A Young Man's Art
By Alex Willaim Davis

(Editor's note: Alex William Davis, News Assistant at the Cameron County Endeavor, has been focused on being a journalist since he was 15. Now 18, Alex is a steady contributor to the Endeavor. This week he writes through his writing struggles by writing).

Recently I skimmed through my old Yahoo email account. Besides the 1,000 and growing spam messages, there's one message that has stayed in my mailbox that always helps me refocus.

That message reminded how much of the art of writing, like many other crafts, can't be taught. It is honed by practice, patience and perseverance.

That message came from this paper's publisher and editor, Bob Hooftallen, more than three years ago. It reads, "As our friend Dave Harford loved to say, "the best way to learn to write, is to just write."

Then that tempted me to visit David Harford's Web site (www.harford-mystery.com). Yes, it's still up, two years after his passing.

I discovered this, "At UPB I took a couple writing courses and then said, "The hell with it. The best way to learn to write, is to just write"' Harford lived by those words and became an accomplished mystery writer, having several of his stories published by Alfred Hitchcock magazine.

Dave tried his hand at numerous workshops, college classes, etc. and finally figured out that to become a writer, he needed to immerse himself in the art and take advice from others who were ahead of him in the trade.

I've been buying books over the years that teach news writing and reporting. But, while they offer good information on the basics of structure and even grammar, they can only get you started in the right direction. Writing's like everything else that's difficult at first: it gets easier as you go.

And despite my youthful ambitions and all my hardwork over the last three years, I have learned that I am still very new to writing and that my best work is still in front of me.

I finally have learned that it is practice makes perfect. Heck I even wrote that here in a story two years ago. But now I am seeing how it applies to real life and I am understanding its meaning.

The fact that my best work is still ahead of me gives me a reason to keep working hard. After all, if my writing was a gift I didn't have to work hard for, it'd take the fun out of it for me. To me, there's not a lot of things I find to be more fun than crafting a story from scratch.

I've been lucky enough to be around good writers and to work with writers who have been in this business for a combined 40 years.

I've learned one thing: if you're a news writer, let your work be edited and learn from what changes are made to it. That's a hard lesson to learn because you love what you write and it's hard to imagine that someone else could write it better- but they often can.

Practice does make perfect, but for those of you wondering, I'm far from perfect, but I'm having a good time trying to get there.