How To Write
I think that until you can walk into your local Barnes & Noble or Borders and buy a pile of my well reviewed, highly regarded works, any advice on writing I would have to give would be difficult to justify. I did write one complete novel (see the link at the top right of the page) that I didn't sell; I didn't try very hard but the last editor who saw it said that it was publishable, she just didn't care for the main character. Neither do I, so I find it's tough to push a book after your own belief falters. I then wrote most of another one and although it was very different than the first, I found I was recreating the same problems from the first book so I stopped short of writing the ending in favor of the next big effort.
Sadly, I let that become derailed with a temporary move to a new city and a new job that demanded so much time (and paid with a commensurate level of stress) and before I new it, a number of years had passed without the production of a new novel. The ambition and desire never decreased, and if anything the studying increased, and now that I have been battling chronic illnesses for several years, the 43 thousand word start that I have now languishes in the desk drawer. Now I'm out of my old career in IT and we're taking steps to getting me to a place where I can begin writing again.
But enough of me. What I wanted to write about here was a general thought on some of the writing advice that's out there. Notice I said some, because this can be a huge topic. Also, I think anybody who asserts the existence of any de facto rules should be seriously questioned.
As one of many, many people who have always felt the need to write, I never felt I knew just how to go about it. I started writing short stories because for some reason lost to history I thought it would be easier than writing books. I was never sure what people meant when they said that most writers could write one or the other well, but usually not both. I think that short stories are easier from the standpoint that the writer can hold the entire concept in their mind as opposed to a novel, where it's simply too big for that. That being said, today I have no idea how to write a short story. The idea mystifies me and I'll save that discussion for another time.
Whenever I tried to begin a novel, I realized quite clearly how difficult it was when I couldn't make it go anywhere or do the things that I wanted. Like many people, I tried to find sources of information, advice that could make me figure out just what the hell these people were able to do that I wasn't. I never believed that it was something that I couldn't do, just something I didn't know how to do.
The two most common pieces of advice I came across were the notion of writing every day, and write as fast as you can. Just get it on paper, you can always edit it later. While this may be sage for some, it added to my bewilderment. If I didn't know how to go about writing, writing every day wasn't going to help me. If I wrote just to get it all down on paper, well, I found that garbage begets garbage and just putting down deficient pages with the idea of fixing it later bogged down in a hurry. If page 2 is built on page 1, and page 3 is built on the heels of page2, the worse the text became as the dilution progressed. Very quickly it had to stop.
Writing every day is probably the best possible advice but only once you find out how to actually produce a novel. After paging through book after book by published writers, the advice therein overwhelmingly not helpful (did they really write like this themselves? I could never quite believe it.), I came across one by Lawrence Block, "Telling Lies for Fun & Profit." Hallelujah, the key has been found.
Block couldn't tell me how to write a book, which is entirely appropriate, but he could tell me how to figure it out for myself. His advice (this is from my foggy memory but it should be close enough) is to read three novels straight through. Then reread each one and after each chapter write a few hundred words about what happened. Then reread them again and write a couple of sentences about why it happened, or how it moved the story along. Aha! For the first time I could begin to see the structure of different novels, identify the individual pieces and the bricks that the story is built upon.
He also talks about how he himself has to write well each page, and not quick. He would do some editing after the book is finished but each page has to be as close to final draft quality as possible, otherwise he ends up with a pile of trash. Again I'm paraphrasing but this was exactly the way I felt about writing.
So suddenly I was on my way. Writing every day could be a good thing at last, and I could begin learning the actual craft of writing. I believe that millions of people out there can write beautiful sentences. A small subset of those can write beautiful paragraphs, and fewer still can write quality paragraphs or pages. And then there's the dialogue and the pacing, the style and originality, all the intangible things that identify a work as that of a truly gifted writer.
On the other hand, there is a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program at a university in South Florida that actually teaches its students to "copy" a book (their word) in order to learn how to write. They say to find a book that you like and rewrite it with your own characters and (hopefully) plot. This shocks me. Where Block's advice helps you discern the structure of a book and thereby learn its nature, this latter advice simply rips it off. Sure, the writer should end up learning something about it, but only by sacrificing a spark of creativity, the learning of the craft of writing, and, I think, one's integrity. It may be a subtle distinction but I don't think so. This program has produced a number of published writers, including a bestselling one and a few who do fairly well.
My summation is that before you can write a book, you need to figure out what makes up a book. This won't make up for poor grammar, a dearth of originality, a banal style and just a lack of talent. But if you at least have the abiltiy to produce a finished work, it should get you started. Writing is another matter entirely and guess what? Not even copying will help you there, even if an editor somewhere finds the result publishable.
Sadly, I let that become derailed with a temporary move to a new city and a new job that demanded so much time (and paid with a commensurate level of stress) and before I new it, a number of years had passed without the production of a new novel. The ambition and desire never decreased, and if anything the studying increased, and now that I have been battling chronic illnesses for several years, the 43 thousand word start that I have now languishes in the desk drawer. Now I'm out of my old career in IT and we're taking steps to getting me to a place where I can begin writing again.
But enough of me. What I wanted to write about here was a general thought on some of the writing advice that's out there. Notice I said some, because this can be a huge topic. Also, I think anybody who asserts the existence of any de facto rules should be seriously questioned.
As one of many, many people who have always felt the need to write, I never felt I knew just how to go about it. I started writing short stories because for some reason lost to history I thought it would be easier than writing books. I was never sure what people meant when they said that most writers could write one or the other well, but usually not both. I think that short stories are easier from the standpoint that the writer can hold the entire concept in their mind as opposed to a novel, where it's simply too big for that. That being said, today I have no idea how to write a short story. The idea mystifies me and I'll save that discussion for another time.
Whenever I tried to begin a novel, I realized quite clearly how difficult it was when I couldn't make it go anywhere or do the things that I wanted. Like many people, I tried to find sources of information, advice that could make me figure out just what the hell these people were able to do that I wasn't. I never believed that it was something that I couldn't do, just something I didn't know how to do.
The two most common pieces of advice I came across were the notion of writing every day, and write as fast as you can. Just get it on paper, you can always edit it later. While this may be sage for some, it added to my bewilderment. If I didn't know how to go about writing, writing every day wasn't going to help me. If I wrote just to get it all down on paper, well, I found that garbage begets garbage and just putting down deficient pages with the idea of fixing it later bogged down in a hurry. If page 2 is built on page 1, and page 3 is built on the heels of page2, the worse the text became as the dilution progressed. Very quickly it had to stop.
Writing every day is probably the best possible advice but only once you find out how to actually produce a novel. After paging through book after book by published writers, the advice therein overwhelmingly not helpful (did they really write like this themselves? I could never quite believe it.), I came across one by Lawrence Block, "Telling Lies for Fun & Profit." Hallelujah, the key has been found.
Block couldn't tell me how to write a book, which is entirely appropriate, but he could tell me how to figure it out for myself. His advice (this is from my foggy memory but it should be close enough) is to read three novels straight through. Then reread each one and after each chapter write a few hundred words about what happened. Then reread them again and write a couple of sentences about why it happened, or how it moved the story along. Aha! For the first time I could begin to see the structure of different novels, identify the individual pieces and the bricks that the story is built upon.
He also talks about how he himself has to write well each page, and not quick. He would do some editing after the book is finished but each page has to be as close to final draft quality as possible, otherwise he ends up with a pile of trash. Again I'm paraphrasing but this was exactly the way I felt about writing.
So suddenly I was on my way. Writing every day could be a good thing at last, and I could begin learning the actual craft of writing. I believe that millions of people out there can write beautiful sentences. A small subset of those can write beautiful paragraphs, and fewer still can write quality paragraphs or pages. And then there's the dialogue and the pacing, the style and originality, all the intangible things that identify a work as that of a truly gifted writer.
On the other hand, there is a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program at a university in South Florida that actually teaches its students to "copy" a book (their word) in order to learn how to write. They say to find a book that you like and rewrite it with your own characters and (hopefully) plot. This shocks me. Where Block's advice helps you discern the structure of a book and thereby learn its nature, this latter advice simply rips it off. Sure, the writer should end up learning something about it, but only by sacrificing a spark of creativity, the learning of the craft of writing, and, I think, one's integrity. It may be a subtle distinction but I don't think so. This program has produced a number of published writers, including a bestselling one and a few who do fairly well.
My summation is that before you can write a book, you need to figure out what makes up a book. This won't make up for poor grammar, a dearth of originality, a banal style and just a lack of talent. But if you at least have the abiltiy to produce a finished work, it should get you started. Writing is another matter entirely and guess what? Not even copying will help you there, even if an editor somewhere finds the result publishable.
posted by Rick Ollerman at 5:54 PM
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