One of my favorite statements about writing is contained in W. S. Merwin's poem "
Berryman", in which the poet as a young man receives some good advice from an older and wiser poet:
"... as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips ...
I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write..."
Note that Merwin writes, "I had hardly begun to read", not "I had hardly begun to write". My advice to you is: read, read, read; read the great works of literature and learn from them; focus on your craft, and stop worrying about publishing. If you're good, you might be published some day. And even so, you might never be published. People write because their passion compels them to write, not because they really want to be published. If the passion isn't there, you won't succeed. Publishing is just a nice extra.
Finally, you need to know grammar, spelling, and proper punctuation like the back of your hand. You can then choose to subvert them, but only when you know how to use them properly. It's "I've", not "ive"; "you're", not "your"; "want to", not "wanna"; "thanks", not "thnx"; and "know", not "kno". Discipline yourself to write correctly. IMspeak can lead to very bad habits that will creep into your serious writing.
Linear Mode
