Category: drafts

            Whoa!  A relevant pop culture title. First one in ages!

            Okay, there’s an issue that pops up at the Coffeehouse now and then.  Someone sent me a message about it on Facebook a week or three back, too.  And it’s something I’ve kinda had in the back of my mind to mention again.

            It takes a couple different forms, but what this usually boils down to is keeping enthusiasm up for writing.  It’s always fun to start a new project, but then they almost always boil down to… well, work.  And when we think of writing, people don’t like to think about work.  They want passion and muses and wild nights of drunken creativity when the words flow at a rate of two thousand an hour or more.

            But the ugly truth is… it’s often work.  A lot of work.  Suddenly all that excitement of that first step is gone and enthusiasm begins to ebb.  We’re not exactly sure what we’re supposed to do next.  And we’re only on chapter four!

            So here are a few things I can do to make that first draft a little easier

            Writing a book is kinda like taking a trip.  It’s going to take time.  I’m going to need some skills.  I may need some supplies.  I can plan out every step of the way or I can be a little looser with it, but either way I should probably have some idea where I want to end up.

            Yeah, sure, there’s something wonderful and romantic about saying “wow, I just learned how to drive this weekend—it’s time to explore America’s highways!!”  Just jumping behind the wheel and taking off. No destination, no maps, nothing. Just me and my best woman/man/dog in the passenger seat.  We’ll figure it out as we go!
            Again… sounds wonderful and romantic, but I think we can all guess how a trip like that will really turn out.

            If I’m going to write a book, I should start off with a really rough idea of how it’s going to end.  I don’t need to stick to that ending, but it’s tough to keep moving forward when I don’t know what direction forward is.  So even just a very general endpoint—“Wakko and Dot sell their invention and get rich.”  “Yakko uses his giant Mechbot to stop the aliens”  “Phoebe’s the only one who gets out alive.”—will give me something to aim for.

            Okay, I admit… this can be a tough one.  I’m in a lucky position when it comes to writing.  It’s my full-time job, and I make a living at it.  I do it from home.  I don’t have kids.  My girlfriend’s a writer, too, so she needs her own time just as much as I need mine.  Most people aren’t in this position.

            But y’know what?  I wasn’t always, either. I had a full-time journalism job while I wrote Ex-Heroes and Ex-Patriotsand my Crusoe mash-up novel. And I haven’t always been in such writer-friendly relationships.

            Heck, I’ll be honest. There were a few romantic relationships in my past where me announcing “I want to write for a while” got a bit of a… negative reaction.  There were rolled eyes, some gentle mocking, even a bit of resentment. And being a younger man who wanted to preserve certain day-to-day aspects of these relationships… I put my writing aside. It was ultimately my choice, and that was the choice I made.  Which is why I didn’t have much writing success in my twenties—writing was a very low priority that I was willing to ignore for other things.

            There’s always going to be other things, so I need to make time for myself to write. An hour before bed,  on the train into work, or a big block on the weekend.  Just like exercise or learning the violin or finally watching Downton Abbey,  writing’s something that’s easy to put off.  It can very quickly become the thing I’ll do nextweekend.  So I need to figure out a time and try to stick to it.

            I know some folks try not to read similar things while they’re working on a project because they don’t want to be influenced.  I think sometimes this leaks out and becomes one of those telephone-game pieces of advice where new writers end up thinking they shouldn’t read anything while they’re writing.  Or watch anything. or listen to anything.  Or talk to other writers.  Or…

            We need input. That’s just common sense.  No input, no output.  I can’t expect to build a lot of muscle if I’m not eating anything.

            Also—and this is, again, just my own opinion—this kind of “starvation” approach can easily turn writing into some sort of punishment.  I’d like to hang with my girlfriend or read a comic or watch the finale of Rebels…but I didn’t write today so I get nothing!  If my method makes me hate writing… maybe I don’t have the best method.

            But again, don’t use feeding appetites as an excuse to put off writing until next weekend.  Don’t fall for the same traps twenty-something year old me did!  Learn from my mistakes!

            This is also a good time for me to toss out my usual comments about voice and spelling and drafts.  It’s important to learn and develop these things, because it’s easy to lose momentum when I end up second-guessing myself a lot.  If I stop to double-check every four-syllable word or verb tense or read each line of dialogue out loud… it’s going to be easy to lose enthusiasm.  Don’t forget that none of this matters in a first draft.  It’s definitely going to matter—just not right now.  First drafts are big, messy, gap-filled things.  They’re not the point where I should be worried about little stuff. For now, just plow ahead. I’ll get to deal with all that stuff soon enough.

            I know this sounds like crap advice, but sometimes the way to keep writing is just, well… to keep writing.  At the end of the day, sometimes that’s what it comes down to.  I can keep making excuses, let myself get distracted, promise myself to do it later.  Or I can just do it.

            Or maybe ask myself why I keep not doing it.

            So there you go. A few easy ways to keep yourself on track. If you’ve got a favorite of your own, feel free to add it below.

            Anyway… hopefully, next week’s rant will be better than this one.

            Until then, go write.

            Hey, y’know what I realized over the weekend?  It’s NaNoWriMo!  Who’s trying it this year?

            I’ll be honest. I’ve never tried it myself.  By the time I first heard of it, as it was just starting to gain popularity, I’d already been writing professionally for a year or two.  Might’ve even already been writing full time (non-fiction, but still).  For the past eleven years… well, every month’s been about word count for me.

            That doesn’t mean I don’t have some ideas and thoughts on NaNoWriMo.  In fact, a lot.  At this early point in the month, I have one very firm reassurance, and one solid tip.

            Which I shall share with you now.

            First piece of reassurance.  No matter who you are, I can tell you with absolute certainty, you are not going to sell the manuscript you write this month.  No agent will consider it.  No editor will look at it.  It’s just not going to happen.

            I’m not saying nobody will ever buy this book.  But what we’re doing during this month is a first draft.  A rushed first draft at that.  It’s going to have plot holes and factual errors and typos.  It will, trust me.  It’s a fantastic starting point, but it’s going to need more work after November 30th. No question about it.

            Again, this is a good thing.  Stop worrying about if an agent or editor or your significant other is going to like this. They’re never going to see it.  This draft is for you and you alone. Be selfish.  Go crazy.  This is the “dance like nobody’s watching” part of the process.  Let your creativity run wild, eat nothing but chips, drink nothing but whiskey, run naked in the coffeeshop, and don’t worry about anyone else and what they may think.  They can see the second or third draft, maybe, but not this one. Do what you want to do with it.  Do anything.  Because this is just the first draft.

            Okay, don’t actually run naked in the coffeeshop.  Yeah, I know they smile at you a lot there, but they’re paid to be nice to you.  They don’t want to see that. Especially not in a place that sells food.

            Second thing—the solid tip.

            Write.

            That’s it. Just write.

            I know that sounds kind of flip and arrogant, but stop and think for a moment.  Like we just said, this draft isn’t for anyone else.  We’re not going to worry about spelling, research, current hot genres, book advances, any of that. All that matters for this month is getting words on the page.

            Sooooo… get the words on the page.

            In my first drafts, I change character names halfway through.  I snip off plot threads and remind myself to pull them out later. I snip off some characters halfway through, and then jump to the alternate timeline version of the book where I killed them sixty pages ago (like I now know I should’ve done in the first place).  And I can do all this because this is going to get another draft.

            For now, the most important thing is to just write.  Put words on paper or on the screen or on your arm or your friend’s shirt or whatever medium you’ve decided to work in. Stop trying to filter or rein in your creativity and get it all out.

            So for now…

            Go write.

            Okay, so…

            One of the marketing folks at Crown, Roxanne,  just set up a sweepstakes for my new book, Paradox Bound  (out in hardcover just four weeks from today).  I happen to think it’s a pretty cool book, and it’s gotten starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, sooooo…  Who knows.

            Anyway, go over to the PRH website before Thursday, August 31st and enter your info and you’re now in the hat to be selected for one of a hundred bound galleys of Paradox Bound.  Totally free.  No surveys or mailing lists. Unless you want to be on the mailing list.  There’s a tab for that.

            Now, what does this mean for you, occasional browser of the ranty blog?

            Well, you may remember we did something similar about two years ago with The Fold.  This is a chance to see an earlier draft (the first layout, essentially) and the final draft side by side.  You can read the book, then go through the earlier version and find all the places my editor and I changed things.   Every tweak and adjustment as we prepared the book to go to the printer.  And there’s a fair amount of them, so it’s a worthwhile exercise. And all it costs you is…

            Well, nothing.

            Just go sign up before Thursday.  Granted, there’s only a hundred copies to be won, yeah.  But let’s be realistic—I’m not J. K. Rowling.  I can’t picture your odds getting any lower that a 1 in 3 chance of winning. Really, I’ll be thrilled if it reaches a  50-50 situation.

            Also worth mentioning that I’ll be doing a ton of signings that release week.  Borderlands in San Francisco, Books Inc. in Mountain View, Pages in Manhattan Beach, Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego.  Please preorder a hardcover from them and then come by so I can scribble in it for you.

            Go sign up!

            Running a little late today, but still here. Thanks for waiting.

            So, our title this week is one of those not-so-clever aphorisms that folks usually  have to work through for a minute or two.  I only mention it here because Shane Black used it in Iron Man 3… with the whole joke being that Tony Stark (cuffed to a bed frame at the time) didn’t get it.

            In the interest of moving things along, the second mouse gets the cheese because the firstmouse set off the trap… and got killed.  Now the trap’s harmless.

            See what I mean.  Obvious in retrospect, not so much when you first see it.

            That’s what I wanted to blab on about.  The traps that seem like good ideas at the time, for one reason or another, but later it’s clear they were the wrong choice. 

            Lots of aspiring writers fall into traps.  Sometimes it happens when they follow bad advice.  Other times it’s because they insist on using a method or writing in a style which really doesn’t work for them.  And sometimes… sometimes that trap’s just sitting there in the tall grass, waiting to snap shut on someone’s leg.

            We all want to think the traps are clear and easy to spot. But we’re all going to fall into a couple of them. That’s just life out here in the writing jungle.  The trick’s to get out as quick as possible.  Some folks, y’know,  get caught in a trap and then try to convince themselves they wanted to be at the bottom of a hole with two wooden stakes rammed through their legs.  Hell, everyone should be in a pit with two wooden stakes through their legs.  It’s really the best position to be in.

            None of us want to be that guy.  Or to listen to that guy. Right?

            So, with all that said, let me toss out some common—and maybe even dangerous—misconceptions people have about writing.

            Writing is easy –  Probably the most common misconception there is.  I mean, most of us learned how to put words on paper when we were ten, right?  We could write passable essays by ninth grade.  So writing for a living, for an audience greater than your immediate friends and loved ones, how hard could it be?  Anyone can do it once you’ve got a clever idea.  Heck, I’d bet 90% of Americans have immediate access to a word processor of some sort.

            Truth is, writing—not basic, grade-school literacy, mind you, but the ability to write— is a skill which needs to be learned like any other.  All you need is to browse Twitter, Facebook, or the comment sections of any news feed to learn how few people can express their ideas through words.  Yeah, I took English and reading classes in school. But most of us went through twelve years of gym class, too, and we all understand that doesn’t qualify us to be in the Super Bowl.

            Writers need to train and practice for months–maybe even years–before they’re ready to show off their writing.  I don’t have hard numbers in front of me, but I feel safe saying Stephen King didn’t make much off the first 100,000 words he wrote.  It’s work.  Hard work.  It requires skill, a great deal of practice, some actual talent, and a heck of a lot of dedication.  That’s why so many people don’t succeed at it.

            This is probably the most successful trap because it doesn’t just catch the writer–it tends to kill them 2/3 of the time.  Most of the folks who believe that writing is easy have never actually written anything.  They also tend to come up with a lot of reasons (unrelated, of course) for why they never complete a manuscript.

            First person is easy –  A lot of prose writers start off with first person stories. It’s quick, it’s not hard to get into, it’s easy to find a voice.  It’s also very personable, so a reader can relate to my characters immediately.  Plus there are tons of formats ready and waiting; journals, diaries, letter, memoirs, and so on.  My first two published short stories were both first person.

            Truth is, though,first person is a very difficult, very limiting viewpoint to write in.  There’s a reason lots of professional writers avoid it.  It takes a lot of experience and planning to pull off a successful first person manuscript.
            Writers who get caught in this trap start their first novel and pound out 20,000 words worth of journal entries over one weekend.  There’s always that chance they may be brimming with so much raw talent they’re the next Hemingway or Steinbeck.  Alas, there’s a far better chance, they’ve just wasted a long weekend.

            Writing doesn’t require any writing –  I think we’ve all heard or seen that person who talks about their brilliant story ideas, and usually follows it up with—“Well, I’ll write it out when someone’s willing to pay me.”

            This mindset is a remnant of the huge spec script boom in Hollywood a few decades back.  It was one of those rare periods when studios acknowledged the importance of writers and were paying millions for screenplays—or even just the idea for one.  And that frenzy sold some books, too

            However… this was almost thirty years ago. These days producers and publishers are much more cautious and they’re not interested in ideas.  They’re interested in complete, finished works.  Not two-thirds of a manuscript.  Not most of a script. 

            Want easy proof of this?  What do you think will happen if I self-published my idea?  Not a complete manuscript, just my one-page, cool idea?  How far do you think that’ll take me? 

            If not having a manuscript doesn’t work for self-publishing, it’s sure not going to fly in traditional publishing.

            Just to save time, knowing the right people won’t change this.  No, it won’t.  I don’t care what that website said.  As a first-timer, I’m an unknown quantity.  Who spends money on unknowns?

            Not to sound too harsh but… well, no, this is harsh because people can only end up in this trap by choice.  If someone can’t write and complete something, they can’t be a writer.  That’s really all there is to it.  I should stop now and go back to those criminal justice classes I thought about signing up for.

            Writers don’t need to read – Somewhere along the line, some numbskull started pushing the idea that writers shouldn’t waste time reading—they should spend all their time writing.  This is kind of like saying drivers shouldn’t waste their time stopping for gas. 

            Every professional writer I’ve ever met, interviewed, or even just read about (myself included) reads voraciously.  A writer should be devouring works in their chosen field to stay current and snacking heavily on everything else to stay fresh.

            Alas, the folks who fall into this trap tend to write plain awful stuff.  Not from any inherent lack of talent—they just have no clue what’s been done.  They go for every easy idea, hit every cliché plot point, and tend to follow the textbook formulas they were taught in some creative writing class somewhere.  What else can they do?  They’ve had no other input.  They end up trying to mimic one or two famous examples of what they aspire to… and usually end up looking just like the worst of the worst.

            Research everything – This one’s  more insidious than deadly, which is why I saved it for near the end.  We all want to get the facts right in our stories.  We check books, make phone calls, visit locations… okay, yeah, and maybe some of us just spend a lot of time on Wikipedia.  Point is, how can I be expected to move forward with my story if I don’t know the exact month they started laying railroad track in Independence, Missouri?  It’ll ruin everything if I say June and it turns out to be July.

            This is an awful trap because getting stuck in it means I’m trying to do the right thing.  Research is important, but I can’t ever forget that research isn’t writing.  There’s a time for putting noses in books but there’s also a time for putting fingers to keyboard (or pen to paper if you’re old-fashioned).         

            Some folks get caught in an even deeper layer of this trap.  They get stuck researching how to write.  We’ve all known someone like this, yes?  The one who buys books, takes classes, studies YouTube tutorials… but never does any actual writing. 

            For some people this becomes a defense mechanism of sorts, sometimes subconsciously and sometimes… not so subconsciously.  If I never start, I won’t have to put the work in, and my work stays in that wonderful hypothetical stage where it’ll be the greatest thing ever committed to paper… if only I had time to write it down.

            Rewrite until it’s perfect– The last and deadliest of the traps in our showroom.  For some folks, rewriting turns into an endless loop.  There’s always another opinion to listen to, more feedback to get, and revisions which need to be done because of them.  Just thought of a new way to do those action scenes?  That calls for another draft.  Maybe last night’s Agents of SHIELDinspired a new opening?  Perhaps my old college beau is visiting and s/he thought the ending needed a touch more romance, and any decent writer knows changing the end means changing everything that leads up to the end.

            There are two ways people fall into this trap.  One is a combination of bad advice and bad judgment.  So many gurus tell people to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite.  How many times have you heard “writing is rewriting” parroted in classes or on message boards?  There’s some truth to that, yeah, but eventually, a writer just needs to call it done and move on or they’re going to be trapped in one manuscript forever.

            The other way people fall into this trap is on purpose.  A bit like with research, constant rewrites are an excuse not to actually produce anything.  You don’t expect me to show you an incomplete or old draft, do you?  I was going to send it to some agents or publishers, but I think it needs one more polish to make it perfect.  Maybe one more after I go through and clean up a few loose threads.  Rewrites are a way some writers–again, consciously or not– can avoid possible failure yet still keep up the illusion of forward motion.

            Are all of these traps deadly?  No, but getting snagged in one can definitely cost me some time.  Yeah, I’ve fallen into one or three of them over the years.  Fortunately, one of those things only has to slam on your ankle once and you’ll rarely let it happen again.

            Assuming, of course, that I get out of it the first time.

            Next time, I’d like to talk with you real quick about my buddy Marc, who I was stationed with in Kuwait six years ago…

            Until then, go write. 

            And watch your step.