Writing Advice

This is the second in a series of posts designed to assist new aspiring writers learn the craft. You more experienced writers (published or not,) Please feel free to comment on anything you think I might have missed. This is the first day of class where we aren’t going to get any work done, but you’ll get your supply list.

So what do you need to be a writer? A pencil and paper is the basic answer, and it is sort of true, but if you plan on getting published as a writer, you’re going to need more, and this brings me to my first clarification issue (there will be a lot of these.)

WHAT IS A WRITER?

This tends to be a hotly debated topic, and generally reduced to the opinion of the person defining it, and where they happen to be in their career at the time. Most concede that there are ranks, or at least different flavors of writers. How these levels are delineated again drifts in a sea of personal opinion because unlike non-creative careers, fiction writing lacks objective benchmarks. In the United States you can’t practice medicine without first obtaining a license, and you can’t obtain a license without first obtaining a medical degree, so these are looked upon as steps that identify how far along you are in your career. Creative writing doesn’t work that way, although many people think it should (particularly those with degrees.) When you’re talking anything in the realm of the arts it is like entering a nebula in a science fiction movie, nothing seems to work like it’s supposed to. You can be successful with no training at all, and you can hold PhDs in all things literary and never succeed.

But what is a writer?

a) a writer is someone who writes, meaning they enjoy writing and do a lot of it.

b) a writer is someone seriously working to make writing their career

c) a writer is someone who is published

d) a writer is someone who has been vetted by the industry

e) a writer is someone who is supporting themselves entirely by their writing

For most people a writer is whichever one of these you happen to be, or if you are insecure, it is the next one up. However, for the purpose of these posts, I am adding two new definitions.

Newbie aspiring writer: those who would like to one day make a living (or at least money) as an author.

Veteran Aspiring Writer: those who’ve been at this a while and still have yet to break into the industry in any significant way.

Most of my comments will be directed at these two groups of writers, the career oriented–the AP students. 

Now, getting back to what you need, if you try and send a manuscript to a publisher written in pencil, they won’t be too happy. Times have changed. Almost everything is done by word processor and email these days, although I was surprised when my publisher asked if I was comfortable receiving edits from them digitally, and if I wasn’t they would send me a printed hard copy. Seriously? Authors still use hard copies?

WORD PROCESSOR

So, to start you will need a computer and a word processor. If you are on a Windows machine I would suggest Microsoft Word, if you can afford it. It usually costs about $200. This is what I use. If you don’t have the money, you can use Google Docs which provides you with a free word processor service that is compatible with Word and gives you free cloud access (which I will talk about more in a second) or download OpenOffice, which is also a completely free software package that is similar, and compatible with, Microsoft Office. OpenOffice is available for Macs as well. Of course if you’re on a Mac you might want to check out Scrivener which tends to be the leading writer’s software on that platform. There is a Windows version, which is very good, and I talk more about in detail here. And if you’re planning to work on an iPad: Pages is the Apple app for word processing on the iPad and provides all the usual abilities. I also like iAWrite, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles but it is tailored a bit more for writers. It provides easier access to quotes, apostrophes, and other typically used keys, but mostly it provides the all important and oddly often missing, ability to move the cursor back and forth with the keyboard.

There are also a number of other lesser known programs designed for writers, but I would like to warn you that some of these programs offer so much in the way of options and features that they can become a time-sink in themselves. Writers often have trouble staying on task as it is and you really don’t need any more distraction. When you realize that until very recently, (yes I’m that old) writers all used typewriters, or pen and paper, and did just fine. All the bells and whistles of some of these programs look like toys for people who aren’t really serious about writing. All you actually need is a basic word processor.

INTERNET ACCESS

When I started writing the Internet did not yet exist and research was a career unto itself. Finding the answers to the simplest of questions could take months and require traveling and awkward interviews. Having access to a web browser is like putting away your scrub board and lye soap to make room for the electric washer and dryer. The speed and accuracy of writing improved astronomically.

NOTEBOOK

Something else that I found useful are notebooks. Being at least a little pretentious I prefer the famous Moleskin notebooks that you can find in art stores or your local Barnes & Noble. Moleskin notebooks have been around since the 19th century and were used by artists and writers from Van Gogh to Hemmingway. They come in a few varieties and the package label is color coded to help tell the difference. Some are blank, some are lined, and some are quad-lined like graph paper. They also come in small, medium, and large. These notebooks aren’t fancy. They are the model-T of notebooks, almost always basic black. They are however very durable and very usable in that they have good stiff covers, (allowing them to be written on no matter where you are,) and stitched bindings (that allow them to lay flat on a table,) and take a lot of abuse without breaking or loosing pages. Unfortunately they are also surprisingly expensive, costing around twenty dollars for the medium size (5×8) which I use (large enough to write in comfortably and small enough to carry just about anywhere.) In reality, any notebook, or even a pad will do.

Why use a notebook if you have a laptop or an iPad?

1) Portability and ease of use. I’ve begun doing on-site research for my new novel, which means I go to places and take notes. In a coffee shop it is easy to sit down and fire up a laptop, but it doesn’t work so well if you’re standing up in a store interviewing someone, (and it is hard to both hold and type on an iPad, but I suppose you could take thumb notes on a smartphone) wandering around a crowded city, or riding a bike. You could use recording software, but I find that annoying as I can’t browse through my notes and people shy away from being recorded. There is software that will convert verbal to text, but that’s a lot of effort to go through when you can just use a notebook. A tablet can also be used for this, but they are not quite as rough-and-tumble, and there is another reason I find them inadequate to the task, which I will get to.

2) It allows you to sketch as well as write. You can draw out maps, and diagrams of things you want to use later, or do drawings of places or people, as they appear to you.

3) Mostly however, the reason I use them is for brainstorming. I don’t write prose in notebooks. I write my books on my tower computer locked in the sanctuary of my office with the door closed and the rest of the world, and its distractions, walled off. This is how I focus. When I am writing on my computer I ponder the choice of words. I evaluate the structure of sentences and the build of paragraphs. I try and avoid misspellings and bad grammar even on my first drafts. And were I to take a laptop, or even a tablet to a coffee shop, I would try and do the same and be frustrated by all the distractions.

However, when I use a notebook, when I am writing long-hand using a nice fountain pen, I’m not working on something that could even remotely be used as a finished product. It’s in a book, and written in pen. Nothing I write there can be used as is. Knowing this frees me to not focus on the words, but to think only about the ideas. The noise of conversation, the honk of horns, and the background music blends into static that my mind can ride on as I day-dream. If I were to try this in the isolation of my office, I’d get sleepy. In a busy coffee shop or roadside café, the activity keeps me alert, (not to mention the coffee,) but as none of it requires my attention I can let my mind wander. Then when I put my pen to paper, thoughts focus. The first thing I write leads to another. Soon I am scribbling notations of a dozen random thoughts and drawing lines and arrows between them, crossing out some as better thoughts materialize. I’m not concerned about the words I’m using, just capturing random thoughts as they spill out. When I’m done, I usually have dozens of concepts listed that I will use as a resource when I sit down to write. A lot of the time I don’t need to look back at what I wrote, just having written it is enough to have helped me work through plot or character issues. But when I get stuck, or am delayed due to real-life issues and forget, I can look back and jolt my memory.

4) Posterity. A notebook forms a bit of history, insight into the making of a written piece. Should one day you write the great American novel, that little notebook might be worth something to the world. If not, it will still be worth something to you.  

PEN

Another thing I use, as mentioned, is a fountain pen. Why? Cause it’s cool. It makes writing a Victorian novelty and therefore fun. It also elevates cramping because you really don’t need to, and really can’t, press hard with a fountain pen. Most cost upwards of $60 but I found a very nice pen on Amazon for just over $20.

SOFTWARE

The best software I’ve found outside of a word processor is WordWeb, which is a free application that works as a dictionary and thesaurus. What makes it great is that it works in concert with anything. You merely control+right click on any word in any application and it launches WordWeb bringing up the definition and a small interface for finding a large variety of similar options. So whether I am using Word, or in a browser, I can check the definition of a word or see a dozen alternatives.Sadly this only works on Windows systems.

Google Earth is another useful program, although now it is integrated right into most online maps. What makes this so special is the street view feature you get when you zoom all the way in on a location. You see a 360 degree view of most areas as if you were standing there, at least where there is a major street. This is wonderful if you need to write a description of some place you’ve never seen.

CAMERA

A camera is extremely useful for recoding images that can be used later for reference. No matter how detailed a written description is I still find myself going back and looking at photos. Of course, cameras can’t record smells, sounds, or how it feels to be somewhere, so written notes are still important.

MUSIC

This is something I just happen to do. Total silence while writing, can become oppressive and yet just about any sounds can be distracting. Playing music in the background helps muffle everything else, but songs with words interfere with my writing. Classical music is better, but can sometimes be too dull, or inappropriate for certain scenes. When you are writing a high speed chase through Brooklyn, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, might not be best. I found that scores from movies, not soundtracks (which are too often just a string of songs,) but the originally composed music, that often goes unheard in the background of scenes, are perfect. I have quite a few and created playlists with titles like: Action, Happy, Heroic, Ominous, and Sad. Then depending on the scene I am writing, I play the appropriate list and it can help put me in that mindset the same way the music was designed to put the audience in that mindset.   

For those aspiring writers who can’t afford to purchase dozens of movie scores, or classical performances, you can always use Pandora, which you can download for free. By entering in the name of a movie score composer, or classical artist, it will play similar music for you.

TABLETS & E-READERS

This is of course very optional and can be replaced with a printer, but is better if you can afford it. Every time you read your own work in a different format, you will look at it with fresh eyes. If you write on a computer, and then print what you wrote and read it in another room, you will notice mistakes you never saw before. I think this is due to how the mind perceives things differently under different circumstances. Likewise, if you read your work aloud, you will find other issues, and if someone else reads to you, you will find still more. Mostly however, I’ve found that when you read your work in a setting that is most similar to how you normally read books by other authors, you will find yourself seeing mistakes far more easily. As such, if you read books on an e-reader or tablet, or even a phone, then importing your book to that format and reading it, will often help you better evaluate it as well as find typos. You can achieve the same effect by printing the story and taking it to the couch or bed to read, but then you run into the cost, time, and effort of printing your work over and over. With a tablet you can just email your writing to yourself, Skype it, use a cloud, or a number of apps that allow for simple drag and drop file sharing.

CLOUDS

The Cloud is almost another name for the Internet. If you have Gmail or Yahoo mail, you are using a cloud. A cloud is when you upload and store information on the Net. This is a fairly new and emerging commercial technology, and as such there are several. What it means for a writer is that you can upload the draft of your novel and then access it using any device that has access to it such as your iPad, your laptop, your desktop, your smart phone, or even your friend’s computer.

More than granting you the ability to access your work across platforms, it also works as a backup. I know authors who have lost whole novels when their computers caught a virus and died. There are few things more defeating than losing the only draft of a book. Keeping an updated draft on a cloud means that if your computer is wiped, stolen, or lost, you still have a digital copy you can download to your new computer. Even if your home burns down, and your computer, your HD backup, and all your printed and stored DVD copies are destroyed, you’ll still have the cloud copy. And again it is so much easier to drag and drop a file than to re-print a hard copy or insert and burn a DVD.

Another benefit is collaboration. If you are working with someone else, you can use cloud apps like Google Docs to work on the same manuscript in real time with someone else, so they can see your changes as you make them. And Word and other documents can be uploaded to Google Doc, by just drag and drop, assuming you are using Chrome or Firefox. 

Most cloud apps are free up to a certain amount of memory usage. Since more people use clouds for photos or music, and since text files are tiny in comparison, you should be able to use cloud technology for all your stories and never hit the max memory usage.

BACKUP

You need a way to backup your work. Never have only one copy of your book or short story, and never keep all the copies of your work on one computer. If you get hit by a virus and your computer dies, you just lost everything. I personally keep many backups in a variety of forms. I burn DVDs of completed drafts and final manuscripts. I have printed copies. I have a massive external hard drive that keeps a mirror image of my entire computer on it. And I keep copies of my works in progress in clouds. So be sure to have some means of making a copy of your work that is not on your computer, just in case.

So this is your list of supplies. Come back next week for your first real class, which will be titled: Outlining. Have a good day and remember not to run in the halls.   

 

I’ve shied away from writing posts on how to write even though I am aware that a sizable section of my audience is likely aspiring writers and might appreciate some insight or at least validation. The reason I’ve avoided such topics is that I don’t know how to write. Let me clarify—I’ve never “learned” how to write in any structured sense.

I never had any formal education beyond the one Creative Writing class in my sophomore year of high school, where I and two of my friends terrorized our teacher by turning Mother Goose rhymes into gritty urban satires. This sort of cutting edge inventiveness might succeed in later life, but doesn’t play well in suburban classrooms. In that same class I did achieve my first serious notoriety. The assignment was to write a short story (two pages) about a photograph of a flower. I penned a story about a boy sent topside from the bunker where the last of humanity was trying to survive a nuclear holocaust. His job was to search for signs of life, but the boy was of a generation born in the bunker. When he stumbled on the flower he plucked and discarded it thinking: how could anything so fragile hope to survive in such a world as theirs. The teacher read the story in front of the class, and when the teacher revealed that I wrote it, the best writer in our class–a girl by the name of Megan–was unable to control herself and said in utter shock, “A boy wrote that?”

Beyond this, I have had no formal training. I only attended a little over a year of college at an art school, where they did not even teach English much less writing. I never read a book on how to write, or attended a seminar. And not only had I not visited a writing group until after I was published, I never talked to another writer—not even a remotely aspiring one. I had spent a decade earnestly trying to learn to write in a total vacuum.

It was not until I signed with Catt,  my first agent, who had agreed to represent The Crown Conspiracy, that I began to discover how much I didn’t know. She politely mentioned a problem with my point of view and sweetly indicated that there were a couple of places where I was telling and not showing. I had never even heard of these terms before. For those of you who aren’t in the business of writing, these are some of the first things a writer learns if he/she is attending workshops or classes. It turned out I was trying to do calculus without even knowing what addition and subtraction was.

Later, about the time Avempartha was being published, my wife got me into a seminar at George Washington University. It was headed by Mary Morrissy, the award winning Irish author of Mother of Pearl.  On occasion, after class a few of us would join her at one of the tiny Georgetown pubs and chat while we watched people pass by the window. Upon learning that I was already published Mary asked why I was in the class. I replied that I was there because I never learned to write in any formal way. To this she replied, “That’s probably why you’re successful.”

So you see from my experience I don’t see I have all that much to offer. Besides the concept of giving advice on how to go about writing strikes me as a bit arrogant, pretentious, and fairly stupid as no two writers, or approaches, are alike, nor should they be. There is an infinite number of reader’s preferences and as such there should be an equal amount of literary variety to service them. Probably the best advice I can give a writer, is not to listen to anyone’s advice. There are many books I would have deemed unpublishable, or incapable of gaining an audience, which have won the Pulitzer or reaped fortunes for the author. I’m certain I am not alone in my ignorance of what will and won’t be successful. Advice-givers can only speak about their opinions, about what they feel works best, and this might only work for them. Granted there are some universally accepted rules, but even those can be successfully broken.

On the other hand, I am frequently asked for advice about writing. I could tell everyone what I just told you and leave it at that, but this strikes me as a miserably screw-it-forward attitude. It isn’t so much that I don’t want to offer suggestions, it is merely that I have no idea if my currency of thought will have value for anyone else, and I’d hate to derail anyone on the track to greatness by indicating that what they are doing is wrong and having them listen to me.

On my third hand, everyone has to start somewhere, and fearing that a writer will be ruined by listening to my advice is in itself awfully arrogant. It suggests that people aren’t capable of thinking for themselves and determining on their own, the merit of another’s advice.

My wife is a great substantive editor. She has a logical, detail-oriented, engineering type mind. She also has a strong personality and isn’t afraid of debating a character, or plot point even with the guy who invented the world and all the people in it. I can imagine Robin critiquing God on platypuses. “Seriously? You’re going to put this in? You don’t think it’s a little…I don’t know…stupid? Com’on a mammal that lays eggs? That’s inconsistent with everything else you created. I know you love it, but come on. It’s bizarre—an egg-laying, venomous, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal? There’s no way that stays in.”

After Robin rips my book apart, I sit down and determine whether to accept her advice or not. In the end it is always my decision. (The other thing that makes Robin a great editor, is that she accepts it when I reject her ideas without asking for a divorce.)

The best I can do then is offer what I’ve learned and you can decide for yourself if you think it’s useful. In so doing, there is the chance I might provide someone with that missing piece they’ve been needing. As such–and this has been quite the preamble–I will begin offering what wisdom I have on how to write novels in a series of posts that I will try and write once a week. We’ll see how that goes.

In the meantime, here is the first bit of advice that plays into the bit about Robin helping me with my books. When you receive advice on a manuscript, don’t make a decision. Initially all critiques are grating. No matter how nicely delivered, hearing criticism is painful. Most people become defensive. They want to stand up for themselves and explain why it has to be that way, and what the reader clearly missed. I’ve learned that if you get defensive with people giving you honest critiques, you won’t get them anymore. So controlling that reflex is important.

The other thing I found is to wait. I’ve gotten into long running debates with Robin about parts of my books. I argue with her over my work (something I only do with her, because I know she’s capable of standing up to it) I even get angry, though I try to hide it. I defend my stance and have often won the arguments. Then the next day I sit down at my computer. When I’m alone with my thoughts and no one can see, I reevaluate. The anger is gone, the embarrassment, and pride are all someplace else, and it is just me alone with the decision. Most of the time I realize she was right and I quietly make the change.

Robin will then be proof reading the passage and stop. “Hey, I thought you weren’t going to change this?”

“Change what?”

“What do you mean, what? We argued over this for hours. The neighbors almost called the cops. Why’d you change it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, it’s always been that way.”

I might have gotten away with it if she hadn’t saved the previous copies on her computer.

So getting honest advice is a rare gift. Being able to determine whether to accept it or not is priceless. And getting away with making it look like it was your own idea all along, just doesn’t work.

Stay tuned for more writing tips and if you have any specific questions, things you don’t understand, things that you have problems with, or are just curious about, let me know. I may not know the answers, but I lie real well.