READING – WRITING – NETWORKING: Crucial Skills for a Professional Writer

By Linda Rodriguez

May 16th, 2017

Writing did not come naturally to me. I still remember the first day of first grade in Puerto Rico In my right hand I had one of those thick yellow pencils and in front of me on my desk a wide strip of cardboard paper. The teacher asked us to write our names in large, bold letters, and when we were finished, we were going to pin the strips on a bulletin board.

 

While everyone around me was writing, I stared into my strip of paper in a kind of quiet panic. I just didn’t have the skills that I needed to complete the task before me. Not yet…

 

“The show must go on!” my mother said and transferred me to a school that two female teachers had opened in a regular house. It wasn’t really a school but more like an intensive tutoring service. At this improvised school, I remember sitting at a table with a few other children about my age in a former living room. There I slowly wrote out the alphabet letters into a notebook with thick double ruled lines. And also at that school, I remember standing, a shy little girl, by one of the female teachers and being commanded to read out loud.

I pointed at a word.

 

She insisted, “Don’t point. Read.”

 

I felt the words form in my mouth and come out: “Mira, mamá. Mira a Mota. Zape Mota. ¡Zape, zape! And then from an English first-grade reader: “Run, Spot. Run. Run. Run.”

 

And uttering these simple phrases, I was liberated and empowered because I had started to develop the skills I needed to communicate and eventually become a writer!

 

But who knew that back then?

 

Well, it turns out the act of reading, but more than that, feeling words in any human language actively flow through our bodies, is really necessary for writers at any age. And you don’t have to accept this idea from this now passionate reader’s word for it!

 

Christopher Vogler, author of The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, when asked by interviewer Chris Jones, Creative Director of the London Screenwriters Festival  about one piece of advice he would offer a writer, said:

 

“READ before you write, you know… and find an author that you really like, screenwriter or novelist whatever, short story writer and read everything that person has written and read them in-depth.”

 

Vogler goes on to say that we should take the time to re-type pages of a well-established author so as to train our brain muscles in their rhythms and learn how to incorporate some of the best qualities of that writer. This is an exercise Vogler admits to actually practicing himself. You can watch the full Vogler interview on Vimeo.

 

And if you would like to meet Vogler in person to ask him about the importance of reading for writers and about the narrative theories discussed in his book, The Writer’s Journey, he will be at this year’s London Screenwriters Festival. This event will take place this upcoming September 12-17th with all 6 days being dedicated to learning about the skills we need to be inspired writers and get on a professional track about our writing. This festival is a great chance to visit the ever-transforming London (where I spent quite a bit of time growing up, but I’ll tell you about that later) and a great opportunity to network with over a thousand participants.

 

Being among so many other writers… can it get any better than that?

 

But if we can’t make it to London this Fall, we can network and form creative alliances through Storyrocket. Once you join we can send messages through their system and create working groups. I recently started a group titled: Storyrocket Puerto Rico Theater, Film, TV & Web. Please feel free to join us!

 

Remember that as professional writers, we all have to keep honing in our skills in the areas of reading, writing, and networking!

One last thing?

 

As we are in the month of May in which we celebrate Mother’s Day in many countries around the world, I want to wholeheartedly thank my mother for helping me to learn to read and write, plus thank all mothers and women who are right now training future writers and story-tellers every day by patiently teaching children their ABC’s in all languages across the world!