This was difficult to understand when I first started writing. I thought I needed to know all of the story before I began writing it. I didn’t appreciate that I was learning the story as much as I was writing it.
E.L. Said
My Five Writing Rules
I have simple writing rules. It’s a complicated world, so why burden myself with greater complications?
- Write every day. Writing every day helps me maintain story continuity, and making progress is tangibly reassuring. I also like the practice and discipline, but as an amendment to this rule, I stay flexible and adapt. I don’t sweat it if I can’t write every day. Okay, I confess, I sweat it, but I endure with the promise to myself, “I will write again.”
- Write like crazy. Yep, put it down, one word after another, and let it flow like lava escaping an erupting volcano. Then, edit, polish, edit, polish, revise, re-write, and edit and polish. It’s a rare sentence that is not changed in some manner between first thought and final edit. After grudgingly accepting that re-writing, polishing, and editing are necessary, I now enjoy this process. Writing like crazy is a fast and intense process, but the polishing, etc., is loving, and let me feel the novel and see how it breathes.
- Don’t overthink it and don’t write for anyone else. Man, I get angst about what I’m writing. I worry that it’s crap, and I suffer the imposter syndrome. Even as I write and enjoy what I write, I worry that others won’t like it, that it won’t measure up as professional, meaningful, entertaining, or original. I fear the moment when someone stands up, points a finger at me, and shouts, “J’accuse! You are not a writer.” However, I’m also ready to respond, “Fuck you, jack.” Of course, that won’t prevent me from brooding about it.
- Create and maintain a support structure. Like anything that you consider imperative, such as eating properly, exercising, or family time, it was critical for me to let others know that it’s writing time is important. In return, I set a schedule for it, and adhere to it, so that they know when I’ll be writing. Telling others – coming out of the writing closet, if you will – was a huge step. People respect the effort. Telling my wife, and her support of my writing efforts, were tremendous boosts to my ability to go off and write every day. Writing is already a solitary and lonely business, but her support reduces the struggle by an immeasurable chunk.
- Don’t talk to others about the novel(s) in progress. People will ask, and I do want to share. But it’s so easy to let that writing excitement overpower the moment. I end up going on and on, regaling them about the characters, concept, plot and complications, even as I understand that it’s in beta, or first draft, or whatever, and subject to change. Just answer politely in vaguely sensible terms, change the subject, and let them escape for being a good friend and inquiring.
Any rules that work for you that you want to suggest? No pressure.
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Expectations
You ever read another’s book, and begin editing it to improve grammar, pacing or story-telling, or think that the character should have been changed, or think about how you’d change the words because a sentence is awkward or sloppy?
I encounter this all the time. But I can’t edit or change it; that book is done. That’s why I’m reading it.
One of the best aspects of reading and editing my own work is that I can enjoy the story and make those changes. Massaging and polishing the elements mentioned in the first paragraph, and more beyond that short list, becomes satisfying, exciting, and rewarding.
Conversely, though, I don’t know how much of my entertainment comes from reading these written words versus enjoying the expansion of my interior worlds being made real. Deep in this forest of words, I’m having a damn fine time, but could anyone else read this and have the same experience?
Well, no, probably not. Writers know what we write, and what others find and take from our words rarely match. Readers develop their own set of expectations as they read our work. As we write from our experiences, so they read from their experiences.
That completes the lap of thought, and I’m back at the start, and the rhetoric about wanting to change another’s book.
Surely, of all that’s possible, that’s not what that writer expected. And that’s why we edit and revise, and have editors, so that we don’t put out that book that someone reads and wants to change.
A Writing Problem
I have a new problem to relate to my writing process, something so fucking stupid that it’s monumentally irritating. It’s one of those things that make me go, “Grrrr.”
Lately, hunger is interrupting my writing process.
Hunger, as in, “I’m hungry, my stomach is rumbling, and I want to eat.” It’s not like I’m starving to death.
I know, as living and writing goes, it’s not an impressive problem. I imagine many people reading this will think, “What a whiner. I wish being hungry was my writing problem.”
Yeah, I know. It’s definitely a first world complaint, right? Who else but a white American male can complain like this?
Yes, I know.
Let’s back up a moment and add some exposition. I write in a coffee shop. I usually leave the house around 10:30, a few hours after eating breakfast. I like that process. I need to escape the house (and the cats and distractions) to write. Plus, the walking I do prior to writing helps me settle into the writing groove. Right, wrong, indifferent, this is my process, and I like it.
It used to work great. Eat, dress, walk, arrive, buy coffee, set up, work for a few hours. I generally begin by reviewing news and other blogs. I then make a few brief posts. I consider them to be clearing my throat. Then, off to work. I usually achieve ninety minutes of writing and editing punctuated by a couple breaks, and feel satisfied by the process and progress. But since returning to the writing process after going east across America to visit with family, I start getting hungry about a quarter of my way into the writing session.
The first time it happened, I wrote through my hunger. I figured it was isolated because it was rare. The next day, when the same thing happened, I bought a cookie at the coffee shop. The third day, I ate a tangelo before leaving to write, and the fourth day, I brought a Larabar with me and ate it as I walked. Then, the next time, I cut my time short again, and again the subsequent time. By now, I recognized a problem.
All these actions of eating something bought me a little time. Today, though, I had to leave later for my writing. This was due to a cat. One of our cats, Tucker, decided to re-arrange his litter box. (Oi, the mess.) An hour of clean up was demanded. Since that put me behind, I figured that I’d eat lunch before leaving. That was okay; I’d eaten breakfast (waffles) at eight, and then ate lunch at eleven fifteen, departing to write at eleven thirty. I should be good. Yet, here I am, hungry by one, dreaming of sandwiches, salads, wraps, and burritos.
I considered, of course, buying lunch here at the coffee shop. That doesn’t fit in with my budget or dietary plans. I have the money but can’t stomach the idea of paying five to ten dollars a day for something to eat here. The food offered is standard sort of fare, and while generally tasty, it isn’t particularly healthy for more than a once in a while thing.
What it all seems to be pointing to is that I need to leave earlier to write, closer to when I finish eating breakfast. That provides a different problem. The coffee shop is busier earlier in the day. That makes it harder to get a good writing location. I define a good writing location as a table or counter space with an outlet and sufficient room to not hot or be hit whenever someone moves. Further, it’s not just during my writing time, either, plagued by hunger. I’m hungry after dinner. I’m hungry in the evening. I wake up hungry.
I don’t understand why I’m so hungry. I’ve been eating normally. Yes, I’ve kicked up my walking again. Yes, I’ve lost some weight. (Hurrah!) Yes, I’ve reduced the sugar and fat in my diet. Yes, I feel great, other than being hungry.
I guess I’m done for the day. I feel like I’m cheating myself because the writing was going well, and I have more to write. I also feel like I’m weak, giving up writing for eating. That’s silly, of course. (Right? RIGHT?)
Worse, I try to walk two to three miles after writing. It helps my writing process and it’s good exercise. Today, I’m so hungry, I’m heading straight home.
So, calling it a day on writing like crazy. Time to go eat. It’s Pi Day. Maybe I’ll go have some pie.
Damn it.
P.G. Said
I do the same thing at my computer.
Michael Seidel, writer 