by David Rawlings, @DavidJRawlings

Let me tell you about a friend of mine who is a carpenter (No, this isn’t the intro to a standard youth pastor-type conversation …)

He’s brilliant on the work site, erecting housing frameworks that rise quickly and stand the test of time. Watching him build a house – a skillset I wasn’t blessed with – is quite awe-inspiring. He knows his tools, reaching for the right one at the right time, using it with precision or force, depending on what’s needed in the moment. 

I asked him how he hones his skills, expecting him to say it was about 15-years experience, or having built a hundred homes. Instead, he told me he makes furniture, and brings those skills to the building site. 

Huh?

After some reflection, I saw the genius in his plan, and the lessons he was learning. He wasn’t stuck in a rut where he used the same tools all the time in exactly the same way. He used the same tools – in a different way – or in a situation that challenged his mindset. And he was a better carpenter for it.

There’s a lesson there for writers. 

Mix it up.

If you want to become a better writer, trying different types of writing gives you a chance to flex your wordsmith muscles in a different ways. You might uncover a different skill, or a different approach, or simply enjoy the process of testing yourself. That’s because you’re developing your craft, as much as developing your WIP.

I write fiction, predominantly modern-day parables with life lessons woven in them. I’ve mixed it up recently, and this is what I’ve taken away from it:

• Poetry. What I learned is the power of brevity, to come up with a five-word phrase that I would normally luxuriate in with a whole paragraph. Plus poetry challenges you to run outside your lane of comfortable words. Not everything rhymes …
• Short stories. I wrote a couple (and they’re available on my web site if you’d like to read them) and realised how I needed to quickly get into the story. No time for backstory in a short story.
• Further to short stories … I took a stab at writing a short story in a different genre. Romance. That required looking into why stories work in this genre, how they’re structured and tropes to avoid or embrace.
• Blog articles about a different topic. Just moving into a new area is enough to get you thinking differently. And blog posting is structured differently (intro, main points, wrap-up) so you get outside your comfort zone again.
• Non-fiction. My big takeaway from writing non-fiction is that the research is intensified – you can’t simply wing it if you don’t have information. Non-fiction needs to be supported by great research so if you don’t have the info you need, you have to go looking for it.

So those are a few things I’ve picked up from mixing it up. What could you write to help stretch your creative wings or pump some new life into your writing?

 

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