Much Ado About Writing

Do what I say, not what I do

Manner of speaking, of course.

The advice I'll hand out in the following chapters is based on personal observations and experimentation, no more, no less; I'm not a published author, nor a professional editor (although I worked for eight years as a technical writer, a job that demanded I honed my grammar, spelling, and writing skills in general). Which brings me to this: no matter how much you know about writing theory, no matter all the books you've read, you will make mistakes in your first drafts. At least, I and a lot of (aspiring or not) authors do. “Show, Don't Tell?” Sure, I know that—yet I still catch myself “telling” when I shouldn’t. “Don't use too many adverbs?” No problem—only the little buggers still seep through no matter what, forcing me to kick them out all the time once I reach the editing process.

In his No Plot? No Problem! book, Chris Baty, one of the original founders of the NaNoWriMo yearly event, advises to write down two lists. The first one, which he calls the “Magna Carta I”, must contain all the things you like to see in a story: 3-dimensional characters, lots of action scenes, romance, and so on. What we like tend to inspire us more, and what we want to see in novels is often what we like to write about, too. Conversely, your “Magna Carta II” is meant to list all things you don’tlike in a story: spelling mistakes, adverbs, purple prose... And guess what? While I didn't believe it at first, Baty was right about that particular point: what you put in your Magna Carta II has a resilient tendency to find its way into your story, even though you don’t want to see those nasties in it.

The human brain does work in strange ways, doesn’t it?

In other words, while I believe I know enough about writing to be allowed to hand out advice, keep in mind that you may catch me red-handed in the act of committing the very same mistakes I'm warning you about. Editing one's own work is quite hard; although I do my best to correct typos and other blatant horrors in my texts, I’m not infallible. Just writing late at night, without focus, is enough to make me dive head first into sandpits I’m otherwise aware of (only my brain’s too tired and stupid at that given moment to pay attention).

Last but not least, what I know about writing is valid advice, that you will find times and times again in “how to write” books. However, we all function in different ways. What works for me may not always work for you, and you’ll have to experiment on your own. A few examples of such problematic situations include, among other things, outlining vs. not outlining, or editing vs. not editing as you write. I’ll address those matters in further chapters.