Why You--Yes, YOU Should Start Writing
Had enjoyable evening recently with a chapter of the Naval Academy Alumni Association: a book talk and signing. I always enjoy opportunities to speak with readers and potential readers. Among the reasons is conversations with folks who feel the urge to write stirring within. I’ve had so many encounters with writers-in-waiting that I’ve prepared a handout with my suggestions and I make it available at every talk.
WHY YOU—YES, YOU—SHOULD START WRITING
Doug Norton, author of Code Word: Paternity, a Presidential Thriller
JUST FOR STARTERS:
• Ever have a conversation and later think, “I wish I’d said . . .?”
o When you write you can do it over until you are completely satisfied, til that feel-good YES! hits you. Go ahead: feel witty as Jay Leno, insightful as Oprah or as agile with repartee as Mark Shields and David Brooks.
• Ever have something you want to get off your chest to a wider audience than your family or your hair cutter or your favorite bartender?
o The characters and plot you create advocate for anything you choose, using any methods you select.
• Ever read a novel, or a scene, so good you wished it would never end?
o Writing a scene that you love gives the same high, but one that may be sustained for weeks or months. My favorite scene creations affect me like diamonds affect a diamond cutter.
• Ever end your day frustrated by injustice, perverse behavior, or indecision in your family members or boss or colleagues or clients?
o Well, that’s the real world. Create another where someone wise, witty, and strong (you) cuts through that crap. Revel in it for half an hour. Like Tom Clancy, after a day selling insurance, eagerly creating Hunt for Red October and channeling Jack Ryan. Or maybe E.L. James and Fifty Shades of Grey!
• Once you get it going, your own writing is like a friend who never makes demands, is never needy, is happy to be there for you whenever it fits your schedule, and is always ready to listen, whether it’s your heart speaking its truth or your ego being snarky.
• Writing can enrich your life by turning “wasted” moments into interesting ones by encouraging you to listen and observe. Grocery checkout lines, waiting in elevators, barbershop or restaurant conversations. How would you describe what you see? How would you portray the conversations you hear?
• Those are all reasons to write. And now that you’re thinking about it, I’ll bet you’ll think of other reasons.
HOW TO BEGIN?
• I started by writing half pages to capture a setting, a person’s appearance, how someone’s words made me feel or my impression of a person’s personality and values. Write for the satisfaction of saying to yourself, “got it-that’s how it was.” If you do this, you will find your appreciation of fine prose increased and your book evaluation skills invigorated.
• Try jotting notes for a plot or a story. [Jargon alert: “plot” and “story.” Think of a river flowing through a long, windy canyon. The plot is the canyon. The story is the river, foaming, whirling, changing color and speed, throwing spray—but staying within the canyon. Another shorthand is “plot” is what happens, “story” is how that feels.]
• For me, next was a basic “how-to” course in fiction writing. Writing courses are plentiful and need not be expensive. Their exercises nudge you into expanding your writing horizons. In my case, into beginning my novel in earnest. There are good ones on-line [Steve Alcorn’s was perfect for me] and at your local community college. Read a how-to book or two. [I find books by Laura Oliver and by James Scott Bell very helpful.]
• Why a course? Novels are like houses. The essentials of a house are unseen: the framing that holds it together, the plumbing, and wiring. Without that stuff, you don’t have a house anyone would buy. Novels are the same, so learn how they are built. [And here’s another reason: understanding the writing craft will increase your enjoyment as a reader—its fun to spot skillfully woven backstory threading a scene, or observe how much freight a well-crafted sentence can carry.]
• And think about adding magazines on writing to your stable of reading. I’m mostly a nuts and bolts person and I particularly enjoy and learn from The Writer and Writer’s Digest. I find it good to be awestruck once in awhile and for those moments I read a literary magazine called The Sun. I could NEVER write that well—but I can savor it!
HOW TO GO ABOUT WRITING?
• There’s no one way—try different routines [or have no routine] and you’ll find one that works for you. I learned that what I must do first is create an outline. With that as guide, I am free to write the scenes in almost any order, as the mood strikes, and put them aside like quilt squares to be stitched in place later. I do offer one hard and fast rule: wherever you go, whatever you do, always have at hand a way to take notes, whether one-liners or great prose inspired by a perfect sail on the bay. Trust me: You will NOT remember your good stuff unless you do that.
• DO NOT get stuck in learning all the rules before you begin writing. This isn’t a card game. You don’t have to know all, or even most of the rules before you play. What you do is start writing.
• I’m not saying ignore grammar and punctuation. In the house analogy, they are the paint, landscaping, and interior decoration. A house with great bones won’t be attractive to most buyers if that stuff is bizarre or distracting. But you need not be able to define “simile” or “metaphor” before using either in your writing, just as you do in your speech.
WHERE DO I FIND IDEAS AND INSPIRATION?
• How can you think up a compelling plot? How can you create interesting characters? Continue what you already do: [1] read and [2] observe. Now take it another step: capture. Jot down your observations—of rainstorms, boring meetings, a sudden scare, how someone’s appearance struck you, a snappy comeback line. In and of themselves these two activities will enrich your life. And now you have the seeds of plots and characters for your novel garden.
• It’s amazing how many writing aids you find if you look for them. How do you name characters? In a few cases, mine told me their names. But my thriller, Code Word: Paternity, has nearly two dozen characters and most kept mum. I used the prayer list in a church bulletin to inspire their names. And what do your characters look like? After all, you gotta give the reader a hook for her imagination. For that the enabler I found was the Internet. I looked at faces on line until I found ones that resonated with my characters. I have a lot of trouble imagining physical appearance. I’m better at describing what I see. For instance, when I was trying to find my first lady, Ella Dominguez Martin, I found her in the person of a Hispanic attorney running for local office in Colorado. I printed her photo and referred to it frequently.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE ME TO FINISH?
• As long as it takes to satisfy you. I feel sorry [well, sorta] for John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell and other best-selling authors who have to crank them out to meet contracts. Remember, my pitch to you today is to write because those sessions at the keyboard or legal pad, daily, weekly, or whenever, enhance your well-being. At some point, completion (a book, a short story, whatever) will become one of your goals. But for most of the process, you’re just getting it right. And, by the way, that’s right as you define it.
• But writing is revealing, you think. The characters are the author. Maybe you’d be shy about that. Well, yeah, to some extent. For example that’s why I didn’t put sex scenes in my novel. But who knows, maybe that will change as I write other novels.
• However, writing need not be uncomfortably revealing. For one thing, and here I must go a little jargon-y on you, if you don’t write in the first person [I heard the door creak and my guts twisted] you are well hidden. Third person uses the I-word sparingly [she heard the door creak and her guts twisted] and so is less revealing. Also, at least for me, my personhood is sprinkled into many characters. You’d have to deconstruct them and then correctly assemble the bits of me in order to see me naked, as it were.
• How do you know if it’s any good? Well, first of all, you tinker with it until it satisfies you, not necessarily one hundred percent, but you don’t think it’s embarrassing. You will know when it’s ready for someone to read; and probably, knowing that, you will be a bit hungry for feedback. When you get to that stage there are on-line author critique groups, family, friends, for-hire “editorial evaluators”—plenty of options.
• When you seek friends-and-family feedback, try to find readers who prefer the type of writing you’ve done. If you wrote in the thriller vein, feedback from a friend who devours coming-of-age novels won’t be as helpful as that from another who can’t wait for the next Brad Thor novel to hit the street.
• One avenue I found helpful at that stage was attending a writer’s conference and participating in workshops where an experienced moderator [agent, editor, college faculty] and the class critiqued everyone’s first chapter. There are many variations of this approach.
• When it’s “done”—in my case after four and a half years, four major revisions and a professional copy-edit—if you choose to seek traditional publication or to self-publish, you have another feast of interesting “stuff” to dine on. Happy to go into that in question time.
• Writing is a gift you give yourself. And it’s one that just keeps on giving. That’s why you—yes you—should write. Don’t quit your day job yet, but add writing to your life!
AN AUTHOR’S PLEA.
• When you enjoy a book, write a short review and post it on Amazon, B&N, elsewhere you shop for books. And mention it to friends.
• If you REALLY enjoyed it and don’t own a copy, buy one! Most authors write for the love of it, but they have to eat and pay rent!
WHY YOU—YES, YOU—SHOULD START WRITING
Doug Norton, author of Code Word: Paternity, a Presidential Thriller
JUST FOR STARTERS:
• Ever have a conversation and later think, “I wish I’d said . . .?”
o When you write you can do it over until you are completely satisfied, til that feel-good YES! hits you. Go ahead: feel witty as Jay Leno, insightful as Oprah or as agile with repartee as Mark Shields and David Brooks.
• Ever have something you want to get off your chest to a wider audience than your family or your hair cutter or your favorite bartender?
o The characters and plot you create advocate for anything you choose, using any methods you select.
• Ever read a novel, or a scene, so good you wished it would never end?
o Writing a scene that you love gives the same high, but one that may be sustained for weeks or months. My favorite scene creations affect me like diamonds affect a diamond cutter.
• Ever end your day frustrated by injustice, perverse behavior, or indecision in your family members or boss or colleagues or clients?
o Well, that’s the real world. Create another where someone wise, witty, and strong (you) cuts through that crap. Revel in it for half an hour. Like Tom Clancy, after a day selling insurance, eagerly creating Hunt for Red October and channeling Jack Ryan. Or maybe E.L. James and Fifty Shades of Grey!
• Once you get it going, your own writing is like a friend who never makes demands, is never needy, is happy to be there for you whenever it fits your schedule, and is always ready to listen, whether it’s your heart speaking its truth or your ego being snarky.
• Writing can enrich your life by turning “wasted” moments into interesting ones by encouraging you to listen and observe. Grocery checkout lines, waiting in elevators, barbershop or restaurant conversations. How would you describe what you see? How would you portray the conversations you hear?
• Those are all reasons to write. And now that you’re thinking about it, I’ll bet you’ll think of other reasons.
HOW TO BEGIN?
• I started by writing half pages to capture a setting, a person’s appearance, how someone’s words made me feel or my impression of a person’s personality and values. Write for the satisfaction of saying to yourself, “got it-that’s how it was.” If you do this, you will find your appreciation of fine prose increased and your book evaluation skills invigorated.
• Try jotting notes for a plot or a story. [Jargon alert: “plot” and “story.” Think of a river flowing through a long, windy canyon. The plot is the canyon. The story is the river, foaming, whirling, changing color and speed, throwing spray—but staying within the canyon. Another shorthand is “plot” is what happens, “story” is how that feels.]
• For me, next was a basic “how-to” course in fiction writing. Writing courses are plentiful and need not be expensive. Their exercises nudge you into expanding your writing horizons. In my case, into beginning my novel in earnest. There are good ones on-line [Steve Alcorn’s was perfect for me] and at your local community college. Read a how-to book or two. [I find books by Laura Oliver and by James Scott Bell very helpful.]
• Why a course? Novels are like houses. The essentials of a house are unseen: the framing that holds it together, the plumbing, and wiring. Without that stuff, you don’t have a house anyone would buy. Novels are the same, so learn how they are built. [And here’s another reason: understanding the writing craft will increase your enjoyment as a reader—its fun to spot skillfully woven backstory threading a scene, or observe how much freight a well-crafted sentence can carry.]
• And think about adding magazines on writing to your stable of reading. I’m mostly a nuts and bolts person and I particularly enjoy and learn from The Writer and Writer’s Digest. I find it good to be awestruck once in awhile and for those moments I read a literary magazine called The Sun. I could NEVER write that well—but I can savor it!
HOW TO GO ABOUT WRITING?
• There’s no one way—try different routines [or have no routine] and you’ll find one that works for you. I learned that what I must do first is create an outline. With that as guide, I am free to write the scenes in almost any order, as the mood strikes, and put them aside like quilt squares to be stitched in place later. I do offer one hard and fast rule: wherever you go, whatever you do, always have at hand a way to take notes, whether one-liners or great prose inspired by a perfect sail on the bay. Trust me: You will NOT remember your good stuff unless you do that.
• DO NOT get stuck in learning all the rules before you begin writing. This isn’t a card game. You don’t have to know all, or even most of the rules before you play. What you do is start writing.
• I’m not saying ignore grammar and punctuation. In the house analogy, they are the paint, landscaping, and interior decoration. A house with great bones won’t be attractive to most buyers if that stuff is bizarre or distracting. But you need not be able to define “simile” or “metaphor” before using either in your writing, just as you do in your speech.
WHERE DO I FIND IDEAS AND INSPIRATION?
• How can you think up a compelling plot? How can you create interesting characters? Continue what you already do: [1] read and [2] observe. Now take it another step: capture. Jot down your observations—of rainstorms, boring meetings, a sudden scare, how someone’s appearance struck you, a snappy comeback line. In and of themselves these two activities will enrich your life. And now you have the seeds of plots and characters for your novel garden.
• It’s amazing how many writing aids you find if you look for them. How do you name characters? In a few cases, mine told me their names. But my thriller, Code Word: Paternity, has nearly two dozen characters and most kept mum. I used the prayer list in a church bulletin to inspire their names. And what do your characters look like? After all, you gotta give the reader a hook for her imagination. For that the enabler I found was the Internet. I looked at faces on line until I found ones that resonated with my characters. I have a lot of trouble imagining physical appearance. I’m better at describing what I see. For instance, when I was trying to find my first lady, Ella Dominguez Martin, I found her in the person of a Hispanic attorney running for local office in Colorado. I printed her photo and referred to it frequently.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE ME TO FINISH?
• As long as it takes to satisfy you. I feel sorry [well, sorta] for John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell and other best-selling authors who have to crank them out to meet contracts. Remember, my pitch to you today is to write because those sessions at the keyboard or legal pad, daily, weekly, or whenever, enhance your well-being. At some point, completion (a book, a short story, whatever) will become one of your goals. But for most of the process, you’re just getting it right. And, by the way, that’s right as you define it.
• But writing is revealing, you think. The characters are the author. Maybe you’d be shy about that. Well, yeah, to some extent. For example that’s why I didn’t put sex scenes in my novel. But who knows, maybe that will change as I write other novels.
• However, writing need not be uncomfortably revealing. For one thing, and here I must go a little jargon-y on you, if you don’t write in the first person [I heard the door creak and my guts twisted] you are well hidden. Third person uses the I-word sparingly [she heard the door creak and her guts twisted] and so is less revealing. Also, at least for me, my personhood is sprinkled into many characters. You’d have to deconstruct them and then correctly assemble the bits of me in order to see me naked, as it were.
• How do you know if it’s any good? Well, first of all, you tinker with it until it satisfies you, not necessarily one hundred percent, but you don’t think it’s embarrassing. You will know when it’s ready for someone to read; and probably, knowing that, you will be a bit hungry for feedback. When you get to that stage there are on-line author critique groups, family, friends, for-hire “editorial evaluators”—plenty of options.
• When you seek friends-and-family feedback, try to find readers who prefer the type of writing you’ve done. If you wrote in the thriller vein, feedback from a friend who devours coming-of-age novels won’t be as helpful as that from another who can’t wait for the next Brad Thor novel to hit the street.
• One avenue I found helpful at that stage was attending a writer’s conference and participating in workshops where an experienced moderator [agent, editor, college faculty] and the class critiqued everyone’s first chapter. There are many variations of this approach.
• When it’s “done”—in my case after four and a half years, four major revisions and a professional copy-edit—if you choose to seek traditional publication or to self-publish, you have another feast of interesting “stuff” to dine on. Happy to go into that in question time.
• Writing is a gift you give yourself. And it’s one that just keeps on giving. That’s why you—yes you—should write. Don’t quit your day job yet, but add writing to your life!
AN AUTHOR’S PLEA.
• When you enjoy a book, write a short review and post it on Amazon, B&N, elsewhere you shop for books. And mention it to friends.
• If you REALLY enjoyed it and don’t own a copy, buy one! Most authors write for the love of it, but they have to eat and pay rent!
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