I’ve been composing my writer hat. A “hat” is a pack of references and materials which are the “how to”, or the “how you do it”. The word comes from jobs where people wear actual hats that show what their job is, e.g. a police officer, chef, train operator, all these guys have their own actual hats which show who they are or what they do. And everyone has their own hat, or hats. “Writer” is one of mine, aside from “father”, “husband”, “student” and so forth. And the word “hat” has a secondary meaning, meaning the actual pack of references and materials which are the “how to”, or the “how you do it”. This is something that would be read by someone coming new to a job, so that they could find out how to do that job. Or it would be something that someone holding that job would write up and compose on their own, to serve as their own reference material.
In the case of writing, I believe there is no existing technology of “how to” out there. A lot of the “how to” on writing out there is actual more like “are you serious?” So I have to make one myself. That simple. I have literally had to flush out the bullshit that I’ve collected over many years of classes and books on writing, and then from scratch put together the real “how to”. With the purpose of actually and for real writing. The test of any knowledge is, can you now DO it? Are you actually DOING it? With the previous knowledge I had had, all I was doing was scratching my ass. And that’s not what a writer does. A writer writes.
This new hat of mine IS what is working for me as a writer, the “how to”. Part of it is bits and pieces of the successful actions and advice of successful writers. (Those two words, “successful" and "writers", are used advisedly. I don’t even bother to read articles on writing from people who’ve never written a damn thing. How would they know?) These are from some of the most prolific writers of our time. Not guys who take ten years to write the Great American Novel, but guys who have written book after book after book after book. And then another book and another. And they’re widely read. They’ve been around the block and they’ve got this superabundance of writing done, published and they reach people. If you wanted to learn how to be a lumberjack, you would talk to an actual lumberjack or read a book written by a lumberjack, who had cut down a lot of trees in his life. Not a book by someone who reports on lumberjacks and analyzes the super-theory of why they hold their thumb exactly 2.5 inches from the end of the handle. Or by someone who had tried to be a lumberjack and failed, and now he’s writing books on and teaching classes on lumberjacking. No I would listen to someone who can DO it and who has DONE it.
And even with that, I still judge for myself as to what I find works and what doesn’t.
Actually, for writing, there is no “how”. It’s just “do”. But there are valuable pointers and there are a few things to know.
And so I’ve been composing my writer hat, and I’m keeping it simple (as it should be) and making it a matter of record. And it’s fun putting it together! There’s bit of a “God, this should have been around or available twenty years ago" feeling, but, whatever. It’s getting done now.
