When you write, be a dreamer. Go nuts. Know that you're writing
pure gold. That fire is why we write.
An author who I truly admire, Kurt Vonnegut, sweats out each
individual sentence. He writes it, rewrites it, and doesn't
leave it alone until it's perfect. Then when he's done, he's
done.
I doubt most of write like that. I don't. I let it fly as
fast as my fingers can move across the paper or keyboard, rushing
to capture my ideas before they get away. Later, I change and
shuffle and slice.
James Michener claims that he writes the last sentence first,
then has his goal before him as he writes his way to it.
Then there's me. No outline whatsoever. I create characters
and conflict, spending days and weeks on that task, until the
first chapter really leaves me wondering "How will this end?"
Then my characters take over, and I'm as surprised as the reader
when I finish my story.
Some authors set aside a certain number of hours every day for
writing, or a certain number of words. In short, a writing
schedule.
Then there's me. No writing for three or six months, then a
flurry of activity where I forget to eat, sleep, bathe, change the
cat's litter. I'm a walking stereotype. To assuage the
guilt, I tell myself that my unconscious is hard at work. As
Hemingway would say, long periods of thinking and short periods of
writing.
I've shown you the extremes in writing styles. I think most
authors fall in the middle somewhere. But my point is, find out
what works for you. You can read about how other writers do it,
and if that works for you, great. But in the end, find your own
way. That's what writers do.
Just don't do it halfway.
If you're doing what I do, writing a story that entertains
and moves you, then you will find readers who share your tastes.
For some of us that means a niche market and for others it means
regular appearances on the bestseller list.
Writing is a calling, but publishing is a business. Remember
that AFTER you've written your manuscript. Not during.
I've told you how I write. For me.
The next step is self-editing. Fixing all the mistakes I made,
that I can identify, in my rush to write it before my Muse took a
holiday. Several rewrites. Running through it repeatedly with a
fine-toothed comb.
Then what?
There are stories that get rejected because they bore the
potential publisher, but far more are shot down for other reasons.
Stilted dialogue. Boring descriptions. Weak characters.
Underdeveloped story. Unbelievable or inconsistent plot. Sloppy
writing.
That's what you have to fix.
After my fifteen-year hiatus from writing, I started by using
Free OnLine Creative Writing Workshops. What I needed most was
input from strangers. After all, once you're published, your
readers will be strangers. Every publisher you submit to will be a
stranger. What will they think? I was far too close to my writing
to answer that.
Whenever I got some advice, I considered it. Some I just threw
out as wrong, or because I couldn't make the changes without
abandoning part of what made the story special to me. Some I
embraced. But the point is, I decided. It was my writing.
After a time, I didn't feel the need for the workshops
anymore. I'm fortunate enough to have a wife whose advice I will
always treasure, and after a while that was all I needed. But
early on, it would've been unfair to ask her to read my drivel.
(Not that I didn't anyway.)
I don't know how far along you are in your writing, but if
you've never used a workshop, I keep a list of them at http://freereads.topcities.com/creativewritingonline.html.
Your goal when you self-edit is to get your book as close to
"ready to read" as you possibly can. You want your editor to
find what you overlooked, not what you didn't know about.
To that end, I offer three more resources.
http://freereads.topcities.com/usefullinksforauthors.html
contains links to online quotations, grammar and style guides,
dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses, scam warnings, writer
groups, copyright stuff, etc. A must-read.
http://freereads.topcities.com/commonwritingmistakes.html
contains a list of the most common mistakes I've seen in my
years as an editor. I still reread it from time to time just so I
don't forget. Maybe you should too.
http://freereads.topcities.com/narrativedialogue.html
compares two writing styles, Narrative and Dialogue, and looks
at how to contrast them both for maximum effect. Inspired by a
particularly difficult edit.
Your story is your story. You write it from your heart, and
when it looks like something you'd enjoy reading, you set out to
find a publisher who shares your tastes. What you don't want is
for that first reader to lose sight of what makes your story
special because you've bogged it down with silly mistakes.
In Lesson One, I told you never to pay to be published, and I
stand by that. Authors are paid for publication. Always. It's
just that simple.
In another lesson, I'll tell you where to get some free
editing. The Free OnLine Creative Writing Workshops will give you
a bit of that too. But there's a limit to how much editing you
can get without paying for it. I don't know if you fall into
that category because I've never seen your writing. But if you
evaluate it honestly, I think you'll know the answer.
As an editor, I've worked with some authors who simply couldn't
self-edit. A non-native English speaker, a guy who slept through
English class, whatever. To them, maybe paying for editing was an
option. This isn't paying for publication. This is paying for a
service, training. Just like paying to take a Creative Writing
class at the local community college.
By the way, I don't believe creativity can be taught.
Writing, certainly. I took my Creative Writing class in high
school, free, and treasure it. But I already had the creativity,
or else it would've been a waste of the teacher's time and
mine.
If you hire an editor worthy of the name, you should learn from
that edit how to self-edit in the future. In my case it took two
tries, because the first editor was a rip-off artist charging over
ten times market value.
That editor, incidentally, is named Edit Ink, and they're
listed on many of the "scam warning" sites mentioned at Useful
Links For Authors. They took kickbacks from every fake agent who
sent Them a client. (Fake agents are part of tomorrow's lesson.)
If you choose to hire an editor, check price and reputation.
And consider that you might never make enough selling your books
to get back what you pay that editor. Do you care? That's your
decision.
(I try to avoid freelance editing now because my schedule's a
mess and my energy's fading, but I can recommend someone if you're
interested. You don't have to believe me, because you don't
even know me. Maybe I'm taking kickbacks. But I'm at
laroccamichael@hotmail.com if you care.)
We've covered a lot of ground in this lesson. Take as long as
you need to digest it all. The first, most important step on the
road to publication is to make your writing the best it can be.
If you're sure you've done that, at least take a look at
the last web pages I mentioned. You might learn something, or at
least find some links you like.
Thanks for reading.
