The styles of advice inspiration for writers past versus present.

The styles of advice inspiration for writers past versus present.

         People often don't write when they aim to become writers for several reasons like they see writing as time consuming, don't know what to write and believe that everything happens outright to be of perfection when in writing for a living or to be a truly professional writer. Professional writers in the field of writing can say that these people who aim to become writers are not alone in their struggles. And yet many professional writers have had the same problems but come to find solutions to these problems in order to become successful. Donald Murray was a professor of English and a profession writer who wrote an essay called “How to write when you have no time to write". His advice could be consorted not contemporary advice for modern writers but good advice for writers never the less simply for the fact he has not be alive for 13 years. As well to say that certainly his words and the manners in which he lived would not be as aspiring to people who want to become writers as a single mother who struggled to make it and eventually did make it with her work and series Harry Potter. J.K Rowling is said to be one of the most accomplished writers of the modern era and has her own share of advice for the everyday individual to become successful at writing. The following is a comparison of past sage advice versus contemporary advice people are most likely to seek out.

    Many people don't write because they seem to not have an idea and really for beginning writers it’s a major excuse that a “writer’s block" is blocking their ideas. Many writers who were professional in the past like Donald Murray suggest that writers "not wait for ideas" and simply keep a set of notecards to write ideas on what they find important or come to think about. Donald Murray in reference to how he writes give advice that he looks for what makes him most different from everyone and writes about it and that it gives him a unique character. JK Rowling the author of Harry Potter- a very successful series suggests that writers write from their hearts and issues that matter to them and that writing is really not an act you’ll find help from others in, "Write what you know: your own interests, feelings, beliefs, friends, family and even pets will be your raw materials when you start writing. Develop a fondness for solitude if you can, because writing is one of the loneliest professions in the world!" 

    What can be said about Donald Murray's advice is that really it never touches on the aspect that writers can be lonely. Donald Murray reflected that his family was his number one inspiration which is a very different aspect of view than what JK Rowling, a single mother has. A woman who did not have a spouse nor any good connecting family members and pretty much as a single mother alone with her child in the world. While she could write of family-its clear by how Murray ignores the issue in, ”How to write when you have no time to write"  and simply states that his family is essentially his companionship. This is an interesting view to modern individuals who will never likely be heads of households as in the 1960s to benefit having some sort of support group out of their family directly. This merits that Donald Murray's advice might not go over well with people of the modern aspect as when he was a writer primarily man people like women and people of skin colors could not get writing jobs at all easily as today when they at least have a chance in some sort and civil rights guaranteed unto them. Certainly even the role of family has changed in modern society and directly people will not be supportive of the "man of the house" in which ever craft he pursues just because he is the "man of the house”. Wives today can be said to have more freedom of speech today certainly more than in the past and the whole dynamic of the family in the modern scene is often subverted by single parent households.

    People don't write because they seem to not think they have the time based on work or other commitments. Even english class students don't think they have the time and waste their time or doing other things like gaming and even other assignments because they don't think they can get their ideas out in an effective time. Donald Murray suggests that people not worry about writing taking long or it even being perfect as they expect but just to write something down and else interact with the real world in order to write something in the span of few minutes by recording a narrative of what the real world induces in the frame of thoughts. In regards to finding time to write-JK Rowling suggests that people be very valiant to guard the times they are to write and let no one take away the times in which a person who aims to be a writer needs to write, “Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg.”

     Else to say why people don't write is that they fear that their writing will not be as perfect as any other person and that there work will not be good enough. What Donald Murray has to say about this is that you should not be worrying about if the work is perfect but put something out into the world that is well written by grammar means and the audience of yours will come to respect your voice and not loathe it. JK Rowling suggests that writers will never be perfect from the start and have to continue to write in order to get better stemming from her own experience, “You have to resign yourself to the fact that you waste a lot of trees before you write anything you really like, and that’s just the way it is. It’s like learning an instrument, you’ve got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot, cause I wrote an awful lot before I wrote anything I was really happy with." In this regard writers like JK Rowling and Donald Murray come into agreement that in order to write good in writing you must first write the bad or what you don't like.

       What a past writer and contemporary writer will agree upon is that writers in order to make it as writers must have the conviction to write and note that doing things over again is the best way to become happy with what you have written. They must have the tact to determine their own schedules and namely their own space. Donald Murray notes that he has his own space or rather settled into his own space of mind to write. JK Rowling references that she guards space /time for writing with ruthless tact. Both author agree that in order to write one must have perseverance. With Murray this comes in the form of taking notes on what to write in different spaces and caring writing into an act in life. Donald Murray in his essay " How to write when you have no time to write" details a spirit of perseverance in a method where one person is to clearly think and try to live out what they are going to say by taking a walk~ and then coming back to determine a text only in the sum of minutes than hours of sitting down. This means that people who use the excuse they don't have time are really lacking of the tact or knowledge of this method in which they could be doing something else before going to write in a short period of time.  With JK Rowling this comes more from her background before she was successful and was a single mother and really struggling to make a living for herself. Solely her experience to even be successful is marked by a character to not fall behind in what a person seeks to become no matter the amount of failures, "Perseverance is absolutely essential, not just to produce all those words, but to survive rejection and criticism."

        Furthermore the advantage of JK Rowling's advice is because she is more similar to modern day people and even young women who have children, are single parents and who are wishing to become writers. She shows that essentially with structure and tact people no regardless of their background can become writers. The flip side of Donald Murray is that really in his advice there is not the same spirit that everyone can become a writer via his background of being a writer off the bat when he was 25 after being a paratrooper in World War 2. People can say that really they will not be lucky to be hired as a copyboy in the modern era where computer can just ultimately send information from one newspaper department to another. Donald Murray essentially is not as a relatable as a person who came up from poverty to write a massive popular book series many people have heard of. One can also say that his advice is outdated with the modern happenings of the world and the internet changing the world. As Donald Murray passed away in 2006 before the world of current society around the internet existed as it does today where anyone can be a writer and yet not write a book and become successful. JK Rowling's advice is more reliable for the modern individual who wants to become a writer because she is able to take in account of the current world in giving advice. However to say-the words of Donald Murray's intentions and methods in writing as found in “How to write when you have no time to write" are paralleled in some of JK Rowlings tactics. Both believe in an attributed space to writing and all the more have different styles about garnering that attributed space.

Donald Murray believed that living to write or seeing writing pieces in what would happen in the day to day when he was not writing was best to achieve writing something in a short period of time. JK Rowling believes in gathering time for yourself to write which is admittedly more flexible than the tactic Murray in that different methods can be used in that one time period whilst  Murray's style is more artful and strict to an endgoal direct. Murray's and JK Rowlings styles can be good for separate different individuals and all the while not good for all people who wish to become writers. Writers like Neil Gailman have no specific time schedule to get anything done and just say to inspiring writers to, “Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.” For many people this approach would work as well too.

        Many people don't write because they have certain conceptions about writing that make it hard for them to progress as writers. They believe they must become writers solely by first only writing good things and that they never have time to write and really lack the real know how of perseverance to become a writer or that writing is a craft in which you must first write not your best to write the best. The advice by JK Rowling and Donald Murray prove that writers must have a structure in order to write and be successful; a conviction to create outright, a conviction to do outright and continue outright writing in sum is what they and others suggest. And thus both their advice is relevant to modern inspiring writers.