Creative Writing For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1

You and Your Writing

IN THIS CHAPTER

Finding out why you want to write

Discovering what sort of writing is for you

Developing your talent

Creative writing starts with you – with your imagination, personality, and interests. Only you know what you want to write about and how you like to work. Only you can choose to spend time working at your poetry or prose to help your words communicate to others.

People often ask, can everyone write? Well, (almost) everyone can write, in the sense of creating a sentence and then stringing another after it, and so on. However, in contrast with other artistic skills, such as playing the violin or painting in oils, or crafts such as pottery and carpentry, people sometimes fail to realize that writing for an audience – writing to communicate to others – also requires study, hard work, and practice.

We all spend our lives telling stories, and in that sense, everyone does indeed have a book in them – or, if not a whole book, then at least a tale or two – but that doesn’t mean to say everyone is prepared to work at it in such a way that, as a piece of art, it communicates itself to other people.

This book gives you all the tools you need to ...