Three Simple Tips for Aspiring Authors

Write

This might seem stupid and obvious but… WRITE! So many of us authors, particularly fiction writers, are afflicted with a billion barriers to simply doing what we want to do, that is write. We procrastinate, we wait for inspiration, we don’t have enough time, we are “not in the mood,” not in “the zone.” Forget all that. Grab a pen and paper, or a computer keyboard, a typewriter, a lipstick and napkin, a magic marker and a blank wall, whatever, put words on paper. Like the old Nike adverts, just do it! Most of us aspiring, unpublished authors have to hold down some kind of day job. We are tired and uninspired at the end of our day. We dream of the time when our thoughts, words and stories will pay our bills and we can say goodbye to “the man,” but honestly, how is that day ever going to arrive if we don’t put our words on a page? Ideally we should set aside at least one hour a day to do nothing but write, no distractions, no days skipped, none spent awaiting the arrival of that fickle muse. Every day, at least one hour.

Henry Millar, in his book “On Writing” suggests that if you cannot write something new then spend the time reviewing and editing. The obvious fact is, if you are sitting at the work, trying to do something, then you will progress. If you are sitting on the sofa, channel hopping and thinking about getting around to working, your page will remain blank, your day job will persist and your dream will slowly slip away. As far as the tired, uninspired author who has worked some menial slog of a day and gets home with no energy, no focus, to apply to writing, I offer my first Writer’s Hero. Philip K. Dick. Living in poverty, eating horse meat from a local pet store, Dick started off publishing pulp Sci-fi stories, being paid by the word. His prodigious works include over 80 books, novels and short story compendiums, in his short lifetime of 53 years. He managed to produce eleven full length novels between 1963 and 1964 alone. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that he did not sleep for a period of three years, however outlandish this claim may sound, it is certainly a fact that this author worked all day and night at times.

So next time you get home from work and think “I’m too tired, I’ll skip writing tonight.” Think of Philip K. Dick and perhaps you’ll be inspired to just sit down and work for an hour, if not for three years straight.

Write, Dammit, Write

Okay, so this might sound a lot like number one, but it is the most important thing, so it bears repeating. Now that you are carefully making an hour a day to sit down and do some structured deliberate writing, you also need to think about your “dead time.” We all suffer from Alice in Wonderland’s White Rabbit complex, no time, no time, I’m late, I’m late! But think how much dead time you have every day? Did you just reread the cereal box for the fifth day in a row at breakfast? Did you sit idle in your car for twenty minutes at road works? Are you waiting for your wife to put on her make up before you go out? Dead time. When we are old and look back over our lives will we add up all those wasted moments and think “I could have written my novel, two novels, a trilogy!” Don’t let time be your enemy. Keep writing materials everywhere, in your car, all around the house, in the bathroom, in your pockets, everywhere. Some sort of Dictaphone can come in handy too, when your hands aren’t free for writing, say while driving for example. Most cell phones have voice memo functions on them these days, so chances are you have a Dictaphone in your pocket or purse twenty-four seven. So use it! When you think of an idea, get it down, you have probably already experienced, at least once, how elusive those exact words can be, even if you wait just a moment before making a note. Don’t wait, don’t let your genius be forgotten and lost, write it down, right away. Most longer pieces of work will involve at least some “donkey work” in the story telling, possibly long tracts of linking material, that may not be your most inspired or inspiring work to do, but it is also easy and requires little thought. These sections can be dictated while doing other things, making dinner, driving to work, etc.

If you get the words “on paper,” even if it’s not your best work, you are three quarters of the way to finishing that segment and moving on. The other quarter, incidentally, is reworking the material. Even the most poorly considered writing can be more quickly rearranged into something good, than starting from scratch, with no words good or bad. Writing Hero number two – Marcel Proust. Although I am neither a fan or a scholar of this French writer, I am in awe of what I have heard about him. Another prodigious writer, he seems to have kept notes on every tiny event, every possible inspiration and translated these into a huge body of work. His most famous volumes, “In Search of Lost Time,” seem to address the very question of dead time. Famed for writing in excruciating detail about the minutiae of his life, Proust was obviously asking that same question, “where did my years go?” So next time you have five minutes and think it not worth using them to make a quick note, re-jiggle some words, or catch a few lines, think of Proust, his hundreds of thousands of pages came one word, one moment not wasted, at a time.

The Writer’s Four Rs: Rewrite, Rework, Revise And Repeat

We all love that divine moment where our words flow like water on to the page, they seem perfect and clear and beautiful in their raw untouched form. We would love to leave them and print them exactly as they had occurred to us, but realistically, we can’t. Even the most improvised sounding writing has been reworked repeatedly to give it this quality. No matter how great the work may be in its raw form, it will be improved by revision. This laborious job can sometimes be horrendous for an author, besides the nitty gritty, time consuming aspect, there is also a sense that with each new draft we have suffocated the soul of our work. With every new coma we have wounded our words and rendered them closer to death than before we began. Believe me, I understand, believe me, I hate editing too, but it is a necessary evil and your work will be better for it.

A few tips on how to do this. One of the best things to do is read your work out loud. Anywhere you stumble or trip, there is a problem. Anywhere you have to go back and reread a line, often in a different intonation, there is probably some punctuation in there or missing that needs fixed, so that line will sound right first go. Remember the main thing your writing needs to be, before all else, is readable, clear and understandable. Also at this point keep a look out for repetition, you’ll be surprised how often you might reuse the same words or phrases, often in close proximity to each other. When you have done this to your own satisfaction, pass it on to a trusted friend. A fresh pair of eyes can see so much that we as writers cannot, because we are too close to the work. An important note on this, try to be open to what may sound like criticism.

The person you have chosen to read your precious work is trying to help you. If you become angry or upset at their comments you will miss out on both their valuable insight and probably their help in future.

My final tip on revision is quite possibly the hardest thing to do as a writer. It was given to me by an editor once and at the time I was incapable of following it up, I have since matured enough to see the value of it and I would suggest that for any writer the sooner they see this, the sooner they will graduate from amateur to professional. “You write beautifully,” He said, “But you have a tendency to overwrite.” What did he mean? I wanted to know, slightly hurt and insulted by the comment, even though I didn’t understand it. “I can’t really explain exactly what I mean, but it’s easy to fix,” He told me, “Go back over all your work, find all the phrases and descriptions that you think particularly good, clever or well done, then cut those. Or rewrite them in a simpler way…” I could’ve cried at the time. Was he sabotaging me? Was he killing my genius out of jealousy or spite?

Or was that the best piece of advise anyone ever gave me? I’ll let you ponder it and decide for yourself.Writer’s Hero on this one is every published author you’ve ever read. No matter how off the cuff they may seem or sound, they have all reworked their words to some extent before they got into print. Even Jack Kerouac, famous for his high energy, improvised writing or William Burroughs with his chaotic jumble of different books brought into one random piece, had editors. So when you look at your writing don’t think, “This is great just as it is.” Think “How could I make this just a little bit better?”