The other day I received my first “How do you write?” email ever. My first thought was, um…you do know I’m just a rookie right? But my second thought was…how DO I write?

I emailed him back and gave him the best answer I could: I write. 

What a completely crap answer, and somewhat of a dodge. That’s the answer every writer always gives…and it’s really not very helpful. Of course, write…duh…but sometimes the actual writing is daunting.  You’re excited when you type that first word, but then you think of the 79,999 words you still have left to right and you think, how can I possibly write all those words?

Until recently, a lot of my time spent as a writer was looking at a blank screen thinking I’m never going to write anything as beautiful as Peter F. Hamilton or as fun as Ernie Lindsay. 

One of the biggest issues I had with my writing is that I lacked detail and my characters and scenes were very black and white. Example: Jack jumped over the candle stick. You understand what is going on, but that doesn’t make for a very interesting scene. I would write a scene like this and think, everything about this sucks and no one is going to like it…trash!

What I didn’t understand then, was that these first words are just my first draft and it’s allowed to be shitty. The second draft is where you flesh out the story, and so is the third, then you start cleaning it up in the fourth and fifth drafts.

I was reading a post by science fiction writer Jamie Todd Rubin the other day and read something that made everything I’ve ever read about writing make sense. I’ll paraphrase: “The 1st draft is for you (the writer); the second draft is for the reader.”

Mind. Blown.

I’ve read many books on writing since deciding to take my writing seriously, and all of these books have good material on structure, plotting, character development and so on…but not a whole lot give advice on the actual writing part.  

The all say the same thing: just write.

So after I gave the exact same answer, I decided to sit down and actually think about what I am doing to write my stories.

It came to me, as most of my great ideas do, in the shower. But I’ll skim over those details…

Earlier that day, I saw a video on YouTube of an interview with Peter F. Hamliton and twice it shows him typing on his computer. I assume these shots are of him doing some actual work on his projects, but who knows.  Anyway, I re-watched these parts several times and paused it to see what he was doing. 

It appears that he is writing a bunch of fragments, clumping them all together and then going back to flesh them out later. If you’ve ever read any of his books then you know when I say, “flesh out” I mean he fleshes them out. His writing is always extremely descriptive, to the point of being beautiful. He has a real talent for painting memorable vistas and vivid landscapes with his words. I just assumed that all that description and detail flowed out of him in some endless stream of words, never once did I imagine his work being crappy and bland.

This is where the light bulb came on.

Yes the first draft is trash, it sucks and no one should ever read it…ever. It also doesn’t have to be “complete.” Get the basics of the story down: who, what, where, when, why and how, then go back and fill in the details. 

The details are what always killed my writing. I could see the scene in my head, but after I’d get it down on paper, it wouldn’t look correct. I would work endlessly on that scene for days and never get it right, become frustrated and shit-can the entire project instead pushing through and going back later to fix it.
So…back to the shower (and not like that either…sickos)  

There I was, pondering the method and it came to me: My style of writing was like that of a painter creating a piece of art. He doesn’t start with the color, he starts with a sketch and then progresses through several stages, until eventually, at the end he paints a masterpiece. I decided to apply this idea to my writing:

The Sketch Method

First stage: “The Idea” For me this is where I sit down, brainstorm, and jot everything down. I use Scapple for this and during this stage I am outlining, plotting, and creating my characters.

Second Stage: “Penciling” Turning those ideas into words (really crappy words) but by the end you know where the story is going end and how the characters are going to get there. (You are just telling yourself the story)

Third stage: “Shading” This is where you add detail to your scenes, expand on the dialogue between the characters, you are creating scenes that when your audience reads them they will see what you see. (This is telling the story to your readers)

Fourth stage: “Color” This stage is adding the touches that will make your work shine: more detail (but not too much!), putting everything together so that instead of several different beautifully written scenes, now you have a beautifully written story.

Fifth stage: “Clean up” This stage actually happens simultaneously with the Third and Fourth stages. This is where the “Red Pen o’ Death” appears and ravages your manuscript. You’ll be hitting the delete key a lot, trying to figure out how you could possibly write such crap, but that’s okay, everyone does this. By the time you get to the Fourth stage, you should be fairly proud of your work.

It’s extremely simple but it works for me. And when it really boils down to it, that’s all that matters: what works for you.

Bam! That’s ten minutes of your life you’re never going to get back! You’re welcome. And now that you’re done reading my ramblings, go and find out what works for you. There is no one “absolute” method to write a book. You might like some parts of mine and parts of someone else’s, take the parts you like, smash them together and make them work for you.

Once you figure out what works for you there is only one thing left for you to do: WRITE.

I have dabbled in writing off and on for the better part of twenty years; it’s always been a fun hobby and until recently, I never really thought about it as actual work. I can’t count the number of projects I’ve started, loved and worked on, only to get bored and lose focus halfway through. The amount of unfinished stories I have laying around is silly. Maybe one day…

Throughout my life there have been times were I would write every day for hours, but usually those periods of inspiration were separated by weeks—even months—of not writing a single word. Little voices in my head told me I would have time to finish the book later, that eventually inspiration would hit and the book would write itself. Surprisingly, this never happened.

Until recently, my “writing career” has consisted of unfinished projects and ideas that never seem to make the transition from my brain to paper. It was always been just a fun pastime, something I really didn’t take very seriously. Of course, I’ve always dreamed of seeing my books on bookshelves, even thought about becoming rich and famous, something always held me back. I’m not exactly sure what that was either. Maybe it was the dread of submitting the completed manuscript to a publisher or worse: that people would hate my work. (I know on some level that fear is still there.) 

But you know what I discovered? If I don’t ever finish a book, no one will ever have the opportunity to hate it and more importantly; love it. About the same time this light bulb went off a second blinked on right beside it: books don’t write themselves. They take work, and finally for the first time in my life I made the decision to take that work seriously.

My first hurdle was not having a deadline. Anyone that knows me can tell you, I’m quite possibly the biggest procrastinator in the entire world. Hell, I put off vacuuming until 5 minutes before my wife gets home when I’ve had all day to do it. Not having a deadline was killing my writing. I could put off working on a project indefinitely because it wasn’t due…ever.

So, I stated this blog and decided that no matter what I would have something posted every week. I planned several post for this blog, as well as posts that I will write for my reviews page, and gave myself deadlines for everything. Looking at my “work” calendar can be slightly overwhelming sometimes, but having something due every week reminds me that I need to sit down and write.

After developing my work schedule for the website I decided to push the envelope even further and give myself a daily word count that was completely independent of the words I wrote for my blog or reviews. 500 was the lucky number and I created a spreadsheet to track and calculate my daily, weekly and monthly totals.

At first, I told myself I needed 500 words EVERYDAY but after the first week, I realized writing seven days a week wasn’t the best idea either. I didn’t want to burn myself out. There is a reason the workweek isn’t 7 days, body and mind require rest to work properly. So I decided to give myself a break during my writing week as well. I set aside two days during the week that I’m not required to work, even though I probably will.

Week 1 is officially in the books and so far, I have met my goals (with the exception of Sunday--Bad Josh!) What’s interesting is that the more I hit “Publish Live” on by blog and the more numbers I punch into my spreadsheet, the more I want to write. Finishing a book is a great goal, and one that you should work hard at, but sometimes that can been too much to handle. If you’re anything like me, that goal seems so far away that some days I doesn’t even seem reachable. So, instead of having one massive goal give yourself smaller, more manageable ones. 

Having reasonable and attainable goals will keep you motivated and make you WANT to reach the next one. Sometimes it feels like it takes forever to reach that 500th word, but other days I surpass it and keep right on typing. Even Stephen King can’t write a novel in a day but he can (and does) punch out a few hundred words each day. 

Set yourself a goal: a page a day, 500 words a day it doesn’t matter. But whatever it is, stick to it no matter what. So, finish reading this silly blog, pull up your project and start typing. They don’t have to be good words; they just have to be words.

Because if you don’t take your writing seriously no one else will.

Now go write.

Josh