Friday, February 21, 2014

What I've learned by writing a book

Everyone wants to write a book.

In the last ten years I've met a number of people who have told me that they wanted to write a book or were going to write a book or had ideas to write a book.

Most of them have left it at that.

Usually, when it comes to writers, there are two camps: those who are writing and those who aren't (but are talking about it).

However, this year I've met a handful of people who not only talked about writing a book, but have written one, or two, or a series. . .

Some of the books are really good: good plot, good characters, good story arc, and some of them are pretty rough. In the past, publishing houses and agents have served as the gate keepers, making sure the story idea is a good one, that the grammar is correct, that character development, plot, conflict, and story arc are all up to snuff. They've also made it highly competitive and difficult to get recognized.

With e-publishing and self publishing it has become easier to publish, but with the opening of the gates it has meant that everyone who wants to publish a book CAN, whether they SHOULD or NOT. Right now the writing/publishing world seems to be in transition, where a lot of things are up for grabs. I think there will be a resettling, where other publishing companies will emerge beyond the big six, and there will once again be gate keepers, weeding out the stories that still need development.

That said, I still believe in the writing process, that there's a lot that happens in the PROCESS of writing that is hugely important. This last year, I jumped in and stopped talking about writing a book, and finally did it.

Here's what I learned by writing a 70,000 word book:
1. Eat a bite at a time.
Before, whenever I would sit down to write, the idea of a book seemed daunting. How do you write 200-300 pages, or more? I would usually get about 50 pages into a story and then lose interest, or have it stall out. The one exception was in grad school I wrote an 80 page thesis. I broke it into five sections: an intro, three chapters, and a conclusion. When I went on to teach writing to adult students I encouraged them to write a 15-25 page paper in four weeks by writing three 5-7 page papers. Each of those 5-7 page papers had four sections. "Easy, right?" I said. They agreed. After the initial shock, many of them came to me and said, "I had a hard time stopping once I got started. That really worked!"

Teaching it is one thing. Doing it is another.

When I taught freshman composition I encouraged students to write one page a day for the next year. "How many pages will you have after that?" I asked.
"Three hundred sixty-five?" someone ventured.
"Exactly. And that's about two books," I said. Immediately the lights turned on and some of them got excited. Two weeks later few of them had gotten started with the one-page-a-day challenge, but the idea still stuck.

For me, it was 1000 words. I realized I could write 1000 words a day pretty easily and it wouldn't take too much of my day. I could draft it out in an hour to an hour-and-a-half. It wasn't always pretty, but it gave me something to shoot for. Every day. Or, for variety, 6000 words a week. I didn't always hit these goals, but I learned to not beat myself up for it either. Progress was progress, whether it was 2,000 or 7,000 words a week. The point was, I was moving forward.

2. Drafts are messy.
I taught this hundreds of times, and yet I still had a hard time allowing myself the freedom to make mistakes. "No one's going to read this crap," some voice, I think on my left shoulder, would say. "You want to be a writer? So does everyone else!" another voice said. Somehow I'd get to a point where I'd sit down one day and feel like whatever I wrote was never going to be any good, especially right out of the gate. In those moments, I had to write anyway. I'd shoot for 1000 words a day or 6,000 a week. It could be the worst combination of words imaginable, but out of it I'd have something to work with. Even if it was a sentence.

It's still a learning process, and now that I'm revising there are more lessons to learn. But more on that later.
In the meantime, I'm finding that writing has become a more consistent habit, I'm enjoying it more, and am learning a lot within a community of other writers.

I hope that you are encouraged to keep writing as well.

2 comments:

Meg Brummer said...

"When I taught freshman composition I encouraged students to write one page a day for the next year. "How many pages will you have after that?" I asked.
"Three hundred sixty-five?" someone ventured."

LOVE THIS.

I've "tried writing a book" so many times and lost steam. I've heard the 1000-words-a-day thing before and tried that, but 1000 sounds like so many. One. I can do "one" of anything. So I started a folder on my computer titled "Page-a-Day" and I'm doing it!

Thanks for the idea!

Cliff said...

Meg, that's great!

I'm glad that idea has helped, and I'll look forward to reading anything you want to send :).