I have been doing this writing and self-publishing thing for a little while now, and over the last year the hard work has finally started to payoff, albeit modestly. Just enough, I'd say, to make me see the true potential in self-publishing and want to write this post. The following is simply my opinion of what I found to work along the way, and what did not. I have spent countless hours over the last three years reading articles that others have written on the subject of self-publishing, and I think it's only fair to pay it forward and add my own two cents and, maybe, touch a little bit upon my own experiences. Take it or leave it. There is no formula for success for this, just a lot of trial and error and luck. But I would be lying to tell you there aren't things you can do to help your chances.
The Product
Once you have poured your blood, sweat and tears into writing your novel or short story or whatever, you need to stop thinking like a writer and start thinking business. Your book is now your product, and there are a lot of products out there that have had a lot of hours put into them to make them look like the professionally crafted products that they are.
So let's talk about what you're putting out there for a second. The first obstacle a self-published writer will be up against is the stigma attached to the fact that you are self-publishing your material instead of being "traditionally published" by a publishing house. Let's face it, for every well-crafted and professionally presented self-published novel put out there, there are a hundred that look like they were designed by a 5th grade computer class circa 1995 (that doesn't mean the writing is bad, but people will be hesitant to take a chance on you if your book looks shoddy). People often fear--and this is a stereotype that is rapidly being shed in the industry--that "self-published" is synonymous with "lesser quality." And they have every right to think this way because there certainly is no shortage of poorly crafted books out there in the digital self-pub market. So one way to increase your credibility is to make your product every bit as professional as what the big publishers are putting out. It's not easy on a small budget, but it also isn't impossible.
I would recommend finding a good website that sells pre-made or custom covers. Oh. Here's one. www.humblenations.com This is where I bought my cover and it was like $40, but it looks great if you ask me. I've actually received a few emails from people who liked Cicada Spring saying they bought it because they liked the cover. So, yes, people do judge a book by the cover. It is the first taste of the story the book contains. I like to think the cover sets the mood before the reader has read one word.*
*I won't lie. I still have a couple book covers on Amazon that aren't as nice as I'd like, but they are for short stories, and I kind of like seeing them as a reminder of how I started.
I would also recommend springing for a professional editor. Oh. Here's a good place. www.redadeptediting.com For a 100,000 word manuscript it's about $500 (I suggest the one-pass line edit), but it is worth every penny. And if things go well and you make a little money selling books (the business side of you should want this), you will be able to write that amount off on your taxes to reduce what you owe Johnny Government.**
**Here I should add that you should save all receipts for anything you do writing related. You'll thank yourself later. Anytime you do anything that costs you money and it is related to your writing, get a receipt and put it in an envelope.
Bottom line is that it is important your book has as few errors as possible inside. Have someone edit it, then have six or seven people proofread it. I won't tell you it will ever be perfect, even after five proofreads from others and a dozen of my own, I still doubt I got them all. That's okay, though. Even Big House books have errors. But the goal here is to get this thing as polished as possible. And if you do find a typo in your digital book after it is published, it's not that hard to fix. Here's Hugh Howey to explain how. And if you don't know who he is, you should Google him.
Fixing print book errors is a different story though, and I'm not going to get into that.
At the end of the day, though, no matter how pretty and professional your product is, how spotless the grammar and spelling is, if you're not telling a story people want to read (no fixes here), you're gonna have a bad time. I have a hard time seeing how a poorly told (or a boring) story will sell well (consistently beyond marketing campaigns, anyway) because word of mouth is key to a book's success. And people don't tell their friends about books that didn't do it for them.
That brings me to my next part.
Marketing
Word of mouth always is and always will be the ultimate marketing tool. But it takes some big pushes, and patience (and sacrifice), to get people talking about your book. However, thanks to the wonderful world of social media, it is much easier for people to hear when their friends are chattering about your book. If you haven't already, go sign up for Goodreads. It's Facebook for booklovers and authors.
When it comes to marketing your book, there are a lot of options. I will tell you the things I have done that have led to over 100,000 downloads and some trailing sales.
Let's start with this, and you're gonna hate it if you just spent a year or more writing a book: GIVE IT AWAY FOR FREE as much as possible. If you don't have a readership yet, which I don't imagine you do if you're reading articles about self-publishing, then the best way to gain one is to give content away for free. And not just any content--give people GOOD CONTENT, a good story, for free and they will gladly pay for your next. They will also tell people about your book and if your free promo is over they will buy it if their friend gushes about it enough, especially if you are pricing your book in the $2.99 - $4.99 range.
What's a free promo? Well if you use Amazon KDP Select, and I recommend you do, you will learn that the service allows you to do five days of free promotion every 90 days. Doing a promotion alone won't generate a ton of downloads, but pairing it with a marketing campaign like Bookbub (more on this in a second) will blast you up the charts.
Here is what I did.
The first time I did a free campaign I did it by itself without any marketing. Luckily, a site called Pixel of Ink picked up that it was free and in three days I had 15,000 downloads and Cicada Spring made it to #2 on the Amazon list of free books. These lists are crucial; they get eyes on your book. And after the free promo was over, I had about 200 sales. Not great, but more than I had ever anticipated. The most valuable thing about the promo though was that it got me about 75 reviews from random readers, and they were good reviews. This increased my credibility.
I then leveraged those good reviews to apply for a Bookbub campaign to list my book for free again in the next few months.
What's Bookbub? It is a website/email subscription with over 3 million users. You basically pay them to blast your book out to all these people. The catch is that they are also super exclusive and picky and won't pick your book if they don' think their readers will like it (here's where those 75 reviews helped).
Anyway, I applied and Bookbub accepted and I paid them $400 (tax write-off) to list my book as free. I listed it for four days. End result: 95,000 downloads. For the following four months I also sold a thousand books and had over a million pages (Kindle Unlimited users) read.
This was all generated by giving away my books for free. Oh, and I also sold a bunch of my short stories. It was a good learning experience too. I received a ton of emails asking if I had more full-length books. I did not, and so ended up depressed that I was missing so many sales opportunities. However, I think it is a testament to how powerful a marketing tool giving away free content can be. It goes against all the hard work you put into writing your novel, but in the end it gets you what you should want as a writer...it gets you readers.
Keep Writing
This is most important. You can't keep focusing on your one book. Once you have written it and polished it and gotten it out there, you need to turn your focus to writing another book. That's where I am right now. Your book is out there until Amazon somehow crumbles, and it has the rest of its life to be discovered. Your best chance of that is to have a few books find moderate success and hope the fire catches. Here is where luck is nice. You never know who will stumble upon your book and love it.
Earlier I said I didn't think there was a formula for success in this industry, but I think I was wrong. I think what you need to do is consistently put out quality writing that people want to read. That's what the pros do. And how do you get people to want to read your stuff? I think you just have to say something interesting. Readers will forgive a lot, but they won't forgive being bored by your writing. The rest, the consistency part, is just hard work.
And here is where I end abruptly, perhaps having written a lot, said little, and taught nothing of value. It's Friday and I feel like leaving the office now. I guess in the end this was more a story about myself than it was advice. I think there is some useful stuff in here though. Basically just pour your heart into a book, spend money polishing it, then spend more money giving it away for free. It worked for me though.
Showing posts with label writing advice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing advice. Show all posts
Friday, February 19, 2016
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Writing Advice: Or (How One Writer Writes)
About a week ago a friend of mine let me do a guest post on her blog. I'm not sure if it's against guest-blogging protocol to post the same post on your own blog after it's already been posted on another's website, but I need to start building my posts (and I really liked this one) so I decided to take the risk. If I'm committing some kind of blog sin, I do hope someone will tell me.
My girlfriend and I just signed a lease on a new apartment. That is exciting news in and of itself, but something equally exciting happened to me this weekend while I was cleaning out my bookshelf and boxing things up: I found my copy of Strunk's The Elements of Style. Immediately I recalled how fun and terrifying those first baby steps into the perilous world of writing were. The feeling was a strange combination of fear and longing that made me thirsty for a cold beer with old friends. I missed those earlier times.
Ahhh nostalgia, what a fantastic and powerful drug.
*Long thoughtful sigh*
Moving on now.
Even better than the book discovery, was when I cracked it open and leafed through the pages and the receipt for it fell out (Spirit of '76 Bookstore, which, coincidentally, is now carrying my first novel, Cicada Spring). The receipt was faded and creased in all kids of strange ways that seemed impossible, especially when you considered that it had spent nearly three years pressed flatly between pages. But there it was in all its magnificent glory—proof of a beginning. For all intents and purposes, it was my birth certificate, a reminder of when I decided writing was what I wanted to do.
According to the tiny piece of paper, May 20th, 2012, was when Christian the Writer was born. I'm still a lot of other things: Christian the Banker, Christian the Over-Confident Golfer, Christian the Hungry, Christian the Habitual Line-Crosser. But Christian the Writer is certainly my favorite of all these identities. He is the one who feels most at home in his awkward and often sunburned skin. Christian the Writer doesn't tan well.
It's funny to think about how three years can feel so short yet so long at the same time. From my current standpoint, it flew by (a tad cliché, I know), but when I try to place myself in my younger self's writing shoes, I can only remember time passing in a grim slog of impatience.
When I was first starting, pumping out short story after short story, all I wanted to do was get better. I wrote hard and fast, with little regard for the rules. I was aware I was making mistakes, but I didn't care. Damn it, I wanted to be good NOW! Get out of my way punctuation and grammar! However, deep down, I knew there was work to be done. Very. Hard. Work. Talent, in my opinion, is less about the 'genius' you think you have inside you, the gift you believe you were given, and much more about how hard you are willing to work to coax it out of you and shine a light on it. It'll be an ugly bastard at first--squinty eyes, no teeth, opaque pink skin (picture a baby rat)--but eventually you can pretty it up some and maybe even find someone who'd be happy to date it.
What I'm getting at is this: I knew that if I kept at it, if I promised myself that no matter what happened, if at the end of the day I never gave up, then inevitably I would get better. And sure enough, I did. At least I think so. The progress was slow. The results, I was certain, would never come. But bit by bit, word by word, then sentence by sentence, things started to get better and easier. I have no delusions of being a genius writer, but I do, however, think that the talent I felt simmering inside me is finally a little easier to transition from my head to the blank page. In short, it's gotten easier to say what I want to say the way I want to say it. And in writing, that's pretty darn important. It is your voice.
So, while I know 'writing advice' is an over-touched-upon subject, and one I'm not even sure I am qualified to discuss, I would still like to talk a little bit about what I picked up along the way. Bits and scraps from here and there. Things that worked for me. Some might be helpful. Some might be better suited as dog food. But if you, dear reader, should glean even the tiniest morsel of inspiration or insight from it, I will be satisfied. Think of this less as advice and more of me telling you what has worked for me. There is no one size-fits-all with writing, so read this and interpret it widely. These things are simply the things I've noticed I was doing when I felt most in control of my craft.
Let's begin.
1) Write Honestly
This is something of a staple in almost any book on writing you will ever read. My favorite, of course, is Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, and he discusses the topic the way only Stephen King can. I doubt he would claim to have invented the notion; it is simply something any writer worth his or her salt learns along the way—that the words are best and have the greatest impact when they aren't dumbed down out of fear of what people might think or who might get offended.
Many writers, I have found, are the sort who were often thought of as weird in their adolescence. Not because they were actually weird necessarily, but because they would say things with little care of what others would think of them. Little did we know we were preparing ourselves at such a young age to say what we wanted to say the way we wanted to say it.
So what exactly does 'write honestly' mean? It can mean many things to many people, but to me it means don't hold back. For example: If you want to make a character convincing, say a character who is supposed to be devious and evil (serial killers are a good blank canvas for the dark inclined mind), then I hate to tell you this but you're going to have to conjure up some dark thoughts that disturb you. And when you finally go to put them down on the page, cringing as you type the words, second guessing yourself as to whether or not it's too much and you've crossed a line, you need to know that that's when you should keep going. If you aren't feeling it as a writer when you're writing it, then you better believe the reader won't feel it when they read it. That goes for any emotion—fear, love, lust, anger, humor, sadness.
To write honestly you need to know your characters inside and out. They have to think and behave the way they were meant to, and often times the way that they want to; they can easily take on a life of their own and say things that catch you off guard. So if they decide to speak up, for the love of God do not censor them. It's an unforgivable sin, if you ask me, and you should be nibbled to death by a duck.
2) Surprise Yourself
When it comes to twists and surprises you need to avoid doing the first thing that comes to mind. You are the writer, but you are also the first reader. If you get to a point in your story where you can see the setup/opportunity for a plot-twist coming, take a break for a moment. During that break, think of the first two or three scenarios that would best fit that twist... then throw them away. If you thought of them that fast, then chances are a reader will too. Sometimes the cleverest twists are the ones that seem more obvious (sounds counterintuitive, I know), but people automatically look for the obscure when they start to realize things aren't what they seem. Hiding in plain sight isn't always bad if it suits your story. Points for clever twists are always good, but not the ultimate currency in storytelling. Stories are so much bigger than gimmicks.
In a roundabout way, I think I am trying to say to be real as often as possible. Root your lies in grains of truth to lend them believability and ground them in reality.
3) Find What Works For You and Do It
Writers are creatures of habit, if nothing else. We have our routines and our environmental requirements in order for the words to flow freely. Some writers like to drink or smoke a cigarette or wear aluminum foil on their feet. Find what works for you, your comfort zone, and stay there for the duration of your writing session, whatever it may be. Me? I need to be warm. Scratch that—I need to be blazing hot. I bundle up and turn the heat to 78 degrees. It's the only way I can relax enough to get things moving along. By the time I've managed to get down a thousand or so words, I'm usually a sweaty medium-rare and ready for consuming.
4) Write, Damn it!
This one should go without saying, yet I cannot tell you how many "writers" I have met who tell me they want to write something. It's usually at this moment that I am overtaken with ungovernable rage and want to grab them by the lapels and shake them, all the while screaming "Well then write it, damn you! Don't tell me you want to write... WRITE!!"
What I am getting at in a not-so-subtle way is that if you want to write, you need to write. Even if it is only a hundred words a day, you have to write. It is the only way to get better, and it is the only way to be a writer. Hence the old chestnut: A writer writes. It's old and it's a chestnut because it is true. I have a minimum goal of five hundred words per day, and I always hit that no matter what, even if the words are crap. If I don't, I honestly have a hard time sleeping. Writing, as with so many other hobbies, can quickly become a compulsion and an obsession that demands things from you. It is not unlike an unruly child without manners. It wants what it wants when it wants it. So feed it and you'll be happy.
5) Read Everything
That's all I have to say about that.
6) Dialogue
Dialogue can be tricky. I have always been jealous of those to whom it comes easy. My brother, for instance, can write clever and witty dialogue as if he has been doing it for his entire life. I should mention he is not a writer and the dialogue he does put down on the page is usually just part of some funny email he has decided to send me when the hours of our day jobs are ticking by slowly. But still, he is damn good at it. The trick is, I have found, to remove the boring parts (Elmore Leonard says the same about all writing, in fact). Dialogue should always move the story along or build a character's depth and reveal subtle motivations. It's a great way to show instead of tell.
If you want to try an exercise that can help you improve your skills, try this: listen to conversations on a train and transcribe them, then after you've creepily jotted down everything the couple next to has said, take out all the parts that didn't lend a person character (mannerisms and stall words etc) and take out all the stuff that didn't advance the conversation. What you are left with is the good meat.
7) Finish Something
One of the biggest confidence boosts I got when I was first beginning to write was when I finished my first story. I had a wicked habit of starting things and putting them down, never to be finished. The problem is that when you first come up with an idea to write, there is this initial euphoric blast of adrenalin and excitement. You are like a child with a new toy. But after a few thousand words the excitement wears off and you are left with a bill for the hard work required to finish it. This is where the men are separated from the boys, the women from the girls. This is where it's time to show that story who the hell's boss. So do it. Come to the page every day and finish that story. Even when it gets hard, even when the idea seems stupid at second thought, even when the characters don't resonate, finish it. I promise you when you sit there at the end of it all, finished first draft in hand, it will all be worth it. One cruddy but finished story is far better than a dozen brilliant first paragraphs. And besides, first drafts almost always stink anyway. It's okay. Rewriting and editing is an equally important craft to hone, and you will do just that, grasshopper... you will. It just takes time and practice.
For now I think I have said enough. There is more kicking around in my noggin I am sure, but much of it is probably nothing more than opinions on what you should eat for breakfast and what brand of tea to drink while writing (Earl Grey). So I shall depart posthaste, before I lose your attention, dear reader. But first I would like to thank Kathleen Valentine for the opportunity to write this piece for her blog. The advice she has given me over the past few years has been invaluable.
Thank You.
* * * * *
My girlfriend and I just signed a lease on a new apartment. That is exciting news in and of itself, but something equally exciting happened to me this weekend while I was cleaning out my bookshelf and boxing things up: I found my copy of Strunk's The Elements of Style. Immediately I recalled how fun and terrifying those first baby steps into the perilous world of writing were. The feeling was a strange combination of fear and longing that made me thirsty for a cold beer with old friends. I missed those earlier times.
Ahhh nostalgia, what a fantastic and powerful drug.
*Long thoughtful sigh*
Moving on now.
Even better than the book discovery, was when I cracked it open and leafed through the pages and the receipt for it fell out (Spirit of '76 Bookstore, which, coincidentally, is now carrying my first novel, Cicada Spring). The receipt was faded and creased in all kids of strange ways that seemed impossible, especially when you considered that it had spent nearly three years pressed flatly between pages. But there it was in all its magnificent glory—proof of a beginning. For all intents and purposes, it was my birth certificate, a reminder of when I decided writing was what I wanted to do.
According to the tiny piece of paper, May 20th, 2012, was when Christian the Writer was born. I'm still a lot of other things: Christian the Banker, Christian the Over-Confident Golfer, Christian the Hungry, Christian the Habitual Line-Crosser. But Christian the Writer is certainly my favorite of all these identities. He is the one who feels most at home in his awkward and often sunburned skin. Christian the Writer doesn't tan well.
It's funny to think about how three years can feel so short yet so long at the same time. From my current standpoint, it flew by (a tad cliché, I know), but when I try to place myself in my younger self's writing shoes, I can only remember time passing in a grim slog of impatience.
When I was first starting, pumping out short story after short story, all I wanted to do was get better. I wrote hard and fast, with little regard for the rules. I was aware I was making mistakes, but I didn't care. Damn it, I wanted to be good NOW! Get out of my way punctuation and grammar! However, deep down, I knew there was work to be done. Very. Hard. Work. Talent, in my opinion, is less about the 'genius' you think you have inside you, the gift you believe you were given, and much more about how hard you are willing to work to coax it out of you and shine a light on it. It'll be an ugly bastard at first--squinty eyes, no teeth, opaque pink skin (picture a baby rat)--but eventually you can pretty it up some and maybe even find someone who'd be happy to date it.
What I'm getting at is this: I knew that if I kept at it, if I promised myself that no matter what happened, if at the end of the day I never gave up, then inevitably I would get better. And sure enough, I did. At least I think so. The progress was slow. The results, I was certain, would never come. But bit by bit, word by word, then sentence by sentence, things started to get better and easier. I have no delusions of being a genius writer, but I do, however, think that the talent I felt simmering inside me is finally a little easier to transition from my head to the blank page. In short, it's gotten easier to say what I want to say the way I want to say it. And in writing, that's pretty darn important. It is your voice.
So, while I know 'writing advice' is an over-touched-upon subject, and one I'm not even sure I am qualified to discuss, I would still like to talk a little bit about what I picked up along the way. Bits and scraps from here and there. Things that worked for me. Some might be helpful. Some might be better suited as dog food. But if you, dear reader, should glean even the tiniest morsel of inspiration or insight from it, I will be satisfied. Think of this less as advice and more of me telling you what has worked for me. There is no one size-fits-all with writing, so read this and interpret it widely. These things are simply the things I've noticed I was doing when I felt most in control of my craft.
Let's begin.
1) Write Honestly
This is something of a staple in almost any book on writing you will ever read. My favorite, of course, is Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, and he discusses the topic the way only Stephen King can. I doubt he would claim to have invented the notion; it is simply something any writer worth his or her salt learns along the way—that the words are best and have the greatest impact when they aren't dumbed down out of fear of what people might think or who might get offended.
Many writers, I have found, are the sort who were often thought of as weird in their adolescence. Not because they were actually weird necessarily, but because they would say things with little care of what others would think of them. Little did we know we were preparing ourselves at such a young age to say what we wanted to say the way we wanted to say it.
So what exactly does 'write honestly' mean? It can mean many things to many people, but to me it means don't hold back. For example: If you want to make a character convincing, say a character who is supposed to be devious and evil (serial killers are a good blank canvas for the dark inclined mind), then I hate to tell you this but you're going to have to conjure up some dark thoughts that disturb you. And when you finally go to put them down on the page, cringing as you type the words, second guessing yourself as to whether or not it's too much and you've crossed a line, you need to know that that's when you should keep going. If you aren't feeling it as a writer when you're writing it, then you better believe the reader won't feel it when they read it. That goes for any emotion—fear, love, lust, anger, humor, sadness.
To write honestly you need to know your characters inside and out. They have to think and behave the way they were meant to, and often times the way that they want to; they can easily take on a life of their own and say things that catch you off guard. So if they decide to speak up, for the love of God do not censor them. It's an unforgivable sin, if you ask me, and you should be nibbled to death by a duck.
2) Surprise Yourself
When it comes to twists and surprises you need to avoid doing the first thing that comes to mind. You are the writer, but you are also the first reader. If you get to a point in your story where you can see the setup/opportunity for a plot-twist coming, take a break for a moment. During that break, think of the first two or three scenarios that would best fit that twist... then throw them away. If you thought of them that fast, then chances are a reader will too. Sometimes the cleverest twists are the ones that seem more obvious (sounds counterintuitive, I know), but people automatically look for the obscure when they start to realize things aren't what they seem. Hiding in plain sight isn't always bad if it suits your story. Points for clever twists are always good, but not the ultimate currency in storytelling. Stories are so much bigger than gimmicks.
In a roundabout way, I think I am trying to say to be real as often as possible. Root your lies in grains of truth to lend them believability and ground them in reality.
3) Find What Works For You and Do It
Writers are creatures of habit, if nothing else. We have our routines and our environmental requirements in order for the words to flow freely. Some writers like to drink or smoke a cigarette or wear aluminum foil on their feet. Find what works for you, your comfort zone, and stay there for the duration of your writing session, whatever it may be. Me? I need to be warm. Scratch that—I need to be blazing hot. I bundle up and turn the heat to 78 degrees. It's the only way I can relax enough to get things moving along. By the time I've managed to get down a thousand or so words, I'm usually a sweaty medium-rare and ready for consuming.
4) Write, Damn it!
This one should go without saying, yet I cannot tell you how many "writers" I have met who tell me they want to write something. It's usually at this moment that I am overtaken with ungovernable rage and want to grab them by the lapels and shake them, all the while screaming "Well then write it, damn you! Don't tell me you want to write... WRITE!!"
What I am getting at in a not-so-subtle way is that if you want to write, you need to write. Even if it is only a hundred words a day, you have to write. It is the only way to get better, and it is the only way to be a writer. Hence the old chestnut: A writer writes. It's old and it's a chestnut because it is true. I have a minimum goal of five hundred words per day, and I always hit that no matter what, even if the words are crap. If I don't, I honestly have a hard time sleeping. Writing, as with so many other hobbies, can quickly become a compulsion and an obsession that demands things from you. It is not unlike an unruly child without manners. It wants what it wants when it wants it. So feed it and you'll be happy.
5) Read Everything
That's all I have to say about that.
6) Dialogue
Dialogue can be tricky. I have always been jealous of those to whom it comes easy. My brother, for instance, can write clever and witty dialogue as if he has been doing it for his entire life. I should mention he is not a writer and the dialogue he does put down on the page is usually just part of some funny email he has decided to send me when the hours of our day jobs are ticking by slowly. But still, he is damn good at it. The trick is, I have found, to remove the boring parts (Elmore Leonard says the same about all writing, in fact). Dialogue should always move the story along or build a character's depth and reveal subtle motivations. It's a great way to show instead of tell.
If you want to try an exercise that can help you improve your skills, try this: listen to conversations on a train and transcribe them, then after you've creepily jotted down everything the couple next to has said, take out all the parts that didn't lend a person character (mannerisms and stall words etc) and take out all the stuff that didn't advance the conversation. What you are left with is the good meat.
7) Finish Something
One of the biggest confidence boosts I got when I was first beginning to write was when I finished my first story. I had a wicked habit of starting things and putting them down, never to be finished. The problem is that when you first come up with an idea to write, there is this initial euphoric blast of adrenalin and excitement. You are like a child with a new toy. But after a few thousand words the excitement wears off and you are left with a bill for the hard work required to finish it. This is where the men are separated from the boys, the women from the girls. This is where it's time to show that story who the hell's boss. So do it. Come to the page every day and finish that story. Even when it gets hard, even when the idea seems stupid at second thought, even when the characters don't resonate, finish it. I promise you when you sit there at the end of it all, finished first draft in hand, it will all be worth it. One cruddy but finished story is far better than a dozen brilliant first paragraphs. And besides, first drafts almost always stink anyway. It's okay. Rewriting and editing is an equally important craft to hone, and you will do just that, grasshopper... you will. It just takes time and practice.
For now I think I have said enough. There is more kicking around in my noggin I am sure, but much of it is probably nothing more than opinions on what you should eat for breakfast and what brand of tea to drink while writing (Earl Grey). So I shall depart posthaste, before I lose your attention, dear reader. But first I would like to thank Kathleen Valentine for the opportunity to write this piece for her blog. The advice she has given me over the past few years has been invaluable.
Thank You.
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