Last month, I wrote about 3 Habits of a freshman writer (and why you should concentrate on only these) in your first year, where I urged the new writers to focus on developing just three habits:

• daily writing doesn’t matter however, small
• daily reading and
• organizing your writing and notes from reading so you can find them when you need them.

While working on developing these habits, a day will come when you feel that you have wasted the whole day if you had to go to bed without writing something.

You would have a nagging feeling if you did not file away the scribbling you did on the back of an envelope when your diary was not handy or notes you took on a piece of paper while reading the amazing book you accidentally found in the library.

When this starts happening frequently, congratulations. You are now in the sophomore year as a writer and ready to develop three habits of sophomores. They are:

1. daily editing
2. show your work
3. introduce yourself as a writer

1. Daily editing

As a sophomore writer, you will have some writing under your belt. Your job now is to take some bits from it and learn to edit it. To make it ready for human consumption.

Self-editing is as important as writing. You will have to learn to do it. If you have this thought in mind that editing is the job of editors and proofreaders, banish it from your mind. Build a self-editing habit from the early stages, and you will not struggle when you are writing a book.

Tighten your sentences. Remove unnecessary words. Cut out the waffle. Refer to objects by name. Be specific. Avoid adverbs and use more verbs. Choose an active versus passive voice. Include dialogue. Learn how to describe a scene and a setting.

Though much disliked and feared, editing, in fact, is one of the most joyful activities for writers. This is where you learn and practice the craft of writing.

And the craft is in making our writing meaningful. As a writer, our job is to observe, decipher the meaning and articulate in such a way that the message becomes universal. It might take us a lifetime to learn how to do that, but when we do, we will leave behind something that will last much longer than us.

2. Share your work

Once you have a few pieces of work ready, it is time to find appropriate writing groups. Writing groups are the best way to get some objective feedback to improve your work.

It is also the least threatening way to get a critique of your work. It could be very intimidating for new writers to get their work critiqued. Writing groups provide encouragement and help and aren’t afraid to pick things apart when they need to be. I have been a part of various writing groups for two decades now and have benefited immensely from them.

How do you find a writing group?

Usually, there are some already in your city or town. Sometimes, when you attend a writing course, participants agree to continue meeting after the course and form a writing group. There are some online writing groups also available. One I know of is Ninja Writers, run by Shaunta Grimes.

If nothing works, form your own group by giving an ad at your local writer’s center.

3. Introduce yourself as a writer

The time has come to call yourself a writer. You don’t have to publish a book to be a writer.

The fact that you’re actively and consistently writing and sharing your work with others is all the proof you need to take up the title of ‘writer’ and start proclaiming your writerhood to the world

So what are you waiting for? Go own your status!

Tell the world. Actively seek opportunities to tell people.

The best way to do that is to have an elevator pitch ready. An elevator pitch is a short, pre-prepared statement you use to introduce yourself. It needs to be short, punchy and should finish before the finish of the elevator ride.

You don’t want to feel embarrassed or hesitant in admitting to someone that you are a writer. A handy, ready-made well-practiced statement can do wonders for your confidence level.

So when someone asks you what do you do, rather than fumbling for words, you can automatically say, “I am a writer, I write…”

Try using this statement even when you are not a full-time writer. Try it on strangers first then move on to friends.

The idea is to make your subconscious mind believe it.

Be ready for the next question, “What do you write?”

Incorporate it in your elevator statement. Keep it sweet and simple. In most cases, the person you’re talking to isn’t expecting a seamless three-paragraph book blurb. They’re simply curious about what you write.

There you have it, the three habits of a sophomore writer.

A sophomore writer writes daily, reads daily, edits daily.

They organize their work and notes so that they can find it when they need it. They show their work to others and get critique to improve their writing. Most importantly, they introduce themselves as writers without hesitation.

Photo by Joshua Ness on Unsplash

We are constantly living our lives in the fast lane. There is so much happening around us all that time that we have practically gone numb. We don’t feel anything, we don’t notice much. We are going through life just like those bullet trains that whoosh by at the speed of two hundred and fifty miles per hour and where the outside scenery keeps changing every minute.

We apply the same approach to writing as well. We want to write quickly. We want to build a portfolio of articles in a matter of months, finish a book in a year, do revisions hastily and publish as soon as possible.

We measure our output by the number of words at the end of the day rather than the insights they carry. We are beginning to think that writing is the same thing as typing.

Good writing takes time.

Just recently I came across the concept of slow writing through Louise De Salvo’s book The Art of Slow Writing. Louise makes the case that mature writing often develops over a longer period of time. Deep immersion in the process of writing yields results that might are not possible with quick writing we have become so accustomed to. If we want our work to get stronger, more nuanced and more compelling we need to practice the process of slow writing.

Slowing down allows us to explore the complexities of the craft. Lousie gives an example in her book, “Virginia Woolf penned roughly 535 words and crossed out 73 of them, netting her 462 words for her day’s work. Let’s say she worked for three hours. That’s about 178 words an hour including the words she deleted—and Woolf was writing at the height of her creative powers.”

She explains, to explore our creativity we need to slow down. We need to give ourselves the opportunity to get to a deeper level by getting to know ourselves and our stories fully over a longer period of time.

Louise goes on to say:

“Trying to work too quickly, trying to work in too polished a way too quickly, expecting clarity too soon, can set us up for failure.”

[…]

“Slow writing is a meditative act: slowing down to understand our relationship to our writing, slowing down to determine our authentic subjects, slowing down to write complex works, slowing down to study our literary antecedents.”

[…]

“Getting completely lost, coming unstrung and unbound, arriving at unknown and unexpected places, is, for me, a critical part of writing.”

Louise DeSalvo, The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity

In the age of the internet, where we are continually under pressure to produce more content, strive to meet daily writing quota, write to deadlines and give preference to quantity over quality, Louise’s book is a sigh of relief.

Intrigued by the concept I went digging and found that slow writing is being used quite effectively in schools. The children are encouraged to slow down while writing, cut out the waffle and focus on every single word or sentence that they construct.

What is slow writing in schools?

In schools, slow writing is used as an approach to writing that uses a step-by-step structure to create a short text or paragraph. A teacher will give specific writing prompts or instructions as to what grammar, language or punctuation features to include in each sentence.

David Dadau has a lot of resources on the topic.

For adult writers, the concept of slow writing is wider than that. It refers to actually slowing down in life and making time to think, meditate and daydream. According to Louise De Salvo, “The most productive writers and creative people I know realize that dreaming and daydreaming are important parts of how writers work.”

Is there a way to slow down in our lives?

Apparently there is.

When a train is traveling at two hundred and fifty miles per hour if you look inside, the things are at a normal pace – a man reading a newspaper, a woman tending to her child, teenagers stealing a look at each other.

Franz Kafka said: “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked…”

When we begin a new project, our ideas are in their infancy. They need to be researched. They need to mature. That takes time. As we learn and understand new information, and let it percolate over days and weeks at length, it makes unique connections with the information we already have in our heads. That is when we discover new insights.

It is the gestation process to become a writer. During this, we learn about ourselves as writers. We establish our work’s foundation. We permit ourselves to play and explore. We commit—or recommit—to working steadily and purposefully.

But no matter how fast the world zips along, if you want to write you need some silence and space, time to slow down to figure out what you think and feel.

Here’s what you can do to practice slow writing:

Schedule a time when you can sit still. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Anything. Keep a notebook handy. Let the thoughts cross your mind and try catching one that intrigues you. Write it down. Keep writing as long as it is there. Stop when your mind moves on to the next one.

For the next month, stick with that thought. Research it. Meditate on it. Look for examples to illustrate it. Find analogies to explain it. See what other people have written about it. Find out books on it and read them. By the end of the month, you will have enough material to write an elaborate article on it. But most importantly your mind will grow and develop insights. A simple thought that appeared randomly while sitting still has now become a fully formed insight. That is what you aim for when you practice slow writing.

Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash