My wife sent me an article about various writers' ten rules for writing fiction. It's fascinating to read how disciplined, intelligent and well-read everyone else is.
These are the ten rules I seem to live by:
1. Do anything - anything - to put off starting to write. Read about the bystander effect on Wikipedia. Play Scrabble on your iPod Touch. Just sit there and stare at a blank screen for forty minutes.
2. Leave the house. A cafe or a pub is a more productive place to write, particularly one without a wireless internet connection. Start by drinking Cokes, because 2pm is too early to be drinking alcohol. After a couple of litres, when the sugar buzz is making your eyes shake, start on the beers to calm yourself down.
3. Stay up ridiculously, self-destructively late. Several nights in a row. You'll know you've had the right amount of lack of sleep when you're barking at passers-by on the street for walking too close to you.
4. Dwell on a particular line of dialogue for at least an hour without moving on. Then realise how long you've been stuck on it, put in a placeholder, and end up cutting it later anyway.
5. Edit, edit, edit the first ten pages before you've written anything else. Editing is so much easier than writing more.
6. Bring your laptop everywhere with you in the utterly misguided hope that you'll pull it out to snatch a few minutes of writing on the train or wherever. Having to carry your microchip-brick all over town is a useful kind of penance for being a lazy writer.
7. Deadlines are essential enemies. It is perfectly natural to leave it just a little too late so you end up writing in an antisocial blood-sweating panicked frenzy. Face it, that's the only state in which you ever get any writing done anyway.
8. When you've finally finished a first draft, assume that there's nothing wrong with it, and refuse to listen to any constructive feedback for at least three weeks.
9. When a project is at last finished and out in the public domain, rest on your laurels. For goodness' sake don't do any more writing until you've milked all the mileage you can (to mix metaphors) out of what you've already written.
10. Remind yourself that you enjoy writing. It's fun.
Honestly, it's a wonder I ever get any writing done.
Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
What makes a good writer?
You are a writer whether or not anyone has read your work yet. You are a writer whether or not you have been published, or won awards, or got good reviews. There is never any badge or certificate you'll get that will say you are a writer. You just have to believe it and it's true.
If you believe it for long enough, and finish enough stuff, then you will gradually transform from being just a writer into being a good writer. The publication, awards and good reviews will follow - in direct proportion to the strength of your belief.
(If you can't bring yourself to believe you're a writer, pretend. Act as if you are and, actually, that's all it takes. Acting like a writer makes you, in fact, a writer.)
There are many different kinds of good writers. Some are popular, some are deeply insightful, some are just good for passing the time in an airport lounge.
The difference between a good writer and a bad writer is that a good writer finishes things and moves on.
If you've been working on an idea for the last five years to the exclusion of all else, or you've started ten novels but they all trailed off somewhere around chapter thirteen, then you are a bad writer. It's not about the quality of your prose, it's about what you do with it.
A good writer knows that ideas don't fail. If he's writing something that doesn't feel right, he finishes it anyway, and moves on.
A good writer has faith that more good ideas will come.
A good writer produces enough material that he's not afraid to shelve the crap.
A good writer says, "I am a writer," without qualifying the statement.
A good writer accepts praise and rejects criticism.
At least, all that's what I keep telling myself. I'm still working on being a good writer.
If you believe it for long enough, and finish enough stuff, then you will gradually transform from being just a writer into being a good writer. The publication, awards and good reviews will follow - in direct proportion to the strength of your belief.
(If you can't bring yourself to believe you're a writer, pretend. Act as if you are and, actually, that's all it takes. Acting like a writer makes you, in fact, a writer.)
There are many different kinds of good writers. Some are popular, some are deeply insightful, some are just good for passing the time in an airport lounge.
The difference between a good writer and a bad writer is that a good writer finishes things and moves on.
If you've been working on an idea for the last five years to the exclusion of all else, or you've started ten novels but they all trailed off somewhere around chapter thirteen, then you are a bad writer. It's not about the quality of your prose, it's about what you do with it.
A good writer knows that ideas don't fail. If he's writing something that doesn't feel right, he finishes it anyway, and moves on.
A good writer has faith that more good ideas will come.
A good writer produces enough material that he's not afraid to shelve the crap.
A good writer says, "I am a writer," without qualifying the statement.
A good writer accepts praise and rejects criticism.
At least, all that's what I keep telling myself. I'm still working on being a good writer.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Finding Time
Towards the end of last year I made an effort to reduce the amount of time I was spending on extra-curricular activities (ie anything but writing). I was running a film club, volunteering at Brixton Prison, regularly attending a go club, indoctrinating myself into the Common Purpose cult, and a bunch of other stuff. I gave all that up.
But I'm still finishing my part-time Creative Writing MA, and I still have a full-time job and a full-time wife. So when do I find time to write?
I don't.
If I was truly disciplined, I would do what they say in all the books - I would get up earlier each day and spend an hour writing before going to work. Ha! There's no getting me out of bed in the morning any earlier than I have to. Or I would dedicate Sundays to writing, forsaking all social engagements for the greater good. Nope.
The truth is that I often carve writing time out of sleeping time. I stay up until 3am on a school night four nights in a row, usually driven by a deadline.
What's worse, it takes me literally hours to squeeze out a few hundred words. My wife can spill a thousand words onto a page in an hour, and I'll still be staring at a blank page. It's a wonder I'm as productive as I am.
Should I be making an effort to develop better habits? Or is this a dirty secret that most writers have?
But I'm still finishing my part-time Creative Writing MA, and I still have a full-time job and a full-time wife. So when do I find time to write?
I don't.
If I was truly disciplined, I would do what they say in all the books - I would get up earlier each day and spend an hour writing before going to work. Ha! There's no getting me out of bed in the morning any earlier than I have to. Or I would dedicate Sundays to writing, forsaking all social engagements for the greater good. Nope.
The truth is that I often carve writing time out of sleeping time. I stay up until 3am on a school night four nights in a row, usually driven by a deadline.
What's worse, it takes me literally hours to squeeze out a few hundred words. My wife can spill a thousand words onto a page in an hour, and I'll still be staring at a blank page. It's a wonder I'm as productive as I am.
Should I be making an effort to develop better habits? Or is this a dirty secret that most writers have?
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