Many people want to be an author. But you can only do that by actually starting to write a book. Here’s how…
Words and writing have always been my thing.
In primary school, when I was 11, I wrote an English composition about a spaceship. I don’t remember anything about the story, or the people in it. But I do remember the feeling of elation and joy as the idea took hold of me and swept me along as I wrote. My teacher, a Miss Binet (I regret that I don’t know if I am spelling her name correctly), loved the story and told me I should be a writer. At least, I think she did. Memory is a tricky thing.
I’ve been writing as part of my various occupations for most of my life, and always held in my head that one day I would write a book. It was never clear to me if that would be a novel, or a slim volume of poems, or something else.
But finally, I do know what book I am writing, and am actually doing it.
My book is not a novel, or a slim volume of poems – it’s more in the nature of an oral history. I don’t want to say too much; at this point I’ve written an introduction and done some research. I’m not a superstitious person but there is part of me that doesn’t want to jinx things by sharing too much.
What I can share
On the other hand, there are some things I’ve learned. In no particular order:
ONE
Cory Doctorow is right. He’s an author I admire and is quoted all over the Internet quoted as saying: “Write even when the world is chaotic. You don’t need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement.”
I haven’t been able to find the source of that quote but I did find a longer version in a Locus Magazine article from 2009:
Forget advice about finding the right atmosphere to coax your muse into the room. Forget candles, music, silence, a good chair, a cigarette, or putting the kids to sleep. It’s nice to have all your physical needs met before you write, but if you convince yourself that you can only write in a perfect world, you compound the problem of finding 20 free minutes with the problem of finding the right environment at the same time. When the time is available, just put fingers to keyboard and write. You can put up with noise/silence/kids/discomfort/hunger for 20 minutes.
Either way, he knows what he is talking about. Once I had decided that 2024 was the year I would simply do this thing, and once I had settled on an idea, I just did a timed 15 minutes every morning. That’s it. Before anything else, I write. And I have made good progress doing that.
Sitting down that first morning, it helped that the idea for the book had been percolating in my head for a long time, and that I already knew what the first sentence was. If that’s not the case for you, then do this: write the second paragraph, even if it doesn’t make sense. And then see my second tip below.
TWO
Jodi Picoult is also right. She says:
I don’t believe in writer’s block. Think about it – when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn’t it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer’s block is having too much time on your hands. If you have a limited amount of time to write, you just sit down and do it. You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page. (my emphasis)
I know that sounds pretty much the same as Doctorow’s advice – but it’s that last sentence that provides my second tip: once you have started, that in itself means you can always make progress. If you can’t or won’t or don’t write something new, you can work on what you have already written.
THREE
I have no famous writers to quote here. But I have learned that the process of writing a book is essentially the process of overcoming moments of terror, again and again. There’ll be times, almost daily, when you think no one will ever want to read this; or when you wonder if publishers would just laugh at you. Or when you need to start interviewing people (my book is after all an oral history). Or when you print the introduction and ask a friend to read it. Every time, you will be afraid. But the idea of the what you are trying to do will pull you forward.
Know this about writing: you will always be frightened, but once you have started you will find the courage to keep going.
Main picture: Eye for Ebony, Unsplash
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