Didn’t update my 70 Days of Sweat progress yesterday…
50250 / 100000 words. 50% done!
line of the day: I’d fainted twice in my life, and this didn’t feel like that, the gray-red haze taking over my vision, the ringing in my ears.
Bad headache today, but I wanted to say this — the only ONE TWU WAY in writing is to sit your butt down and write. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a pompous git. You write. And write some more. That’s the only way to do it.
All the rest is commentary and opinion (and we all know about opinions, don’t we?)
Opinions are great. But that’s all they are. They’re not carved in stone, secret handshakes or guarantees. There are people who will try to lecture you about all the technical aspects of writing and impress you with their knowledge about things like black moments and story arcs and they’ll rattle off a laundry list of shoulds and must-dos…but really…in the end, what it comes down to is something simple.
Knowing about a black moment or resolution or what HEA means and that they’re important to the story is fine. But none of that will write your story for you, and it surely won’t guarantee that it makes it GOOD. If knowing that you need 1,2,3 and X,Y,Z to create a story is what works for you, FABULOUS! Go to it! But if you’re going down a checklist because someone told you the only way to write a story is to have X love scenes and a black moment by page Y and you absolutely MUSTMUSTMUST have this, that or the other in order for your story to be any good…well, hey, whatever. It’s your life. It’s your book. And I’m not saying that it’s not important to know what you’re doing with your book, or where it’s going, but I think you do yourself a huge disservice if you need a checklist in order to write — if without that checklist you can’t manage to put the words down.
It’s my OPINION (remember what we all know about those) that anyone who tries to tell you HOW you should write and WHAT you should write is a pompous, self absorbed and probably insecure person. Because really, nobody should be able to say “This is what I do, and you must do it the way I do it, or you are wrong. And more than that, you suck.”
I can tell you what I do, and if you want to try it, hey. Good. If you find it doesn’t work, or if the idea of writing sequentially but leaving spaces to add stuff later (which is what I sometimes do) drives you nuts, then don’t do it. I’m not saying and would never say that I have the one true way for everyone. I only have the one (or more than one) true way for me.
There are tons of experts out there and writing books and advice, and you know what? Great. Read them. Find what works for you. Some of that stuff will be great for you. Some won’t. But the bottom line is, NOBODY out there, and I don’t care who it is, can give you the magic key and say if you do this their way, you’re going to write a great book. Or that if you don’t do it their way, your book will fail.
You can spell it all right and use proper grammar and throw in every single “acceptable” writing convention and you could still write a wall-banger. And while I will concede that without good spelling and proper grammar and some basic storytelling techniques like beginning, middle and satisfactory end that your book won’t be much good…well, I guess it’s easier to figure out what will make a book bad than make it good.
You can’t write a good book unless you write it. Period.
And that’s my pompous and self-absorbed advice to you. All the rest is details and commentary. ;)
M
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