Category: golden rule

            2014!  Welcome to the world of tomorrow!  Just with no flying cars.  Or jetpacks.  And far less moonbases than Space: 1999, Inherit the Stars, or 2001: A Space Odyssey led us to expect.

            Wow.  We’re only two days in and 2014 is kind of a letdown so far.

            Anyway, as I often do at the start of the year, I’d like to take a minute or three to talk about this page and the kind of stuff I babble on about.  And touch on a few of the things I don’t.

            And to do this, I’m going to dip my toe into a potentially controversial subject.  So hopefully I won’t offend anyone too much

            Maybe it’s just the circles I travel in, but I tend to see a lot of “after the fact” material.  It’s on pages I get links to or I get spammed with messages about it.  People with blogs about how to self-publish and why traditional publishers are dinosaurs.  About how to get past those evil “gatekeepers” and why they’re pointless.  Which ebook platform is best.  How to format for said platform.  Where to find a good agent. Where to find a good artist for my cover.  How to network.  Good places for self-promotion.  How much I should self-promote.  How much I should pay for that promotion.

            The reason I call this “after the fact” material is because it skips a major step.  Every one of those issues is about getting my book in front of readers.  None of it addresses the important question…

            Shouldmy book be in front of readers?

            Is my book ready to be published, by me or anyone else?  Does it deserve to make it past those gatekeepers?  Do I have something worth promoting?

            And that’s what I don’t see a lot of out there—help to get past that first step.  Because the best chef in the world can’t do anything with no tools and an empty kitchen.  If I don’t have a full, polished manuscript, all those other tips are kind of useless.

            This is why, in my opinion, self-publishing still has—and probably always will have—a stigma hanging over it.  There are some absolutely phenomenal self published books out there, and some authors who are making great money as self-publishers.  But the ugly truth is that, statistically, most self-published material is bad.  Now that it’s so easy and cheap to self-publish, I’d even say that these days the vast majority of self-published stuff is awful.  There’s a lot more good stuff than a decade ago, absolutely, but by the same token  there’s tons and tons more bad stuff.

            So, that’s what I want to do here.  I try to help with that first step. Every week I toss out some advice, tips, and observations on how to improve a manuscript and turn it into something people want to buy and read.  Things I was told or stumbled across (or learned the hard way) in the thirty or so years that I’ve been stringing words together.

            Now, the two main things you’ll find here is advice on writing and ruleson writing.  Yes, there are rules.  No, I don’t care what he said.  No, I don’t care what she said either.  There are rules that have to be followed.  Bear with me.

            Adviceis optional.  When to write.  Where to write.  What to write.  How to develop characters.  How to edit.  How many drafts I need to go through.  What kind of structure a particular story should have.  What point of view to use.  I’d say the ranty blog is about 60-65% advice.

            This is the kind of stuff that’s going to be individual to each writer.  I like to write in the afternoon, but you might be more productive in the morning, and she’s more productive after midnight.  I tend to plan a rough outline in my head, but you might need three really detailed pages before you begin, and he might be fine with a dozen notecards taped to the wall.  I might need music to write but you need absolute silence and she can’t write unless she’s outside and wearing a Ren Faire outfit.  The thing about advice is that it’s rarely wrong, it just might not be advice that works for me or you.  That’s one of the main tenets here, my golden rule.

            It drives me nuts when I come across someone insisting advice must be strictly followed.  I think a lot of would-be writers get messed up by this, and these are the folks who end up staring at a blank page every morning in a silent room, wondering why they can’t write the opening of the goth-witch-lit novel they have no interest in but were told is going to be the new big thing.  They often get stuck wearing an itchy corset, too.

            Y’see, Timmy, rules are the real non-optional stuff.  Spelling.  Grammar.  Structure (you have to have some kind of it).  Likable characters (not necessarily good characters, but someone my readers won’t mind following) with believable arcs.  Flow.  Coherency.  This page is maybe 35-40% rules, at any given time.

            Most of us had at least five or six teachers during our lives who tried to teach us the rules of writing—the basic mechanics of how words go together to express ideas.  If I want to make a living at this, I need to know those mechanics.  If I don’t know how to spell, if I don’t understand structure, if commas and apostrophes are baffling to me, if I can’t sense how my readers will react to something… well, it’s going to be very hard for me to have any success as a writer.

            The flipside of what I mentioned above, it’s also very damaging when some folks try to insist that rules are just loose guidelines, that it doesn’t matter if I follow them or not.  I think a lot of that comes out of folks who see the rules broken by an experienced professional and assume they can be ignored from the start.  They point to the exception and use that as their reason to not learn the rules.  This kind of deliberate ignorance leads to poor writing and bad habits, and it means a lot of potentially good writers never improve. 

            Y’see, Timmy, if I don’t understand the rules, I’m not going to know how to break them.  A good writer can break some of the rules, but it’s like playing Jenga.  I can’t pull out all the blocks holding up the stack, and if I’m going to pull out this one I need to make sure that one is rock-solid.  If I don’t understand the basic rules of how the tower stands, I’m going to bring it crashing down on my second turn.  Maybe even my first.

            Actually, that’s an even better analogy.  Breaking rules is like demolishing buildings.  It looks simple, but the folks who do it actually need to know more than the people who built it.  They need to understand which walls are load bearing and which beams are supporting, but they also need to know how the material’s going to break or crumble or shatter and how much explosive is needed for each result without there being so much that the building collapses out rather than in.

            Because it might look really cool and fun when the building collapses out across the city, but it doesn’t get a lot of repeat customers.

            What else, what else, what else…

            Do I repeat myself here?  Well… yeah.  Especially if you’ve been following along for two or three years.  I try to come up with new ways to approach the same problem.  Sometimes I’ll hear something new and clever that I’ll try to share, or maybe even expand on.  At the end of the day, though, this page is more like a mid-level class on writing.  You can take the same class twice and get more out of it, but by the third of fourth time there’s a serious case of diminishing returns.  I’m not saying any of you long-time followers should leave, but don’t be too surprised if I end up talking about dialogue or character voices or something like that.

            Speaking of which, next time I wanted to talk about dialogue and character voices.

            Until then, go write.

            Actually, those are pretty good excuses.

            So, while I finish getting caught up, Thom Brannan has offered to step in with a post about scheduling your writing time.

            (maybe I should’ve read this two weeks ago…)

* * *

            Hello is all right.

            I know, I know. You came here to glean some of Peter Clines’ wisdom, and what the hell is this? Right? I’ll do my best to keep your disappointment to a minimum.

            My name is Thom Brannan, and some of you know me from Cthulhu Unbound, some from Survivors, some from Pavlov’s Dogs, and some from filing restraining orders. Some of you don’t know me from Adam. This should help.

            I’m here in Pete’s blog to help you with your writing. I’m not a guru, and if you’ve read my work, you’d probably agree. I’m probably only a notch above “adequate.” But one thing I do well is produce. I am a productive individual for someone who does not write for a living. And the reason for this is scheduling. So, I’m here to talk about scheduling and its importance for writers (and for any other creative endeavor, really) in my experience.

            (It should be worthwhile to note, for the rest of this blog entry, whenever I say “it’s this way,” or “this is what works,” I’m speaking of what I’ve experienced for myself and through others. I have no guru hat.)

            The first thing to realize is we are creatures of habit, all of us. Good habits, bad habits, everything in-between. It’s hard to break habits, so rather than suggesting you alter something about yourself that may require the assistance of a psychiatrist, let’s talk instead about forming good habits, which will hopefully be just as hard to break.

            Pete has hammered home the point: to be a writer, you must write.  I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve found that doing it at the same time every day helps the process. Your body and mind know when it’s time to do something. There are things you do so often and so insistently that you feel off if you’re not doing them. Liken the creative process to a workout, and you’ll see what I mean.

            These things are part of your daily routine, and if you are fortunate to be able to carve out a niche in your day for writing, you should definitely do so. Allow me to share with you my experience.

           After finishing work on Survivors, I had the opportunity to write a novel for the same audience. I leapt at the chance, and after wrestling with several ideas (and gathering input from friends) I chose one and got started.

            I’d written before, but always for myself, or to have a Cthulhu Mythos story in my back pocket for whenever an anthology opened, or what have you. I had never written with a deadline before. Now, I know myself pretty well, and I know this is how I am: if you give me a deadline, that’s when I’ll turn it in. If you wanted it earlier, you’d have made the deadline earlier. Right? Right. That’s kind of crappy, and I want to change that.

            So, to that end, I tried something new and scheduled myself some writing time. And, to keep myself honest, I tracked my daily and weekly progress in an Excel file. The first week, I averaged about twelve hundred pages a day, say five pages in standard manuscript format.  That seemed pretty good to me, and in keeping with Robert B. Parker’s self-enforced rule.

            My second week of writing at the same time every day yielded slightly better results: eight pages a day. By week three, I was up to thirteen pages a day. By the last week of working on the novel, I was churning out eighteen pages a day.

            I leaned to take the weekends off, which allowed the grey matter to decompress, and it kept me from burning out. I also only do this four weeks at a time, with four weeks off in between.  

            To date, when working on a solo project, I write an average of twelve SMF pages a day. Slightly less when collaborating, but that’s to be expected. Compared to a powerhouse wordfount like Eric S. Brown, it’s not very much. But if I compare it to my previous output of one or two pages a week, it’s a vast improvement.

           I’ve also found that if I sit and play my guitar for five or ten minutes before writing, that primes the pump, so to speak. But that’s me. Everyone has something different to get them started when it comes to write. I’ve read that Hemingway would leave off in the middle of a sentence. The proprietor of this very blog makes sure he has something left over from today’s writing time so he can write tomorrow.

            So, there you have it. My 2¢ on scheduling. If I’m back at some point, I’ll likely blather on about collaborating.

            Until then… well, you know what Pete says here.

            As I often do at the start of the year, I wanted to blab on for a minute or three about what I try to accomplish with this little collection of rants and ravings.  And I think one of the best ways to accomplish that is to start off by mentioning a few things I won’t be doing here.

            First and foremost, this page isn’t about “when you’re done.”  I’m always coming across blogs and message boards where people want to know what to do with their finished manuscript.  How do I get an agent?  How do I promote myself?  How do I get an “in” with a publisher?  Should I self-publish?  How do I get blurbs?

            None of that here.

            Speaking of which, I also don’t use this page for self-promotion.  I may mention stuff that’s new or noteworthy, but that’s about it.  No sales or contests or interviews (not with me, anyway).  There’s some Amazon links on the side, yeah, but those are almost more for credentials purposes than sales.

            (Although if you want to buy them, I’ll never object to that…)

            Not to sound harsh, but this page also isn’t for inspirational ideas, mindless encouragement, or a joyous celebration of art.  I’m not really big on the special snowflake, “we can all succeed” mindset.  To be honest, I think it’s one of the most damaging things out there on the internet.  I’m also not a fan of those folks who see writing as some wild, bohemian expression of art where there are no wrong answers or directions.  They’re not far behind the special snowflake people.  If that’s the kind of “advice” you’re looking for… wow, this is so not the place you want to be.

            So, with all that out of the way… what is this place supposed to be about?

            Well, it struck me many years back that there aren’t many places online to find actual help with writing.  Not useful help, anyway.  Yeah, all that other stuff is important, but the writing is the big thing.  Nothing else matters if my writing is sub-par.  I can do tons of research on surfboards, wetsuits, skegs, surf wax, wave formation, and all that.  Thing is, if I don’t take the first step of leaving Nebraska, that’s all pointless information.  If I don’t have a decent book or script, it doesn’t matter how much work I put into self-promotion.

            I look around and I see a lot of folks making mistakes.  Sometimes it’s from inexperience.  Sometimes it’s from following bad advice.  And a few times… okay, sometimes I have no clue where people are getting their information from.  None whatsoever.

            I also see some would-be gurus offering hard-fast “rules” for writing.  Your characters must do this.  This element of your plot must unfold by this page.  And it gnaws at me because they’re just plain wrong.  There are a lot of rules in writing, but it’s not all rules.  If it was,  writing would just be mechanical fill-in-the blanks (granted, it seems like it is for some people).  One of the biggest things to realize is which rules can and can’t be ignored.  It’s finding the methods and styles that work for you within the frameworks that work for everyone else.

            That’s what this is all about.  Taking that idea in your head and fleshing it out and turning it into a few dozen or a few hundred coherent pages.  Hopefully pages other people will want to read all on their own without you begging or pleading or tricking them into it.

            Heck, maybe they’ll even pay you for those pages.

           So sometimes I point out the places where you really have to do this, but also the places where it’s entirely up to you.  Every now and then I’ll talk about a  recurring mistake I see a lot.  And most of the time I’ll just toss out a few ideas on how to work with (or work around) different issues that can come up when writing a short story or novel or screenplay.  Issues like spelling or structure or dialogue or characters or action or point of view or… well, there are a lot of them.

            Anyway, what makes me qualified to say these things and toss out these tips?

            Well, I’ve been trying to do this for over thirty years now.  I was stabbing at the keys on my mom’s old Smith-Corona before most of you ever considered writing as anything more than homework.  I tried to write my first book in third grade, then another one in seventh grade, plus two while I was in high school.  I spent years poring over different writing magazines and journals, pulling out every tip and hint and suggestion I could, and then trying all of them out (even the contradictory ones).  I took writing classes in high school and college.  I joined writing groups.  I made two attempts at the college novel, then the after-college novel, and then the “moved to California” novel.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say I probably submitted more manuscripts with paper and postage than at least half of you have done through the miracle space-age technology of email.

            And it all led somewhere.  I received personal rejection letters from editors at magazines and comic books encouraging me to try again.  One of my college writing professors, the multi-award winning novelist John Edgar Wideman, told me with absolute certainty that I was going to make it as a writer.  The first script I wrote got me a meeting with Ron Moore (of Deep Space Nine and later Battlestar Galactica).  Agents asked to look at my manuscripts.

            More to the point, people eventually started to pay me for my writing.  It’s not the only yardstick for success, granted, but I think we can all agree it’s the one that’s universally accepted and pretty much always has been.  My ability to write got me a job as an entertainment journalist.  I sold short stories to journals and anthologies.  I’ve sold half a dozen books to Permuted Press, and later to Crown Publishing, a division of Random House—and some of those books have sold very, very well and received a lot of praise (okay, so there’s a little self-promotion).  Amazon Studios hired me to develop a screenplay idea for them and write up a treatment.  For the past six years, I’ve supported myself by stringing words together in a way that pleased people enough that they paid me to keep doing it.

            So… that’s what I’m bringing to the table.

            If you’re interested, stick around.  Next time I want to talk a bit about the BFG-9000 plasma rifle in the forty-watt range and other firearms.

            Until then… go write.

            First off, many thanks to all of you for your patience.  The new book’s been especially troublesome and I’ve been banging my head against it for a few weeks.  Plus there’s a bunch of other stuff going on that’s been taking away valuable pontification time…

            Anyway, I hope you found some of the screenwriting interviews mildly interesting.  Just as a warning, there may be one or two in the near future.  But, for the next few weeks, I’m back with actual posts.

            So, what am I talking about with that amazing, pop-culture title?

            Well…

            Tony Faville is one of those guys you read about in books.  He’s just had way too interesting a life to be a real person.  He signed up with the Navy and went into the medical corps.  He became a combat doctor and was assigned to the Marines, where he was on the ground for the first Iraq War (the one started by the smarter Bush).  When he got out of the Navy, Tony decided to become a chef and ended up working for several restaurants.  And after years of doing that, he decided to start writing novels and produced fun stuff like Kings of the Dead and the Avery Nolan supernatural detective series.

            Like I said, way too interesting to be real.

            A few months back I was at a convention with Tony (we’ve got the same publisher) and overheard him making a wonderful analogy.  Someone was asking about how to do something, and—as I’ve done a few times–Tony related being a writer to being a chef.  As he explained it, there was one question he’d get all the time from people as they started working with him.

            “Chef, what’s the best knife for me to buy?”

            I’m now going to paraphrase Tony’s answer.   

            Start with the cheapest knife you can find and work with it for a while.  See how it fits in your hand, how it feels when you cut different things.  If it’s not comfortable, toss it and move up to the next knife. 

            At the end of the day, no matter who makes it, no matter how much it costs, there is no right knife.  There’s just the knife that’s right for you.  So why spend months struggling with a $300 knife when there may be a $20 one out there that was made to fit in your hand?

            Y’see, Timmy, that’s a lot like writing.  You’ll hear a lot of people offer their advice.  Some of them may insist things must be done this way.  But in most cases, writing boils down to what works for you.  If I need to outline the whole story before I start writing, I shouldn’t waste my time trying to be spontaneous.  If I write better at night, it doesn’t matter how many people say to start with five hundred words before breakfast.  If I need to dress up like Spider-Man to write…well, hopefully I look good in tights, but it really doesn’t matter because I’ll be at home writing.

            One of the most important things to do as a writer is to recognize all the optional hints and suggestions for what they are and just weed out the useless ones that don’t apply to me.   Like those television cooking shows that are more about getting you to buy a $300 dollar knife, a $150 measuring cup, and are so glad that last commercial has got you thinking about becoming a chef.  No matter what anyone says, no matter who says it, all that matters is what works for me.  That’s the golden rule, and I’ve brought it up here a bunch of times.  What works for me won’t necessarily work for you, and it definitely won’t work for that other guy.

            Yeah, like cooking, there’s still a lot of things I will have to do.  It’s the difference between methods and actual rules.  I need to have some kind of knife, and I need a basic understanding of grammar.  I don’t want to serve undercooked eggs or pork, and I also don’t want every page to be a pile of misspelled or misused words.   I have to add ingredients in a specific order to get a certain taste, and I need to structure sentences and paragraphs to tell a certain story.   I’ve got the freedom to choose whatever knife I want, and to cook whatever I feel like, but that doesn’t mean I can thrown anything I want in a pot or frying pan and people are required to show up and eat it.  I’ve got to cook something people want to eat, and I can’t complain if I’m writing something nobody’d want to read.

            So don’t waste your time trying to find the perfect knife.  Just find the knife that works for you.

            Speaking of cutting, next time I thought I’d talk a bit about some quick edits I always make when I dive into later drafts.

            Until then, go write.