I haven't written that much for the last month. Partly this is due to feeling down and discouraged after a certain (nameless) publisher mucked me around for two years promising publication after I came second in one of their competitions and then dropped me. Not straightaway, I hasten to add but after a bit of discussion over their contract, which I considered normal procedure and they considered 'angst'. The main problem being that they didn't want me to negotiate any of the contract just sign it at once without argument. Needless to say it went primarily in their favour. So I haven't found it in myself to write a lot for that reason.
The other problem the writer has to face is time wasters. Social media is a prime culprit here but also are the so called computer supporters or back-up help. How many times have you been kept hanging on the phone for hours after just requiring minimal help? I have wasted most of my day this way today. Ringing up just to gain access to my blog and recover my password, finding myself on a technical support line and two hours later... plus a lighter wallet! I think such organisations prey on the less technically minded writer and are maybe bored and need a little diversion. Frustrating or what? Well, I suppose I can at last post this blog but it has been a costly one.
The most important thing to remember is Stephen King's advice on writing in 22 points. Wish I'd bought his book when I last saw it, I will now. Only bit of advice I disagree with is writing for oneself. I write for my God and my audience. But thanks, Stephen. Hope this isn't plagiarism but the website link has disappeared!
1. Stop watching
television. Instead, read as much as possible.
If you're just starting out as a writer, your
television should be the first thing to go. It's "poisonous to
creativity," he says. Writers need to look into themselves and turn
toward the life of the imagination.
To do so, they should read as much as they can.
King takes a book with him everywhere he goes, and even reads during
meals. "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all
others: read a lot and write a lot," he says. Read widely, and
constantly work to refine and redefine your own work as you do so.
2. Prepare for
more failure and criticism than you think you can deal with.
King compares writing fiction to crossing the
Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub, because in both, "there's plenty of
opportunity for self-doubt." Not only will you doubt yourself, but other
people will doubt you, too. "If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or
sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's
all," writes King.
Often times, you have to continue writing even when
you don't feel like it. "Stopping a piece of work just because it's hard,
either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea," he writes. And when
you fail, King suggests that you remain positive. "Optimism is a perfectly
legitimate response to failure."
3. Don't waste
time trying to please people.
According to King, rudeness should be the least of
your concerns. "If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days
as a member of polite society are numbered anyway," he writes. King used
to be ashamed of what he wrote, especially after receiving angry letters
accusing him of being bigoted, homophobic, murderous, and even
psychopathic.
By the age of 40, he realized that
every decent writer has been accused of being a waste of talent. King has
definitely come to terms with it. He writes, "If you disapprove, I can
only shrug my shoulders. It's what I have." You can't please all of your
readers all the time, so King advises that you stop worrying.
4. Write primarily
for yourself.
You should write because it brings you happiness
and fulfillment. As King says, "I did it for the pure joy of the thing.
And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever."
5. Tackle the
things that are hardest to write.
"The most important things are the hardest
things to say," writes King. "They are the things you get ashamed of
because words diminish your feelings." Most great pieces of writing are
preceded with hours of thought. In King's mind, "Writing is refined
thinking."
When tackling difficult issues, make sure you dig
deeply. King says, "Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground
... Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world."
Writers should be like archaeologists, excavating for as much of the story as
they can find.
6. When writing,
disconnect from the rest of the world.
Writing should be a fully intimate
activity. Put your desk in the corner of the room, and eliminate all
possible distractions, from phones to open windows. King advises, "Write
with the door closed; rewrite with the door open."
You should maintain total privacy between you and
your work. Writing a first draft is "completely raw, the sort of thing I
feel free to do with the door shut — it's the story undressed, standing up in
nothing but its socks and undershorts."
7. Don't be
pretentious.
"One of the really bad things you can do to
your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because
you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones," says King. He
compares this mistake to dressing up a household pet in evening clothes — both
the pet and the owner are embarrassed, because it's completely excessive.
8. Avoid adverbs
and long paragraphs.
As King emphasizes several times in his memoir,
"the adverb is not your friend." In fact, he believes that "the
road to hell is paved with adverbs" and compares them to dandelions that
ruin your lawn. Adverbs are worst after "he said" and "she
said" — those phrases are best left unadorned.
You should also pay attention to your paragraphs,
so that they flow with the turns and rhythms of your story. "Paragraphs
are almost always as important for how they look as for what they say,"
says King.
9. Don't get
overly caught up in grammar.
According to King, writing is primarily about
seduction, not precision. "Language does not always have to wear a tie and
lace-up shoes," writes King. "The object of fiction isn't grammatical
correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story." You
should strive to make the reader forget that he or she is reading a story at
all.
10. Master the art
of description.
"Description begins in the writer's
imagination, but should finish in the reader's," writes King. The
important part isn't writing enough, but limiting how much you
say. Visualize what you want your reader to experience, and then translate
what you see in your mind into words on the page. You need to describe things
"in a way that will cause your reader to prickle with recognition,"
he says.
The key to good description is clarity, both in
observation and in writing. Use fresh images and simple vocabulary to avoid
exhausting your reader. "In many cases when a reader puts a story aside
because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted
with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep
the ball rolling," notes King.
11. Don't give too
much background information.
"What you need to remember is that there's a
difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the
story," writes King. "The latter is good. The former is not."
Make sure you only include details that move your story forward and that
persuade your reader to continue reading.
If you need to do research, make sure it doesn't
overshadow the story. Research belongs "as far in the background and the
back story as you can get it," says King. You may be entranced by what
you're learning, but your readers are going to care a lot more about your
characters and your story.
12. Tell stories
about what people actually do.
"Bad writing is more than a matter of shit
syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn
refusal to tell stories about what people actually do — to face the fact, let
us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street," writes
King. The people in your stories are what readers care about the most, so make
sure you acknowledge all the dimensions your characters may have.
13. Take risks;
don't play it safe.
First and foremost, stop using the passive voice.
It's the biggest indicator of fear. "I'm convinced that fear is at the
root of most bad writing," King says. Writers should throw back their
shoulders, stick out their chins, and put their writing in charge.
14. Realize that
you don't need drugs to be a good writer.
"The idea that the creative endeavor and
mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual
myths of our time," says King. In his eyes, substance-abusing writers are
just substance-abusers.
15. Don't try to
steal someone else's voice.
As King says, "You can't aim a book like a
cruise missile." When you try to mimic another writer's style for any
reason other than practice, you'll produce nothing but "pale
imitations." This is because you can never try to replicate the way
someone feels and experiences truth, especially not through a surface-level
glance at vocabulary and plot.
16. Understand
that writing is a form of telepathy.
"All the arts depend upon telepathy to some
degree, but I believe that writing is the purest distillation," says King.
An important element of writing is transference. Your job isn't to write words
on the page, but rather to transfer the ideas inside your head into the heads
of your readers.
"Words are just the medium through which the
transfer happens," says King.
17. Take your
writing seriously.
"You can approach the act of writing with
nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair," says King. "Come
to it any way but lightly." If you don't want to take your writing
seriously, he suggests that you close the book and do something else.
18. Write every
single day.
"Once I start work on a project, I don't stop,
and I don't slow down unless I absolutely have to," says King. "If I
don't write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind ... I begin
to lose my hold on the story's plot and pace."
If you fail to write consistently, the excitement
for your idea may begin to fade. When the work starts to feel like work, King
describes the moment as "the smooch of death." His best advice
is to just take it "one word at a time."
19. Finish
your first draft in three months.
King likes to write 10 pages a day. Over a
three-month span, that amounts to around 180,000 words. "The first draft
of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months, the length
of a season," he says. If you spend too long on your piece, King believes
the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel.
20. When you're
finished writing, take a long step back.
King suggests six weeks of "recuperation
time" after you're done writing, so you can have a clear mind to spot any
glaring holes in the plot or character development. He asserts that a writer's
original perception of a character could be just as faulty as the reader's.
King compares the writing and revision process to
nature. "When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and
identifying the trees," he writes. "When you're done, you have to
step back and look at the forest." When you do find your mistakes, he
says that "you are forbidden to feel depressed about them or to beat up on
yourself. Screw-ups happen to the best of us."
21. Have the guts
to cut.
When revising, writers often have a difficult time
letting go of words they spent so much time writing. But, as King advises,
"Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your
egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings."
Although revision is one of the most difficult
parts of writing, you need to leave out the boring parts in order to move the
story along.
22. Stay married,
be healthy, and live a good life.
King attributes his success to two things: his
physical health and his marriage. "The combination of a healthy body and a
stable relationship with a self-reliant woman who takes zero shit from me or
anyone else has made the continuity of my working life possible," he
writes.
It's important to have a strong balance in your
life, so writing doesn't consume all of it.