Excellent stuff, Alisha! I was fortunate enough to have a fantastic professor once upon a time, roughly sometime before the Dark Ages. Because he was also a published author and editor, he helped me fine tune my writing and find my voice. That made all the difference in the world.

Of course, there's always room for improvement. I like to think of everything I write as a work in progress. Even that which has already been published is subject to rewrites and revisions.

The litmus test is in how one responds to the criticism from those who know. If you wither and moan about the comments, you get nowhere. If you absorb and digest the information, you have endless potential.

Bravo, Alisha! Thank you for putting my very thoughts on writing and editing, as well as critiques, into words.

^^^ what she said.

Too true. All of it, Alisha. Writing is bad, photography worse. Everyone pulls it apart, adds their 2 pesos worth or, on the internet, can be as mean as they care to be.

I, too, happily had one of those professors (a night class at a lousy, Southern university in which I wasted two years) who made one really great impression: you cannot write unless you can allow your audience into your thoughts and feelings.

You tell a great story about how to write and why one writes and how important it is to slough off the barbs that come along while waiting for the occasional perceptive comment or beam of understanding.

I only wish I had learned the lessons you teach a great deal earlier.

Nicely said. Might I add the life of the writer is a solitary one. You mention "liquor," and the reason many writers drink is the solitary nature of the life (not that I'm condoning that as I sip my breakfast Heineken). Hemingway said that a bottle of wine was good company (especially when other writers aren't around).

Writing is a tough job. Pete Hamill said something like besides manual labor, writing is the hardest job there is.

So chin up after rejections. They just make us stronger.

well expressed, and you're absolutely right about the value of setting a project aside for that refreshing and imperative what-a-difference-a-day-makes perspective. And yet I often have to force myself to do that--I have too much of that befuddled, bleary-eyed "out of sight, out of mind" mentality, but in the end I'm always grateful that I took the time and didn't give in to that temptation to send something off right away. No matter how much I've deluded myself that I've achieved parity with perfection, there always turn out to be problems, from stupid litte oversights to more big-picture transgressions.

Wow, guys! Thanks for the positive comments. I'm jealous of those of you who had great writing professors. Closest I've come so far is the teacher I had way back in the way back, senior year of high school, who was one of the first to explain to me that my writing really was vague. She was great. I keep thinking I might send her some clips.

I'm starting back to college next month in English/Creative Writing, so I hope I can have some of these profs myself.

This is just my opinion, and I'm odd man out here, but I think the value of writing courses may be overrated: I never took a writing class (not that I wouldn't benefit from it)--but I am glad I got a degree in English, so I think you'll at least find Literature studies a considerable help.

I got real lucky years ago and ran into a children's book author and former journalist who ran a writers' group. She had a basic rule - keep the comments positive. No "this stuff is so bad, you should tear it up," kind of remarks.

I learned a lot about having other people read your work to the group. It was very helpful.

And I noticed, being a very light drinker and a non-smoker, how important alcohol and cigarettes seemed to be...

And Alisha - you did a very nice job. Great article!

GoHah: "stupid litte oversights" - ironic, huh?

Christopher: yeah, I could use a bit of that stiff-upper-lip reserve and all--some ambiguity and lack of clarity, too, would really confuse the issue and help not get the point across.

One of the hardest things is just to write at all, rather than put it aside, put off, or put away as not worht writing about. I find that writing is like priming the pump; it starts slowly but flows after a bit of effort.

I want you to know I wrote my response to this like three days ago and when I came back I completely disagreed with myself which led to an awful headache after all the shouting and...

Good advice, Alisha.

The discipline I am trying to learn (and am not very good at) is to write first and re-write second. I am so obsessed with getting everything just the way I want it the first time. I rarely give myself enough time to edit (as those poor BC souls who have seen my first-draft copy can attest) so I try to write and edit all at once. I have tried to convince myself to write it first and edit it later. I am getting better at that. It is both a time-management skill as well as a writing discipline.

my first edit happens this way: i write everything with a pencil. as i'm writing, my 'inner editor' tells me that a phrase my not be so hot. i encase the phrase (ok, sometimes whole paragraphs) in brackets.

when it comes time to type the stuff in, i then deal with the bracketed material.

and hopefully, the time between the pencil scratchin' and the typin' isn't more than 12 hours, because my handwriting is just plain awful.

I wish I did more writing with the old pen/pencil instead of always on the screen. I have gotten into the habit of mostly writing on the computer. I miss the idea of pen/pencil and paper.

apropos of nothing really, but I'm reminded of that scene in the movie "Love and Death" where Woody Allen, deciding to become a writer, is shown in full steretypical serious-writer regalia to the hilt: velvet burgundy smoking jacket, ascot, cigarette in long cigarette holder, standing by the fireplace mantle, roaring fire blazing. Allen, feather quill pen in hand, is in deep thought when the muse suddenly strikes; He gives spoken word--as he writes--to his sudden inspirational, epiphanic burst of a literary Eureka, which turns out to be a line--decades before it is acutally written by T.S. Eliot in "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": "I should have ...been a pair...of rag-ged claws ...scut-tling across the floors ...of silent seas." Allen looks at what he has written, pondering, but then with tempermental-artist disdain, rejects his effort--not recognizing greatness when he sees it and writes it--and crumbling up his paper and tossing it in the fire as he berates himself for what his poor effort.

(me#17: goofs--should've waited a day to look at it again and make corrections)

This book has been out more than three years. I've seen it referred to many times and never a negative comment. I wonder if that reflects who the author is more than the contents? Make no mistake, I devour King's books like a ravenous vampire wolf. I even have a copy of his masterful reprise of horror lit and enjoyed every line.

Comment #3, by alpha, was chosen as Comment of the Day for Tuesday 13th December.

is this book true

Great article

Great advice. I wrote as a newspaper reporter for more than 10 years and I'm still learning how to write better and tighter.
My challenge now is to unlearn some of what I learned in journalism.