I’ve been wanting to dip my toe back into the blog pool for
a while now, but blogging is much like exercising: the longer you go without
doing it, the harder it is to start again.
Tidying my hard drive in anticipation of a new laptop, I was
surprised to find how many writing tips from my betters (read: just about
everyone who can spell)I have compiled over the years.
Thus was born as misguided an idea as you are likely to find
on the Internet outside of anything posted by Donald Trump. Using these tips
from famous writers as fodder, I’m going to post my own thoughts about them,
mostly how they relate to my writing, if at all. This could be an educational
exercise, in which case yay for me. It could also be a catastrophe, in which
case yay for you, as it’s always fun to watch someone else crash and burn when
it’s their own damn fault.
This is a variation of the dictum The Beloved Spouse™ taught
me years ago: eat the elephant one bite at a time. I don’t think I could have
written seventeen novels any other way.
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the
whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.
Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also
interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious
association with the material.
This may be the one tenet I observe most religiously, so
much so some first drafts look more like screenplays, as I leave notes for what
needs to be filled in so I don’t lose momentum.
Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the
nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place,
unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single
reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real
person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
This is something I learned as a musician when a performance
wasn’t going as well as I liked. I’d pick a single person in the audience,
typically in the back row, and play just for them. As a trumpeter, this made me
project, which forced me to breathe and phrase properly regardless of the
volume. It works just as well for writing, even if the single person in my
imaginary audience is me.
If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you
still think you want it — bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole
you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble
is because it didn’t belong there.
See my response to Number Two above. It’s not unheard of for
me to go back, complete the chapter, then throw it away in a later draft.
Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer
than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
Steinbeck’s version of ‘kill
your darlings.’ I cut a whole chapter from the final draft of the work in
progress, even though I really wanted it in there, so much so I made excuses to
keep it in all previous drafts. Reading through it this time, knowing it was my
last chance to make changes, forced me to realize that, while well-written and
entertaining, it did not move the story and did not tell us anything about the
characters we didn’t already know.
If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it.
Only then will it have the sound of speech.
It used to scare The Beloved Spouse™ when she’d hear me
arguing with myself behind a closed door. It probably still does – as it should
– but even she agrees it makes the books better.
I enjoyed this exercise more than I thought I would. I hope
you did, too.
