This post is for a friend whom I know has great stuff to share and just needs to write it all down. I hope it helps. Get your book out already, dude!
1. The Ultimate Secret to Writing
The ultimate secret to writing is the one that most people don’t seem to want to hear. And it’s simply this: keep working your ass off.
Are there freak geniuses that wake up in the morning, eyes blazing with divine inspiration who knock out thousands of pages before breakfast? Maybe, but I’m not one of them. I have to sit my ass down and sweat words before they even look halfway decent, writing even when I don’t feel like writing and churning paragraphs of rubbish. It’s hard.
But then, some days it isn’t hard. It’s graceful pirouettes all the way instead of thundering tumbles. Them’s the crazy breaks of the creative life. But you have to work regardless, whether it’s beautiful ballerina day or clumsy hippo night. Just sit yourself down, and keep typing, keep typing, keep typing.
2. Be Okay with Sucking Horrendously
You are not the lovechild of Shakespeare, Einstein and Amelia Earhart. Do not expect your first draft to be anything but shit. The good news is that gorgeous isn’t what you’re aiming for when you’re doing the first draft, the first draft is what you’re aiming for when you’re doing the first draft.
The shitty first draft isn’t optional, it’s the compulsory first step towards getting your final, beautiful thing shaped and crafted. It’s like sculpting – not that I’ve ever sculpted anything in my life. In the beginning, you chip off chunks and end up with a rough mess that’s nothing like the final product you see in your mind. But it’s okay. Chillax. Because making that mess just got you closer to the finished work.
3. ‘Cus You’re Just Getting Started
You wouldn’t expect an Olympic-class sprinter to roll out of bed, head straight to the tracks and blaze a record in his pajamas would you? Same thing for writing; don’t expect magic to come out of your fingers immediately, you have to get yourself warmed up first. Your fingers have to make the clackity noise for a while before your brain gets that you’re trying to type the next mega-bestseller. Switch off the MSN. Close the door. Be prepared to sit your ass down for a while. Start typing, your muscles are starting cold and it’s hard, but the longer you go on, the easier it’ll get.
4. Keep the Critic Waiting
If you’re like me, you hear a vicious, evil voice in your head whenever you make something that goes “you suck at this, you’ll never make anything good, what makes you think anyone wants to read what you’re writing?” It’s normal (I hope). Every creative person struggles with this inner demon (I hope). The important thing here is you have to learn to ignore the hell out of it when you’re writing or it will kill your child.
(By child I meant your manuscript. Sorry for being melodramatic.)
You need to learn that being creative and being critical are two essential but separate stages in the creative process. This is critical. There’s a place for this demon critic and it’s after you’ve finished your first draft, not before. When you’re done with that, let it go to town and rip your draft to shreds. That’s what it’s good for, listen to it then and it’ll help you see where your text sucks and help you make the revisions you need to make so it don’t suck no more. But never edit when you’re writing, because that opens the door for the demon to come in and destroy any creative spark you’re nurturing (and you need every creative spark you’ve got to make your words happen).
Keep the creative and critical parts of you separate, it’ll help you get your work done and keep you sane.
5. Start with What You’ve Got
Don’t know how to start? Me neither, but I still write pages and pages month after month. The trick is to start with what you’ve got; while your book needs a beginning, middle and end, nobody said you had to write in that order. Sometimes all I have is the middle, and I have no idea how to phrase the beginning, so instead of struggling, I write what I’ve got first. The crazy thing is that after I finish with what I’ve got, the rest of it comes a lot easier.
Not Convinced?
What’s that? Not convinced that your buddy who gets paid for his wordsmithory knows what he’s going about? Need to learn more? That’s cool. We all can do better and learn something new every step of the way, just don’t let the thought that you need to learn more stop you from starting. This isn’t rocket science. People have been writing since the first alphabet was invented. If you have a mind, pen and paper, you already have all the tools Shakespeare had at his disposal to write his masterworks.
These are the books I like. About writing and the creative process, I recommend The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield. To improve your writing, I recommend On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser and On Writing by Stephen King (yes, that Stephen King). About the creative process, read The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp. Read Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders newer blog posts for free. And watch this talk by mega-bestselling novel Eat Pray Love‘s author Elizabeth Gilbert about creative work; she speaks with experience, insight and humor.
Namaste. I hope this helps you give your gift to the world. Get your ass to work.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a great post, it has changed the way I am thinking now
hey alvin, thanks for the post. sometimes i think i’m not cut out to illustrate because i take such a long time… and i keep thinking that if i were better, i wouldn’t need to take such a long time. i def have more clumsy hippo nights than beautiful ballerina days… and i don’t feel that beautiful on the ballerina days either. but yup… sucking is not only permitted, it’s kinda necessary. so ganbarimasu ;p
Ganbatte Rebekah! I have to disagree, I love your work and I definitely think you’re cut out to illustrate
Thanks for stopping by.
Okay, I’m hoping that the title is tongue-in-cheek, as “good” is an adjective rather than an adverb. So, if you are going to write well, the first step is quite obviously to actually put pen to page and WRITE. I love Julia Cameron’s prescription of Morning Pages, where we can feel free to write without that lovely editor voice piping in. Unfortunately, the next step is engaging that editor and letting it go through your written words with a red felt-tip marker. Thank you for the engaging article. You have a wonderful voice.
Alvin,
I read On Writting Well by Zinsser late last year and it has moved me forward like no other book on the subject. I think your point five is the most important. We have to write something or we will end up with nothing. Understanding this has helped my write more blog posts in the last month than I have in a year. Thanks again.
P.S. Love your artwork in the sidebar. Just finished Hugh MacLeod’s book.
This is a really good article. It is true. I have been blogging for a about one and a half years and I feel I get better one word at a time, one thought at a time. I want to revise it but it changes the meaning of the first draft. Just post it and keep moving…it gets better with age like good wine.