Where Themes Come from

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Practicing the craft of writing every day is as important as reading books to engage the imaginative and artistic faculty on a daily basis. Daily writing tones and prunes the skills of a writer to perfection. The internet has no shortage in the number of ‘How-to’ pages. They will tell you how to write a story, a book, a love letter, or even a computer code. Perhaps, there is a ‘How-to’ page on how to find themes for your stories, or articles, or poems as well. I am not concerned about those sites, here. However, what I do feel concerned about is a website that might tell you where to find your themes.

The Writer’s Genie

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Firstly, I lied about the genie. There are no genies that can help a writer, magically sparing him or her from all the pain and fret of the work. Secondly, a part of this lie is truth. Of course, there is one thing that can help a writer. Guess what?

Type writer?

Computer?

i-pad?

Writing software?

If you are still following this sequence of guesses, you prove yourself to be a serious searcher of the art of writing. At one point in life, we all search for a support mechanism in our work. However, if you are guessing along the same lines, as mentioned above, you are going the wrong way.

23 Tips from Famous Authors for New and Emerging Writers

I.

“I have advice for people who want to write. I don’t care whether they’re 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can’t be a writer if you’re not a reader. It’s the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it’s for only half an hour — write, write, write.” ― Madeleine L’Engle

II.

“Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.” ― William Faulkner

III.

“Read Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don’t ­really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, “how to” books seldom do any harm. You can kick-start a whole book with some little writing exercise.” ― Hilary Mantel

IV.

“Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that – but you are the only you.” ― Neil Gaiman

V.

“Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.” ― Anne Lamott