aren't as bad as you thought but even if they are it doesn't really matter.

No matter if you are intimidated by the writings of others, the time investment to create a novel or simply the process itself the most important answer is to begin. A master writer may seem like a diamond lying on the ground when you find them, but you must remember that a diamond exists only because of high pressure over a long period of time.

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