Christmas Day. Kris and I both worked, both watched some television, had a great dinner, and are now both back at work. Normal day around here and I love it that way. I’m just not much of a holiday person, especially year and year after year. So last night with friends was enough.
Before you read the following, make sure you have gone back and read the three before it, in order, or not a lot of this will make any sense. One week to a new year. A fresh start. A fresh decade, and glad to be in it, to be honest. I’ll talk more about this later on, in a “look back” post, but this is starting my 5th decade writing. I sold a bunch of poetry and two short stories in the 1970′s. I ramped up and sold a first novel in the 1980′s, sold another sixty books in the 1990′s, and then this last decade I just sort of chugged along. So in one week I get to start my fifth decade with writing. I have a hunch it’s going to be the best one yet.
So on to motivation and goal planning for the new year.
If you have followed the previous posts, you know how much time you can carve out of your daily life and you know how long it takes you to write a simple manuscript page of 250 words. Right? And you have the big goal in mind, the big dream. Right?
So what next?
Answer: Numbers.
Publishing is a numbers game, all the way through Heinlein’s Rules. A simple numbers game.
For example, to finish one book a year, you should write two pages per day and then not worry about missing a bunch of days to get to the 360 pages of a 90,000 word book. Numbers.
When submitting books or stories to editors, you can’t control what they think of your book, if they have an opening in their list, if their sales department didn’t get on board, if they just bought something like it six months earlier. But you can control the number of editors you mail the book to. You can control the number of chances your book has to sell. You can control the number of different books you mail to different editors. Numbers.
So, with numbers in mind, let’s look at Heinlein’s Business Rules again to set some goals.
Rule 1: You must Write.
If your large goal is to be a professional writer, or just sell regularly, you have to do this. If you hate writing, why are you thinking of doing this? You should love writing, telling stories, having people read your stories. Otherwise, find another job.
“But I just can’t find the time.” Those words come out of your mouth and you are doomed. That simple sentence is the excuse of the masses and what separates a real writer from a want-to-be. You have figured out where you can carve out time, you have your family ready for the carving of the time. When that carved time comes each day, each week, you sit down and type. It doesn’t have to be good. Just type. “Dare to be bad.” as my close friend Nina Kiriki Hoffman said to me once.
She was right. It takes a lot more courage to sit and type and fail (because it’s practice anyway) than it does to not type. So carve the time each day out of your life, park your butt in the chair, and type.
Numbers:
Write one page per day for 360 days to finish one book.
Write two pages per day for 360 days to finish two books in a year.
Write three pages per day for 360 days to finish three books in a year.
Write four pages per day for 360 days to finish four books in a year.
(If you can’t hit writing every day, then cut the number of days in half to give yourself half the year off and divide the book numbers in half. For example, write 4 pages for 180 days in a year to finish two books in a year.)
Rule #2: You must finish what you write.
If you keep typing and carve the time, you will finish what you write. This rule really gets hit with the Dare to Be Bad courage issue. If you don’t finish, you don’t fail, right? Nope, you fail worse. No one likes a quitter. Don’t finish story after story and you are nothing more than a fearful quitter. Blunt but true. Sorry. And this rule is really mixed up with the next rule for most quitters.
Rule #3. You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand.
This rule hits right at the heart of a huge myth, a myth so large most writers never get past it, and thus fail.
Rewriting is a forced process, not in creative voice, but in critical voice, and often leads to the failure of Rule #2 and worse yet, really crappy, dull stories because all the voice and life are taken out for safety sake.
The myth is that a story must always be rewritten until it’s good, right? Snort. How the hell, as a new writer, do you have a clue if a story is good or not? I’ve written a hundred novels and far more short stories and been an editor for decades. I can tell you what’s wrong with your story, but I don’t have a clue when it comes to my own stories. Not clue one.
So remember this simple statement (which you won’t but try <g>). Writers are the worst judges of their own work.
I learned this by selling a lot of poems back in the 1970′s to some really top literary markets before I stopped mailing my poems out. I would always in a submission send one poem that I thought was my best, that I had really worked on, that I thought was “art” and one poem I thought was all right, not great but good enough, and one toss-off poem I thought was silly, had spent no time on, and didn’t care about. I always sold the toss-off poems, never the “good” ones. Those “good” ones are still in my files, I still think they are good, but hundreds of editors of major magazines didn’t. They liked my toss-off stuff. Stuff that I had not rewritten to death.
Here’s how many professional writers I know do it. We do three drafts. Very simple, we do a pounding first draft, racing through the story, making notes or going back and changing any detail that needs to be fixed as you race in a white hot heat through the story. If you make notes, go back after you finish the book and add in only the notes. Everything done in creative mode.
Spell check your manuscript as draft #2. (You should always have your spell checker and grammar checker turned off while writing. Computer people do not know how to write. Trust me.)
Third draft, give the book to your trusted first reader, fix the mistakes and problems they found, and then mail it to editors and start the next book the next day.
Or you can have real courage and do it like Harlan Ellison has done many, many, many times with many award-winning stories. Sit in a store window with just an idea someone handed you, or a simple word, and write a story on a manual typewriter, ripping the pages out of the machine and taping them to the window so the people standing outside can read them.
Rule #4. Mail the story to an editor who will buy it.
With books, you can go to many editors, with short stories only one at a time. But always mail your work to someone who can write you a check. Agents can not write you a check. You can hire one after you get a book offer and should hire one at that time to help with the terms and the contract and a thousand other things. Only editors and publishers can write you a check for your work, so focus on them. (If your first thought reading this was “But…” you are in deep trouble right here. Over this last year I’ve talked a great deal about agents, go back and read some of those posts.)
Here comes the problem with Dare to be Bad. And also the problem with not knowing the quality of your own work. When you finish a book or story, you will think it sucks. You must have the courage to mail it and then work to make the next story better. You honestly don’t know if the story sucks or not. Just mail it and let an editor decide.
In the master’s class, we had the writers attending bring three stories well disguised with pen names and different fonts and everything. One story was a story they thought was one of their best, one was all right, and one story they thought was their worst. And they could NOT tell anyone any of the pen names. Then, along with the stories they wrote at the workshop, we tossed them all into a tub and made them put an anthology together. Upwards of over 100 different stories to pick from, and they couldn’t pick any of their own. They had to do a table of contents and then give that table of contents to everyone.
The shocked look on people’s faces was wonderful. What happened was that their “best” stories seldom sold, but everyone in the room sold their “worst” story many times. And most of those writers didn’t even have those stories in the mail because they thought they were so bad. Writers just don’t have a clue what’s good or bad in their own work, thus you have to have the courage to just mail it.
Rule #5. Keep it in the mail until someone buys it.
The numbers of this are simple. The more editors you let see your work, the more your chances of selling your work. Publishing is ripe with stories of a major bestseller selling after 30 or 40 or 50 rejections or more. Not kidding. You get discouraged because one editor, or three editors said “Sorry” to your story, get over it quickly. Rejection and sales are a numbers game.
During Babe Ruth’s years of playing ball, who struck out the most? He did, of course. If he had been afraid of striking out, we wouldn’t know his name now. Same goes with publishing and rejections. I have thousands, and I do mean thousands of rejections and I still get them all the time. No big deal, part of the numbers game of mailing your work to editors. You have to keep it out there.
So, when thinking of setting these goals, also set goals regarding keeping your work in the mail. That’s a goal you can control. And I will talk about methods of setting these goals, both page count and novels in the mail goal in a new post coming up shortly.
But for now, think about what you want in your large goal and try to find just an extra thirty minutes a week above what you have already carved out in time.
And one more thing. Start working on the attitude that you don’t know if you write a good story or not. You’re just going to do your best and then release it for others to determine if it is good or not.
One last truism that applies to the rules above. “The quality of a book or story has nothing to do with the quality or the experience the writer had while writing it.”
Stick that on a sign over your computer right along with “Dare to be Bad” and you should be a good step toward starting these goals and getting your attitude in the right place to keep going after the month of January is finished.
Cheers, Dean
Lots of tough love here. If an author isn’t writing to get it read (published and sold), then it’s just mental maundering.
Design, blueprint, etc., all you want, but pump out that first draft as a writer, not a critic. Do the other passes you mentioned, then publish!
Bruce, yup, everything on this site is aimed at those who want to make a living at writing fiction. If you want to do this as a hobby, I’m sure much of my advice might really bother. But if you have a dream of making a living with your fiction, I’m sort of blunt. No reason not to be, far as I can see.
Cheers,
Dean
I’ve heard/read “dare to be bad” before, but this post has really hit on a couple of things that I’ve struggled with. Namely, “when you finish a book or story, you will think it sucks” and that I’ll not know if what I’ve written is good or not.
I’ve only just recently started to learn that this feeling that what I’ve written sucks is not a malady limited to myself, and that, of course, has led to the idea of rewriting and subsequently to not submitting (or, rather, not submitting consistently). That’s where I’ve found myself derailed most often.
Since you referred to plumbing in your last post, I guess I should, uh, flush these fears down the toilet. That plumbing, after all, will only backup and overflow if I let it. I guess this makes my mantra: flush the fears; submit the manuscript; rinse and repeat. Make that a habit and the plumbing won’t have a chance to become clogged. That’s what I get out of what you’ve said, anyway.
The feeling that what we have written sucks is not limited to just you I’m afraid. I pretty much feel that way on just about everything, and have come to learn that if I like it and think it works, I had better be ready because Kris is going to rip it apart. I can pick award-winning stories by other writers and by Kris, but with my own stuff, I don’t have a clue. And any writer that tells you they know when they have written something good is just using that as a support system of some sort or another. By the very nature of writing, it is impossible to know when you have done well, when other readers are getting what you want them to get. Only other readers can tell you that. And since writing is communication, shouting in some made up language at the top of your voice may sound perfectly fine to you, but sounds like just noise to someone you are trying to communicate to.
Dare to be Bad is the hardest thing about this business. It takes far, far more courage to try and maybe fail then never try at all.
Cheers
Dean
Love this series, and particularly this post.
These rules are so hard for some writers to understand. Over and over again, I hear “if I just work on it for another month, make sure it’s really good…” It kills me. Write the story and get it out the door already! Has it done you any good sitting on your hard drive? Do you really think it’s a better story if you change the third sentence of the fourth paragraph on page 10? Quit it! I really need to stay away from writing forums.
Dean,
Thanks for the post. I’m sharing what you write in rule #3 with my writing critique group.
You’ve elucidated, quite clearly in fact, one of the biggest stumbling blocks that I’ve seen as a newbie writer. In fact, my polished and re-edited stories have yet to sell. My “homework” for the writing critique group, which I dashed off in 20 minutes, sold immediately. No editing.
Wow.
So, I’m validating what you are saying above. It makes sense, in a quirky sort of way.
On another note, I’ve been pointed quite firmly at you by two fellow Coloradans: Thea Hutchison and Alastair Mayer. They both sing praises of your advice and wisdom. I’m thinking seriously of flying further West to workshop with you…
Thank you.
Lou
Actually, #3 doesn’t make sense to people who think that more work always equals better work. But the way the human brain works, and how writers judge work, it doesn’t with fiction writing. Hard thing to fight.
Any questions about the workshops, just e-mail me. List under workshop tab.
Cheers
Dean
I gave up on writing forums a few years back. I found that I spent too much time at forums, too much time reading, rereading, editing my posts, reading other’s posts, and not enough time writing.
I’d post small excerpts from stories I was writing, usually the openings, get some positive feedback, then lose interest in what I was writing. Sure, I could use some feedback, I’m positive, but at the expense of losing interest in something I was writing? No. Not worth it.
It was a great forum, too. FictionAddiction it was called. For whatever reason, Apryl decided to close the forum down. Great people — I still stay in touch with a number of them via email or Facebook — but I get the feeling that a great many of them are no longer writing, while my own productivity has picked up greatly since I stopped visiting forums.
The number one mistake that any writer can make is show anyone else, ever, a work in progress. Then it becomes a group project and will mostly suck. Trust your own voice, your own vision, your own style, always. Never show work in progress.
Cheers
Dean
Y’know, I am starting to agree with Amanda on this. Seems to me there is a great deal of bad advice and “myth,” as Dean calls it, floating through the aspirant community. Especially on-line. Anyone who comes along and won’t imbibe the myth, tends to get thwapped by the group. Or at the very least, people all look up from the table as if they heard a very strange noise, or something, grumble, and go back to doing precisely what it was they were doing before.
The necessity — nay, the commandment — of re-writing is probably the biggest myth out there right now. About as big as the myth that nobody — nobody! — ever sells a first novel anymore without getting an agent first. These beliefs are iron-clad gospel in the aspirant community.
I certainly bought into the gospel a few years ago.
I’m slowly failing from grace, as it were.
The win at WOTF sealed it, at least as far as re-writing goes. I was so sure that story was destined for an HM, no more. I told my wife over and over, “Nah, this story isn’t doing anything, I am hoping the next one scores.” Voila. The story I thought wasn’t going to go the distance, went the distance.
I promptly re-read the thing and wondered why a story I myself wasn’t too sure of, had apparently been enough of a hit with K.D. and eventually people like Kevin Anderson and Jerry Pournelle, to Place with the Contest. I still can’t figure it out. It’s not a bad story, but I think I have done better. But the ones I think I’ve done better, haven’t sold, and don’t sell.
(shrug)
Gotta hand it to you, Dean, this is some mean-wicked heresy you and Kris are putting out there.
Errr, I am sorry, that last part didn’t make much sense. Forgive me, I am up waaaaaaaay too early on a Sunday.
The win at WOTF sealed it for me, both in terms of me not being a good judge of my own quality and re-writing.
I did very little re-writing on that story, and it didn’t go through a critique process either. I was rushed to meet the deadline, and afraid I’d been “lazy” with the story as a result.
In resignation, I said, “Oh well, I don’t like it, but this is as good as I can possibly make this story right now,” spellchecked, gave it a quick grammar proof, and dropped it in the mail.
And thus, Brad, you have an exact example of what I have been saying, but still fantastically hard to fight the myths and stay with a method that worked for you, isn’t it. The myths run deep.
Remember, the writer’s experience at writing the story has nothing at all to do with the quality of the story. Put that on your wall.
Cheers
Dean
Speaking of putting things on a wall…
“Stick that on a sign over your computer right along with “Dare to be Bad”.”
Just had to say that in our Master Class workshop, I put a sign up over my laptop based on something similar that Kris had said that morning. The sign read: “You are free to write something that sucks!”
Reason being, it was a way to remind myself to take risks and write the best damned story I could – and not worry if anyone was gonna like it.
Sure enough, I ended up doing some of my best stuff, and it’s moved my craft yet another step ahead.
This is really funny. I have long suspected the truth behind the schism between how good I think my writing is vs. its actual worth. In fact, I received a BA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College in Chicago where I had the opportunity to study with the great Mort Castle. He would constantly contradict my own judgments of my work. I lost count of the times I would turn something in saying, “This really sucks. It’s awfully rough.” And he would turn around and tell me how well it worked, lavish me with praise, then tell me I was simply not allowed to judge my own work until I’d been at it for longer than 10 years.
Mort Castle is awesome, talented, and a legend. I was lucky to study under him. Obviously, any writer would be wise to listen to his advice. And yet…I still sabotage myself with my own bad judgment. It’s a hard habit to kick.
Even after all the evidence to the contrary. It wasn’t just Mort’s class. Almost every damn time I dashed off a writing assignment just to GET-IT-DONE, that was the piece my instructors felt worked best. Then I’d turn in something with the smug expectation of florid praise, and get a long list of suggestions for improvement.
I wasn’t going to do any New Year’s Resolutions, but after stumbling onto this site, I think it’s high time I changed the way I look at my writing process. And I think all those manuscripts sitting on my hard drive collecting virtual dust need to get sent out.
Thanks for the great advice. You very well may have saved my writing life.
Best,
Rob
Rob, you were very lucky to have studied with Mort. And the only reason he said ten years was because he hoped after ten years you would learned enough to understand you would never be able to judge your own work. But I do agree, I learned this lesson the first time in the 1970′s and had to keep learning it over and over up to the mid 1990′s where I finally gave up and just put stuff out. But every so often, to this day, when I am thinking “Oh, this is a piece of crap” I want to argue with Kris when she tells me it’s good. And she does the same thing. In fact, last night she finished and handed me a new short story to read. I did, it was wonderful, so I said, “It’s great. Fix the two nits I found and mail it.” She started arguing with me about how it couldn’t work, how she had written it backwards she was sure, how something needed to be lengthened. I said the same thing I’ve been saying here to her, something she has said many, many times to me or students. “The quality of the final work has nothing to do with the writer’s experience in writing it.”
She glared at me, said, “Shut up,” and left. She fixed the two nits and it’s already off to the editor. None of us ever get past this need to point a gun at our own work. But we can learn to not pull the trigger all the time.
Coming into this discussion a couple of weeks late, but perhaps I have some hint of why we’re the worst judges of our own work. We tend to judge it by comparing it against the idea in our head, other readers can only judge by what’s on the paper.
The limitations of linear language mean that we’ll never be able to get ideas onto paper exactly the way they are in our head, so that comparison is off to a bad start. If, somehow, we get something on paper that we think is a pretty good match (and thus a really great piece of work), that either means the idea wasn’t all that to start with or the words are triggering internal memories that won’t match somebody else’s.
Years ago my wife chaired a major space-related conference. Afterwards she was convinced that it had been horrible, things hadn’t turned out as she’d wanted, etc. Everyone else thought it was fantastic. Even though it didn’t live up to the expectations she had in her head, it met or exceeded most everyone else’s. I think it’s the same with writing (and probably many other undertakings).
There’s a saying about better being the enemy of good enough. There comes a time when one needs to stop tinkering with a project and declare it finished — and the Pareto Principle (aka 80-20 rule) suggest that that point is sooner rather than later, especially when that tinkering is more likely to break it than improve it.
Alastair,
Well said, and I like the clear explanation of how it works in our heads. Thanks!