Saturday, March 6, 2004

Posted by Qin Chan, 3/6/04 at 11:11:58 AM.

"I used to think masters, like Hemingway and Shakespeare, are born to be writers. They have the entire story in their minds. " Jane Qi

Read Jane's comments on Hemingway's writing ability and I agree that all great writings are not produced on the first attempt. Similar to what we do with our papers. After a first draft is written, we would spend the next few days editing, changing and haggling over the content and phrases in our paper before we finally submit our final draft for appraisal.

So what makes a great writer great? Well, first of all is the first draft.The making of a great piece of writing must have a solid yet flexible foundation. In a sense, the foundation is the content, the tone and the basic writing style of the writer instilled into the writing. The first difference is that a good writer is able to draw from his own writing ability to produce a piece of writing that has great potential to become a great piece of work. Although with the advantage of starting on higher ground, they do not stop there. They continue to pursue perfection by laborous reading and editing as Hemingway described the process. In my opinion, that is the main difference between an amatuer and professional writer. And of course, a great writer would need more than patience, but the innate ability and talent to do the job better than others.

We should not underestimate the power of good editing skills (I used to, now i take it more seriously). A good example would be the summary I did for Hemingway's 'My Old Man'. After coming up with a first draft I began editing the paper, deleting sentences and paragraphs which i felt was no longer necessary. I made the mistake of removing the last sentence of the story, which turned out to be a critical error. Overall, I believe I could have done a much better job if i re-read the paper a couple more times and did more in depth analysis of the story.

Thus, a great writer is not only good in writing, he/she must possess the skills of a superb editor. Great writers are able to shape and mold a piece of unattractive writing into a work of art.

Discuss