This is the second lesson in my series on how to write for children. In Lesson One I told you that the first thing you needed to do if you want to be a children’s writer is to read. At the risk of becoming painfully obvious, I’m going to tell you now that the second thing you need to is to write.
If you are serious about being published you need to develop your writing skills, and the best thing you can do to develop your writing skills is to write. Write often. And write a lot. Preferably, write something every day. Something new.

You see, no matter how obvious this advice might sound, many aspiring writers never make it to publication because their focus is wrong. Instead of writing, they spend too much time worrying about what they are going to write, or when they are going to get published, or how they are going to get published.

True, these things are important, but your starting point should be just to get writing. Develop a writing habit. Make writing a priority rather than something at the bottom of your list for when you have spare time.

If you are a busy person, you may, right now, be frowning at your computer screen or even muttering at me that I don’t understand. You are busy. You have a job. Perhaps you have kids. And sporting commitments. And meals to cook. And floors to sweep. If that’s you, then you might be thinking it’s unfair of me to tell you to make more time for writing.

But I’ll let you in on a secret. Authors are busy people. Many still have day jobs. Many have families. And all have houses, and need to be fed, and all those other things. And, once they’ve been published, those extraneous commitments increase, because they need to spend time promoting their book(s), which takes away from writing time. But still, they write. They don’t find time – they make it.

And if you want to be a writer – you’ll make that time, too.

And, if you do make time to write, you’ll soon see that your writing will improve. Hockey players get better at hockey by training. Performers get better at performing by rehearsing. Crafts people hone their crafts by repetition. And writers get better at writing by writing.

One final piece of advice: if you are just starting out, be wary of using your writing time to endlessly refine your first sentence/first page/first chapter. This is not writing – this is revising. And whilst revising is important (and we’ll get that in future lessons), it is better in the beginning to have a hundred pages of okay writing than to have half a page of heavily revised writing.

What are you waiting for? You’ve read what I’ve got to say – now go write something!