We're all artists

I'm watching the Voice, there's cheering, there's coaching, there's artists fighting for their places, to show their talent, to be heard, to tell their stories, to prove their right; and their not dissimilar to us writers are they.

Singers, dancers, musicians, writers, they all need to learn their craft and we are all apprentices at some point in our careers. As writers we want to entertain our readers, we want to leave them at some point cheering, crying or laughing from the experience they just had, much like other artists.

And as a writer our craft is complex, it's not just a matter of putting words down (or is it)? We need to take into consideration a lot of things, things as simple as sentence length and structure, capitals, comma's and spelling.

Then there's things a little more complex like knowing nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections, and knowing how and when to use them correctly.

As we progress through our apprenticeship we might try our hand at understanding how dangling, squinting and misplaced modifiers can change how a sentence is interpreted. We might then need to take into consideration fragments and run-on sentences, we need to use these skills and use them to write short stories, articles, essays, interviews, memoirs, poems, novella's novels, biographies and columns.

It might take some of us longer than others to learn this craft, to become proficient; to become published, much like our counterparts making it on the big stage. And as writer's, yes, we too want to make the big stage, we strive for that big break regardless what our genre is or expertise. We want our stories to touch hearts, to leave impressions -some everlasting - much like a musician. We want our readers to feel, to be moved regardless how we make that happen.

We writer's must keep plodding along as artists, improving, growing. We must believe in ourselves, in our stories, in our audiences, and while one story might not make the grade, the next will. Our stage is huge where we get to showcase our art in journals, newspapers, blogging, on-line, periodicals, magazines, anthologies, competitions and through self-publishing.

Our art is hard, but it's also rewarding and yes rewards are out there to chase, some are small and some big, perhaps the biggest for most is publication while others chase smaller dreams, it doesn't matter what your dream is just chase it and the rewards will follow.