Do You Have a Book in You?

Beginning writers often say they have a book inside them. Well, if they ever expect it to get published, they had better get it out. For many people, the epitome of being a writer is writing books. And although aspiring to be an author is a noble pursuit, it’s not all there is to a writing career.

When writing a book, most writers begin by doing just that. They bury themselves in researching their topic or story and spend months, if not years, writing about it. Sounds logical, doesn’t it? But how many of them actually get their book published?

In general, most people feel they have something so important to say that every publisher will want to publish their book and every reader will run out to buy it. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

This attitude of self-importance originates way back in school—as far back as first grade. Most teachers don’t mean to instill this in their students, it sort of happens through a process of educational osmosis. The teachers had it instilled in them by their teachers in a never-ending educational process. So what is a book writer to do? Market research.



Whether you plan to write a non-fiction or fiction book, it pays to take a look at the market for your idea—not your book. Take a trip to a good bookstore and browse through the books on your topic. This will tell you what’s being sold. Remember, most of the books on the shop’s shelves originated at least two years prior to you seeing them. Now stroll over to the sale tables. The books on these tables are remainders—leftovers that didn’t sell during the book’s most recent run. Many may be terrific, but for some reason didn’t hit the mark. Take notes, being sure to nor publishers names.

Next surf on over to Amazon.com, the world’s greatest book depository. Search for books on your topic. Amazon has practically everything in print. Do the same at their competitor, Barnes and Noble’s Web site. Take more notes, again being careful to note the names of publishers.



After all this research, review your notes and draw some conclusions about how viable your topic really is. Generally, too many books on your topic means the market is overloaded. Too few often means not enough readers are interested or the topic hasn’t been explored to any great degree by writers.

Armed with your conclusions, you’re ready to proceed with your book, modifying the topic to reflect market trends. It’s important to note that you shouldn’t cater to your topic’s market but be driven by it. Doing so will greatly enhance your chance of publication.

And remember, it’s not the book that makes you a writer, but what you have to say in it.

Learn more about me on my Web site, Writing at Its Best, and on my Facebook Page.

A World Without Readers

What would writers do without readers? As the old saying goes, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it fall, did it really fall?” “If words appear on a page and no one reads them do they really exist?

Well, yes. Unlike the trees in the forest, books in libraries all over the world contain the words of thousands of writers. But if no one reads them, what good are they?

Words are a writer’s stock in trade, but many beginning writers seem to think that just the act of writing is enough. To complete the communication process, all writing needs to be read.

It used to be that writers were limited to the printed page. If you wanted more than one person to read your work, you had to get it published. Competition in the publication arena is tough, so beginning writers had to spend much of their time pitching story ideas to editors. And while this is still a big part of the market, there are lots of other possibilities. And as the slogan for Mastercard says, “Master the Possibilities.”

Besides print publishing there are lots of other venues where readers can read your work. However, it’s important to understand what type of reader you’ll find in each. Don’t go looking to readers to provide criticism, constructive or otherwise. You should leave that to other writers—people who know writing.

The average reader reads for enjoyment or information. They don’t read to give feedback to the writer. In fact, most people don’t read in detail. Writers, on the other hand, should know how to read like a writer.

So it’s important to know your readers. Let’s say you post something you wrote on Facebook. People generally use Facebook as a quick way to catch up on what’s happening with their friends, as well as people they don’t know—Facebook calls these people “friends,” also. If you post an article or a very short story in the Notes Section of your Facebook page, chances are that very few people will read it. You could post it directly, but even if you do, most people will just skip over it.

Posting a piece of your writing on a writing Web site or creating a site of your own will guarantee that you get the most readers. Blogs are a good example of this. But readers won’t flock to your site or blog just because you wrote it. You have to promote it. Now this is where Facebook can help. By creating a post that includes a link to your article or short story, readers, many of them accessing Facebook from their smartphones will probably take the time to go there and read—or at least skim over—what you wrote. Blogging programs, like Google’s free Blogger, allow readers to post comments.

By devoting a little time to promoting yourself and your writing on social media—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.—you’ll be surprised how many readers you can attract from all over the world.

A publisher printed 5,000 copies of a writer’s book, of which only 3,500 sold. That doesn’t necessarily mean that 3,500 readers read the entire book. Some people stop reading after the first chapter. That same writer created a Web site on which he posts articles in his field of interest and now the site gets over 17,000 readers a month. It’s as simple as doing the math. In fact, more people read writing of all kinds online than all the books put together.

So remember, a writer without readers is like a musician without listeners, a teacher without students, a garbage collector without trash. Knowing that someone will be reading what you write will motivate you to write more. Too many beginning writers keep journals in which they're both the writer and reader--the only reader. To be successful as a writer, it's important to write for the reader, not for yourself. And the more readers, the better.

To read more of my articles and book excerpts, please visit my Web site. And to read more articles on freelance writing, grammar, and marketing, go to Writer's Corner.

Organization is Paramount

Readers see only the words on the printed page or screen. They have no idea of all the words that pile up to get those particular words in front of them. While some people think writers pull their ideas and words only out of their heads, most writing requires research—and lots of it—as well as draft upon draft. All this research and drafts must be kept in order to keep any writer from going insane.

To be a success as a writer, you have to be organized. Have you ever been in someone’s office and all the desks are buried in piles of paper? While those who work in that office most likely know what’s what, any new employee or some hired to take over while another is out sick may find the whole mess daunting. Without organization, production slows or even worse ceases.

When computers first came on the scene, manufacturers said they would lead to a paperless society. Obviously, they didn’t mean writers. In fact, that really hasn’t happened and probably never will. There are some things that just can’t be digitized.

If you haven’t done so already, you need to get organized. Many writers wait until a slow period to do this, but somehow that slow period never seems to materialize, so they just keep piling new material on top of old. Sooner or later, it’s almost impossible to find anything.

Back in the day—whenever that was—people used filing cabinets. But unless you have endless space, they’re only a temporary solution, good for newer material at best. So where do you put your archives. Big businesses have large warehouses in which they store their archive files. Or the hire another company whose business is storage to do that for them. Oh, but you say that today most of your files are electronic and you can use the Cloud. That’s all fine and dandy for computer files, but you can’t store any paper on the Cloud.

Manila folders have long been the basis for a business’s filing system. They worked back in the day and they work today. You should create a file folder for every writing project. For those projects that are big, like books, you’ll need multiple file folders and eventually a file box to store them in.

When writing a book, for example, you should create a separate file folder for each chapter, plus extra ones for appendices and the general concept and outline. You could place all your research notes for each chapter in the chapter’s folder or you could use additional folders to store them.In the end, you’ll amass a good amount of material, some of which you may want to use again.

Each article and book chapter should also have corresponding computer files—several for research, one for the rough draft, and successive additional ones for revisions and rewrites, each numbered in succeeding order.

In addition to all your writing files, you may also have a well-organized library of several hundred books. While you may use most of these for reference in researching your work. But you may also keep books you’ve read and might read again.

Go to any office supply store or search them online and you’ll discover a myriad of items designed to help you get organized. Stackable trays, for instance, look like they would be good to get clutter off your desk. But in fact they can produce more clutter. While you may plan to use them for sorting current material, they tend to get clogged up, so you’ll need to periodically  clean them out.

It’s also a good idea to keep everything you use most often closest to your desk. This can be article folders, notes, a scheduling book, etc. You may also want to keep a calendar with automatic reminder alerts on your computer. Paper calendars can’t remind you of a deadline or appointment with a sound or by flashing on a screen. If you use a smartphone, you can even set up the reminders in your phone.

To read more of my articles and book excerpts, please visit my Web site. And to read more articles on freelance writing, grammar, and marketing, go to Writer's Corner.

Those Pesky $25 Words

Inflation has a way of affecting everything eventually. Prices have gone up on many things you buy today. The same can be said for those writers who continue to challenge their readers by using words their readers don’t know instead of simple, everyday words to express themselves.

As little as 10 years ago, those big words were only worth $20, but the price has gone up. With the the advent of social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, more and more people are turning to plainer words to express themselves. Part of this is the use of their thumbs to peck out the words of their posts on their smartphones.

It doesn’t matter how extensive a vocabulary you have. What matters is that you clearly express what you’re trying to say to your readers. Unfortunately, that’s what wasn’t encouraged in school, and especially not in college. Academics pride themselves in sounding learned. But to be a good writer, it’s not necessary to show readers how intelligent or learned you are. It’s more important to take complex concepts and write about them clearly so all your readers will understand.

By using complex words, readers miss the nuances and only get a basic understanding of the subject matter.

A good example is a travel book entitled Mirrors of the Unseen by Jason Elliot that tells about his journeys through Iran. The majority of readers haven’t been to Iran, so they probably only know about it through the T.V. news. He writes beautifully about the culture, with its mosques and bazaars. Unfortunately, all this beauty comes at a price. It seems Elliot, like so many writers, assumes all readers have his extensive vocabulary.

In contrast is a book entitled Antarctica by Gabrielle Walker that’s filled with descriptions of complicated scientific experiments and research written against the background of the stark beauty of the world’s southernmost frozen continent. This writer, on the other hand, uses plain language and makes it seem as if her readers were traveling around with her. She presents an in-depth view of Antarctica that draws her readers in and keeps them turning the pages.

Go back and look at books you’ve read. You’ll notice that the ones you enjoyed the most probably had the most conversational language. Re-read portions of the books you liked the most and see if you can discover the essence of the author’s writing style.

Back in the early days of personal computers, there was a simple software program called PC Style. This little program would analyze a piece of writing for its use of personal pronouns, word length, dynamic verbs, concrete nouns, sentence length, etc. By running several paragraphs of a book through it, you could immediately analyze the writing style. Then by doing the same to a piece of your own writing, you could immediately see where it was lacking.  Unfortunately, that program hasn’t been available for a long time. And while some of today’s word processing programs try to do the same, they just don’t compare to it.

You can use the Find and Replace feature in your word processing program to search for personal pronouns—I, you, we, they, he, and she—for example. These are the words that make writing conversational. These are the words that make readers feel as if they’re part of the story.

You can also do a manual search for complex words—but don’t do this immediately after finishing a piece. Wait a day or two so your writing will appear fresh to your mind. When you find words that you are either long or complex, put them in bold type so you can easily find them and then use the thesaurus in your word processing program to find plainer words that mean the same thing. Do the same for long sentences. Try to keep your sentences shorter and avoid using semi-colons which tend to string them out.

Once you see the difference all this makes to your writing, you’ll never want to go back to using those pesky $25 words.  Instead, you’ll get used to using $1, $5, and $10 words to enlighten your readers about your subject. This blog is a good example.

To read more of my articles and book excerpts, please visit my Web site. And to read more articles on freelance writing, grammar, and marketing, go to Writer's Corner.

                               


       

What Makes a Great Nonfiction Book?

You’ve been writing articles for a while and would like to step up to writing a nonfiction book. While there’s a lot of information out there about writing novels, there isn’t as much about writing good nonfiction books.

Remember the Bob Newhardt Show on which the main character, a writer of nonfiction how-to books,  ran a bed and breakfast in Vermont with his wife.  The subjects of his books would have been great for insomniacs, but not all nonfiction books make readers yawn.

Today, nonfiction books have a lot of competition from the Internet. Readers can find all sorts of information online, so why would they want to purchase a book—even an inexpensive ebook—when they can search for what they need. The truth is that most people don’t really know how to search the Web, so they still need nonfiction books to give them information in an orderly manner.

It’s how a writer assembles the facts in a book that makes all the difference. The key to nonfiction book success is information synthesis. To make sure a nonfiction book is worth paying for, you need to bring your own fresh a perspective to the subject matter—a perspective that readers can’t find online. What’s more important today is your ability to synthesize the facts and give them context and perspective.

First and foremost, make sure your nonfiction book has a strong focus. It’s better to limit the focus than ramble all over the place. To do this, you’ll need to think out your book before doing research. You’ll most likely find a mess of facts on your subject. How you make sense of those facts is the key.

To make sense of all the information you collect, you need to give meaning to it. And that requires a point of view. What are your feelings about your subject? Who will be telling your story? Except for memoirs, most nonfiction books are told from another person’s perspective.

Offer insight by weaving current events and trends into the context of your book, even if it’s historical in nature.

Present the bigger picture about your subject so that readers will be able to make more global sense of it.  And if your subject is more complicated, simplify it for the average reader. Don’t talk down to your readers to prove how smart you are. Instead, write in plain language and explain difficult words or phrases.

A nonfiction book goes deeper than an article or blog on a subject. While the shortness of both only gives the reader the basics, a book can delve deeper into a subject. Take a common theme or one that has been written about heavily in the past and give it a fresh approach.

Above all, make sure your nonfiction book gives readers information in a way they won’t find it anywhere else, in a way only you can deliver it.
   
   

So You’ve Decided to Retire, Now What?

For whatever reason, you’ve decided to retire from the daily grind of stress of freelance writing. Perhaps through no fault of your own. You’ve lost all your paying markets. Maybe, freelance writing has become too demanding. Maybe you just need a change. Whatever your reason, you’ve got to think ahead before making the leap, just like y oui did—or at least should have done—when you firest started freelancing.

Before doing anything else, you should take a look at your inventory, both your published work and the research you did to write it.

If you specialized in a particular subject, you may have enough information, or at least a good bit, to write a book on one aspect of your specialty. You may have been thinking about this for a while but never had the time to pursue it.

Opportunities for publishing go far beyond commercial publishers. While you could pursue the more traditional route, you can also look into self-publishing, either as a print-on-demand book or an ebook. Either of these will work well, if you already have a target audience.

You might also consider writing a blog. This shouldn’t be one in which you pour out your personal opinions, but a more professional one that appears online regularly and explores a particular subject.

Your blog could be based on your previous speciality or you could explore a subject is that is near and dear to your heart. The possibilities are endless.

And if you’re really ambitious you might try publishing a magazine—not one that will drain your financial resources but an online e-zine that mostly requires just time and energy. More and more people are reading about things online, whether through tablets like Kindles or Nooks or on their smartphones. An online magazine is just another extension of a blog.

You can pursue any of the above while still keeping your hand in commercial publishing, just not as much.

One thing you must do in order to enjoy your retirement years is to keep a flexible schedule, one that allows you to write at whatever level you wish but also allows you to pursue recreation and travel.
                           

Beyond Words

Words are the building blocks of writing. They’re what pulls readers in and keeps them there. But having a great vocabulary isn’t all there is to writing. In fact, it’s only half the story. Besides being able to choose the right words, a writer must also know how to assemble them to communicate a clear message. And part of that is mastering the language in which the writer is writing—in this case English.

The use of sentence structure, punctuation, and capitalization is called English usage. Grammar is part of it. As a writer, you cannot ignore grammar. Too many beginning writers today think that it’s the editor’s job to correct their sentence structure and grammatical mistakes. And while an editor may correct the occasional grammatical error, his or her main job is to make sure sentences read correctly and that the content is clear. This is the job of the copy editor.

If you don’t make sure that your final draft is free of grammatical mistakes, then you’re not much of a writer. And while good editors will make sure to point out all of your grammatical errors, it will take away from the job they were meant to do. Plus it will cost you since the more time an editor spends on your work, the more an independent editor has to charge.

If you send your work to a publisher, he or she will assign an editor to work with you. But before an editor even begins to edit a book manuscript, for example, a reader will be assigned to read it. If there are lots of English usage and grammatical mistakes, your manuscript will be rejected.

If you have a problem with sentence structure, punctuation, and the like, you’ll need to do something about it before you go on. A professional writer is a not only a wordsmith but has honed writing skills. They’re the tools of this profession.

Perhaps you felt that grammar and such were unimportant as you sat in English class bored to tears as the teach went on about participles and gerunds, for example. After all, you want to write—to create interesting stories. Why do you need to concern yourself with such mundane things. What you didn’t realize at the time was that those mundane things would become your everyday tools to help you create those interesting stories.

So where can you get help? You could sign up for a basic writing class at a local adult evening school. Or you could buy yourself a book on English usage. You can easily find a used one at a local library book sale or get it online at Amazon.com. You can also improve your English usage and grammar online.

Begin with the article “14 Must-Visit Websites to Learn English Grammar Online.” Then check each one of them out and see which offers the best resources for you. Another great site is English Grammar 101. There are whole lot more to choose from, so take your pick.  Use the exercises provided to improve your writing skills. And before you know it, you’ll be writing like a pro because isn’t that what you want to be—a professional writer. 

Keeping Track of Your Ideas

Ideas are the fuel that keep writers going. These might be for future articles, short stories, plays, non-fiction books, and, yes, even blogs. They can be little bits of information, observations, profiles, or full-blown concepts. Unfortunately, the human brain can’t possibly remember them all. In fact, You can’t remember most of your ideas since they seem to disappear into thin air as fast as they appear. In order to keep ideas ready for when you need them, you’ll have to find a way to record and track them.

Keeping track of your ideas could be as simple as creating a folder in your computer in which you save any little tidbit of information that comes along. You probably can see where this is going. Soon you’ll have a folder full of tidbits but not way to tell one from another. So you create more specific folders and file specific information related to one idea category or another in them. Now you have a bunch of folders with tidbits but still no way to know what’s in each.

A rather simple solution to the folder chaos that is to keep an Idea Book–well, actually, a series of Idea Books. This notebook will become your most valuable possession—it will be what keeps you writing.

To start an idea book you’ll have to go low-tech—a standard 6x9½-inch, spiral-bound notebook will do nicely. You can either opt for a thicker one or several thinner ones. If you can find one with built-in tab dividers, all the better. If not, pick up a packet of divider tabs that you can stick some of the pages to create your own sections.

This large idea book will become your main depository for your ideas, but you may also want to keep a small, 3x5-inch, spiral-bound notebook that you carry with you. Then you can periodically skim over the ideas in it and transfer them to your larger Idea Book.

So exactly what should put into your Idea Book? First and foremost are lists of ideas on  particular topics. This is where the dividers come in handy. Perhaps you write a regular blog. You can’t come up with topics off the top of your head without some research. Your Idea Book will allow you to keep an ongoing list of ideas for future blogs. As soon as you finish writing your latest blog, you should take a look at the list and decide which topic you’re going to tackle next. This is also a good place to keep a log of all the blogs you’ve written so far in the order you’ve written them, so that you don’t repeat yourself.

Your Idea Book is also a good place to focus your ideas. Sometimes an idea is way too broad, so you may have to focus it down to its essence. It’s in this process that you can play around with variations on the topic—different slants, possible fiction adaptations, even Web page ideas. Most writers never write about a topic just once, and neither should you.

Another part of any good Idea Book is the resource section. Here, you should jot down information about library books you’ve borrowed in case you need to borrow them again and the addresses of Web sites that contain pertinent information about subjects I write about.

Lastly, you can use your Idea Book to brainstorm possible markets for your work.  This might be just a list of places where you can post your blog. If you write for magazines and such, you may also want to produce diagrams that help you figure out who will be reading your pieces and which markets cater to them.

The techies out there may argue why not use a tablet or phone to do the same thing.
While you can handle some of your items in your idea book—lists of ideas, Web sites, library books, and such—brainstorming, focusing, and figuring out who will read your work is best done on paper. Perhaps you can figure a way to combine the two.

For the digital side of things, you’ll most likely have to use an app, otherwise you’ll be using several programs to do all that an Idea Book entails. One that really works well is Evernote. This little program allows you to create messages to yourself, as well as to-do lists, but it also goes beyond what you can do with just a standard paper Idea Book.

With Evernote or some app like it, you can also clip parts or entire articles from the Internet and save them to it. Then you can go back later and read them. It also allows you to create categories in which to save information. With the free version, you can only save to two digital devices—a desktop and laptop, laptop and phone, laptop and tablet. But you can go for the deluxe paid version which allows much more flexibility.

You can certainly use your smartphone to record ideas on the go, as well as saving Web sites for review later.

Choose whatever works for your situation and digital expertise level. Whatever you do, get your ideas organized. And you’ll keep writing forever.

 

What Makes a Great Writer?

You’d think that to be a great writer, you have to be a master wordsmith. While that certainly helps, it takes a bit more to put you at the top and keep you there.

Someone who writes a bestselling book the first time out of the gate may be a good writer, especially if the book is a hit. But it could be the subject matter that sells the book—plus some really great editing.  Having one hit book doesn’t make anyone a great writer, just a lucky one. In fact, can this person even be considered a writer at all or just someone who’s incredibly lucky. Great writing comes with experience and lots and lots of writing. The old saying, “Practice makes perfect,” isn’t far from wrong.

Take Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. Some claim her book to be one of the best of all time, but what else did she write? She just happened to write about racism—a really hot topic just about any time—and she did it well. But then nothing for years. Recently, she tried to resurrect one of her old manuscripts, but it more or less fizzled. So in the greater world of writing, she might be considered to have produced a “happy accident,” but she’s not necessarily a great writer.

Then look at writers like Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Ann Rice, and John Updike, and you’ll notice they all have one thing in common—they all have written about various subjects equally well.

Another thing these writers have in common is that they aren’t only aware of the world around them, they scrutinize it’s every detail. So many things occur every day that the number of subjects and even topics within a subject category is almost endless. All of the above writers most likely had so many ideas they didn’t know which to do first.

Prolific writers are students of the world around them. They pay attention to everything because stories worth their time are happening all the time around them. The difference is that they see details others don’t. Their gift is seeing beyond the obvious.

Great writers also know how to fight resistance—that invisible force that works against creativity, production, and progress.  Resistance is that little negative voice that tells you that you can do it tomorrow or that you’re not that good anyway. Resistance is the enemy to anyone who strives to be great. Successful writers are aware of this and know how to fight it.

Creating writing is hard work. Many people who think they want to be writers just don’t make it because they don’t realize just how hard it is. There are probably more half-written novels out there than completed ones.  To be a great writer, you’ll have to keep your head down and move forward regardless of the odds.

If you say no to new ideas, you probably haven’t taken many risks. And writing is a risky business.  Too many beginning writers don’t like to see other succeed where they have failed. And when someone does succeed, they usually don’t know all the details. A great writer believes his or her ideas are possible whether they are or not.

People often see great writers as delusional or egotistic. But it’s really seeing the world for what it could be and expecting nothing less than passion and belief in what they are doing that makes them great.

Do Beginning Writers Need an Agent?

People generally look for the easy way out on most things. And writers, especially beginners, are no different. So it’s no surprise that many beginning writers believe that in order to succeed in publishing, they have to have a literary agent.

The publishing world is a mess at the moment. It’s no wonder beginners feel that they need help to navigate the confusing maze of publishers and editors. But does having an agent guarantee they’ll get published? Not necessarily.

In the first place, many literary agents won’t even consider taking on beginning writers. And those that do usually are a bit shady in their dealings and take advantage of a beginners ignorance in business matters.

At this point, it might be a good idea to find out just what an agent does for a writer. Essentially, when a writer teams up with an agent, he or she is basically outsourcing the marketing and promotion of their work. A highly successful writer, usually those writing and publishing books, needs someone like this to help with promotional chores. This leaves more time for them to write. But a beginning writer has not such demands on their time. Many beginners usually have just written their first book and are desperate to get it published. They see an agent as an express method of accomplishing this.

A big problem with many agents is that they have a stable of editors and publishers with whom they have close relationships. They rely on these people to place their clients’ work because of past successes. They do this at the exclusion of any other publisher that could possibly want to consider a book, for example.

One writer’s agent sent a book proposal around to 28 different publishers. Each politely declined to publish the book. When he had exhausted his list of publishers with whom he had relationships, the agent stopped sending out the proposal. In the end, the writer never did get his book published.

Another writer worked successfully on a couple of travel books through an agent and a particular publisher. The agent took a hefty 15 percent of his advance as her fee. After completing these two books, the writer decided to try his hand at negotiating himself. He got substantially more money than the agent was able to get him and didn’t have to pay her the 15 percent fee. The writer went on to publish two more books with the same publisher and had the firm consider two more book ideas.

So it comes down to this. Beginning writers are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to publishing their first book. They have no credentials and think that having an agent will miraculously give them some. Also, agent generally don’t promote articles or short stories. The low fees paid for them can’t compare with the advances paid for books. And, let’s face it, 15 percent of not much money isn’t a whole lot.

Next Week: Some tips on writer/agent negotiations.

Some Truths About Book Publishing

Any writer who has attempted to write a book knows how much work goes into it. You work long and hard, then one day you’re holding it in your hands. And even though it came from your deepest core, it’s really got a life all its own.
   
One of the biggest misconceptions you can have when writing a book is that if it’s accepted by a publisher, then it must be good—it must be perfect. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While you conceive the idea, then flesh it out, and finally give it form, a book isn’t complete until it runs through the gauntlet of copy and content editors.

When a publisher accepts a book, it’s just the first step. To market a book, it must be molded so that it fits into the marketplace. Most writers become myopic when writing their books. They don’t see beyond its content while publishers have a much broader view.

Realize that your editor is a professional at making at helping authors put their books into the best possible shape. So you must learn to be open and nondefensive.

Most changes editors request are minor. You think about it and get to it, You’ve been so close to your book that you perhaps didn’t realize that a bit of dialogue sounded flat and unrealistic or that there was a small hole in the plot. If you’re writing a non-fiction book, you may have inadvertently switched the facts or left one out that made the subsequent text not make sense. You shouldn’t feel bad since these things happen to the best of writers. A book is a large project, so it’s only natural that a few things will slip by.

But what happens when your editor asks you to make a major change? Eliminating a major character, putting in a new one, drastically revamping the ending with the resultant alterations to the rest of your story to accommodate it—these are big. If your editor asks for a major change and after thinking it over you agree, you’ve got some work ahead of you. No matter how you feel about it, it’ll make you a better writer.

Just the way a book is a series of chapters, any major change is simply a bunch of minor ones. Approach it that way. Make a list of what you have to do, then do it. If you feel stymied or have serious reservations about the suggested changes, talk it over with your editor. The more open you are with your editor, the better..

But remember that in the end, it’s your book. Give your editor a concrete reason for refusing to make a specific changes. Offer alternatives. Stand your ground but also listen to what your editor has to say. He or she knows the marketplace.

Besides the editor assigned to work with you on your book by the publisher, you’ll also have to deal with copy editors. The great thing about copy editing is seeing your book through the eyes of someone fresh to it. Your copy editor will challenge any grammar and mechanics you’ve missed and suggest small improvements that never would have occurred to you. Copy editors also catch all those embarrassing mistakes.Since you’ve been working on this big project for so long, you’re bound to make a few.

Today, all book editing is done electronically. You send your manuscript into the publisher, and the copy editor sends it back to you digitally marked. All publishers use Microsoft Word to edit, so no matter what word processing program you use to write the book, you must save the text as a Word document before sending it to the publisher. Word features a complete editing subroutine that enables the copy editor to not only mark mistakes and other items but recommend ways to fix them.

Nearly all first-time authors get bogged down thinking that they control their book. For some reason, many think that they’ll have a role in choosing the cover of their book. As stated above, the publisher’s job is to get a book ready for the marketplace and he or she knows what type of cover will work best. Your publisher trusts this job to experts in graphic design. This doesn’t mean every cover will be perfect for every book, but it does mean you should relax and concentrate on what’s inside.

Another mistake beginning authors make is putting the chicken before the proverbial egg. They worry more about whether their book will be reviewed by the New York Times than they do about its content.

In fact, it’s rare for a first-timer to be reviewed in The New York Times—or any other major publication for that matter—so don’t get your hopes up. The only way a top reviewer will even consider your book is if it concerns a controversial topic. A few good low-profile reviews will help your book in the long run. But one really bad top review could kill it.

Bringing Real Characters to Life

You’d think that if you’re writing about real people in a nonfiction piece that it would be easier than making up characters in a fictional short story or novel. Actually, quite the opposite is true. While you have facts about the person to deal with, there are limitations.

Many of the same techniques for writing characters in fiction apply to nonfiction.  Through detail, through gesture, through talk, through close understanding of someone’s life before and after the scope of your story, you make your people vivid in your reader’s mind.

Characters are primary in creative nonfiction, an all-encompassing term covering the personal essays and literary journalism. The chief difference between creative nonfiction and regular nonfiction is that the writer composes the former in scenes with characters just like in fiction. But characters in nonfiction present special problems. While fiction writers base their characters on real people, nonfiction writers usually tell their readers about their characters. The trick is to use the fictional technique of showing, not telling.

When writing nonfiction, much of the work of characterization is done for you. You base your characters on facts, characterization is complete, the family history is in place, the physical description is a given. But that doesn’t make anything easier. The job is merely different. Doing justice to a real person can be difficult because you may have pre-existing biases to that person or their ideas.

Nonfiction readers get to know characters through their actions. But from who’s point of view? It’s all in the moment, all told from a particular point of view. We see the scene—a dark, stormy night off the coast of North Carolina—in the book Shipwrecks and Lost Treasures: Outer Banks, by Bob Brooke. The reader is in the wheelhouse with the captain, Commander George Ryan, and the officer on duty, Lieutenant W.S. French, at 1:00 A.M. as they try to steer the Huron, a converted gunship, through the swirling waters.

        “Hard over,” French shouted to the helmsman. “Leadsman take soundings.” But his orders came too late. The ship swung around toward the beach, heeling over on her port side.
        “What’s out location?, Mr. French?” asked Ryan.
        “I don’t know sir,” French replied.
        “Give the orders for all hands on deck.”
        “Aye, sir.”
        As the mist parted, Commander Ryan finally saw the coastline. “My, God, How did we get here?” he cried.

With just a few words of dialog and some short description, the writer was able to not only establish a time and place, but the military order covering the panic in the voices of the crewmen. From here, the point of view changes as the scene changes to a father and daughter on the shore, desperately trying to find a way to save the sailors.

Once you establish the scene, readers are in a particular time and don’t leave it. What changes is the point of view. Action keeps the scene moving forward.

Often nonfiction writers relate their characters personality characteristics through an as-told-to narrative. This often happens in memoirs where writers use family stories to make their characters come to life. In these, the writer stands back and lets readers draw their own conclusions and make their own judgements.

A character rarely appears fully formed. Readers get to know him or her in bits and pieces scene by scene. You’ll need to will your characters to life by drawing on your unconscious, memory, and imagination until your characters assume a clear form and, with hope, begin to act of their own accord.

This process is inherent to the success of any novel, but it’s also important in nonfiction writing. The key is first to understand what your characters require from you in order to come to life, and then to determine how you can draw on your best available resources to give them what they need.

But what happens if you don’t have all the information you need to flesh out a character in nonfiction? Unlike in fiction, you can’t just make things up. However, you can use your imagination in finding information from other sources.

For instance, let’s say you want your characters to speak but you don’t have access to the exact words of what they said. You can research the same sort of character in similar situations who most likely said something similar. This is exactly what happened in the above example. From captains’ logs of similar shipwreck scenarios, it was possible for the writer to create an exciting, nail-biting scene. He had to do this because Commander Ryan died when his lifeboat overturned and the all was lost, including his log, when the ship sank.

The same goes for how a character dresses. You may find what you need in old photographs from which you describe the type of clothes your characters wore. Similar information may appear in old letters written by a friend or relative of the character about him or her. Remember, you need to find facts about the person to fill out the characterization. Begin with what you know about the person and then do specialized research to fill in any voids in your characterization. You may not need much, just the essence.

Next Week: Characteristics of Compelling Nonfiction Characters

Stop, Look, and Listen

“Stop, Look, and Listen.” Everyone is familiar with these signs at railroad crossings, but those same words can also help you improve your writing.

STOP
Know when to stop. That’s probably the primary thing that separates beginning from seasoned writers. In the beginning, you sometimes feel that when you’re on a roll, you should just keep on going. But learning to know when to stop writing will help you write tighter and avoid rambling.

While it’s important to come to a logical conclusion, it’s just as important to say what you have to say in a compact way. Back in the mid-1990s, writing for the Internet caught many professional writers off guard. Many had been used to writing longer pieces for magazines, but the writing for Web sites required them to write short articles. For many, writing shorter meant working harder because they didn’t have to write as compactly before.

LOOK
When you’re involved in writing an article, story, or book, do you take the time to look at the piece overall? If you try to do that while you’re writing, it can be distracting. Instead, put the piece aside for while. Doing so will give you some distance from it, thus giving your brain time to forget it for a while. Reading over your work at another time gives you some perspective—a chance to see the bigger picture. It’s then and only then that you’ll be able to tell if what you’ve been writing makes sense.

LISTEN
Join a writers’ group and listen to what the other members have to say about your work. It’s important that any group you join has a leader whose skills are more advanced than those of the members of the group. Only in this way will personalities not enter into discussions as much, thus resulting in more honest critiques. Learn to listen to what others have to say about your writing while at the same time learn how to constructively critique others’ work.

Of course, some members of the group may dwell on grammar and such. That’s good, but you also want to encourage feedback about your content, length, and style. The real purpose of joining a writers’ group is to improve each others' writing, not to massage egos.

Also, listen to authors by reading their work. Learn to read like a writer, being on the lookout for techniques that you can use in your own work. Really listen to the way another writer tells his or her story or the way they delve into a subject in their article. Most people read an article, for instance, without looking at who wrote it. You need to be aware of the writer and be on the lookout for other works written by the same person.

Pay attention to how other writing sounds. If you like the way a piece reads, read a section out loud to yourself or into a digital recorder. Then listen to it several times to pick up its rhythm and style. Really listen then try it in your own writing.

You might also consider taking a writing class to help improve your skills. If you’re just starting out, take a good foundation course in creative writing, for example.  But if you’ve been writing a while, take classes focused on the type of writing you do. An alternative is to attend writers’ workshops and conferences.

When you finally get your big break, and an editor wants to work with you, be sure you’re ready to listen. Don’t be defensive. Don’t be argumentative. Listen. Listen to his or her feedback. Most editors have enough experience under their belt to know a good writer when they come across one. Even if your work is a bit rough around the edges, a good editor will work with you to improve it. They want what’s best for you and your story, and good editors always have a vision for what your article, story, or book can really be. Listen to them and let them guide you.

What It Takes to Write a Non-fiction Book

Beginning writers look up at that ivory pedestal and wish that some day they could be standing on it. But most of the time the writer that’s currently standing on it high above the masses is the one who writes fiction. Why is that?

Perhaps it’s because the majority of what a novelist writes comes from his or her imagination. Readers respect that. But those who write non-fiction books work just as hard—perhaps harder—since they deal in facts and can’t embellish those facts to enhance their story.

So what does it take to write a non-fiction book? It takes commitment and lots and lots of research. The subject you chose for your book has to be one that will appeal to a wide variety of readers. While other writers may have written about it before, you have to choose the right angle that will make your chosen subject seem new and exciting. In non-fiction, that’s known as a slant.

No matter how much you want to write a book, don’t start out doing that. First, your writing skills may not be up to it, and second, your organizational skills won’t certainly be up to it. And if you haven’t written and published articles, on the subject of your book or not, you don’t have the credibility publishers look for.

So you say, forget the publishers, I’m going to publish my book myself electronically. That’s all well and good, but unless you have a reputation as a writer, why should readers buy it. And after all the work you’ll be putting into it, you certainly want them to do that.

Writing a book direct from the starting gate is like going from grammar school to graduate school in one leap. Chances are highly likely that you won’t finish it, and even if you do, it won’t sell. You need to be comfortable with the writing process before you tackle a book. You should be sure you can actually write well enough to be able to focus your attention on other things, such as organization, process, and deadlines and not have to worry about your writing. .

Before you begin to write your book, you’ll need to plan it out. Writers call this blocking. While you may want to start with an informal list of what you want to include, eventually you’ll need to create a table of contents. The table of contents becomes your guide while writing your book.

But before you can even begin putting together your table of contents, you’ll need to do quite a lot of research. You’ll need to do two types of research—marketing research and content research. The first looks into what other books have bene published on your subject and when. The second digs for the facts you’ll need to produce the content of your book. Both are equally important.

If there are lots of books published on your subject, it may not do well because of a flooded market. If there aren’t any or few books published on your subject, it may also not do well because readers may not be interested in it. So you have to look for a happy medium.

Researching the content of your book is a big job that takes a great deal of organization. You may choose to do all the research and then write your book, or you may research one chapter at a time. Whatever you do, use your table of contents to help keep things organized.

If you’ve chosen to self-publish your book and before you start to write it, set a drop-dead deadline—one that you can work with—and work backwards to the present time. Include editing, copy editing, revisions, and extra time for the unknown and unknowable. If there isn’t enough time between then and now, change the final deadline or publication date

If you choose the publisher route, you’ll begin by composing a query letter and sending it out to publishers, that through your marketing research, you believe may show an interest in it. In this case, you won’t begin to write your book until you get a firm commitment from a publisher who will also set the deadline for completion of the manuscript.

There are two ways to write your book. The first is in chronological order, beginning with Chapter One. The second is to write it out of order, beginning with the easiest chapter first and working ahead to the more complex ones.

Edit each chapter as you finish it. This is much easier than waiting to edit your whole book. As you write, be honest with yourself. If you get that little pang of doubt, listen to it. Don’t con yourself and don’t fall in love with your own pearls on paper. On the other hand, don’t polish until you take all the luster off the page. Know when to stop editing.

However, the editing you do is to get the manuscript in the best condition possible. Even though you’ve edited your work, you’ll need to find a professional editor to edit it if you’re self-publishing. Otherwise, you’ll send it to the publisher who will assign an in-house editor to work with you on the final copy edit. Writing your book is only half of the process.

Unless your publisher gives you a short deadline, figure out how much time you’ll need to complete your book and plan accordingly. Writing can’t be rushed. You’re not trying to make the early edition. You’re writing a book, perhaps your first. Between writing times, do something other than think about the book. Leave space between work sessions. Take a day to review research, and then sleep on it. Write, reread, leave it alone, and sleep on it. Remember, your mind will be working on your book while you’re sleeping.

It’s important not to overdo it when writing your book. Don’t work for hours on end. Take frequent breaks and spread the work out over days and weeks. Also, eat well, sleep as much as you need to, stretch frequently, and exercise. This is work. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

You’ve Got a Site—Now What?

Okay, so you’ve designed your writer’s Web site or had it done for you, now what? Many people think if they design and launch a Web site that visitors will come. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, it usually takes at least three and sometimes six months for visitors to find your site. Why is that and what can you do about it?

The answer to the first question is simple. In order for people to find your site, they have to see it in search listings, but getting into search listings is no easy task. The extraordinarily long time it takes for your site to appear in search engine results is because it takes time for search engines robots to crawl your site. The next time you view your new site, imagine little things moving all over your pages. They’re recording keywords in the content and what the content is about. Then they send that information back to the mother ship, let’s say Google, so the search engine can create a listing that appears in visitors’ searches.

But once search engines have found your site, things will change and visitors will start going to it. However, by promoting your site through Email and social media, you can get visitors to go to it even before search engines list it. It’s imperative to promote your site from the very first minute it appears online. And don’t stop—ever.

In this era of social media, it’s important to let readers know where else you’re active online. After you get your Web site up and running, be sure to create a professional Facebook Page. This isn’t the personal page that most people use, but one that shows you as a writing professional. It’s the type of page people “like.” You’ll have to work to get people to like your new Facebook Page, and this could take some time. But once you’ve created your Facebook Page, you’ll be able to download the code for widgets to put on your site, so that visitors can go to it.

Unlike your Web site, your Facebook Page is more to show fans what’s happening currently in your professional career. Don’t, as so many book authors do, create a Facebook Page for your book. Rather create a page for your writing business on which you can showcase your writing, no matter what kind you do.

If you have notable media coverage, good reviews, positive testimonials, or a significant following on a social media site, such as Instagram or Twitter, tell your site visitors about it. In fact, you may want to create a media page on which you post press releases and links to articles and reviews about you and your work. Doing so will show visitors that spending time on your site is worth it.

Give your visitors a reason to come back. Just telling them you’re a writer isn’t enough. Just promoting your book isn’t enough. You must offer them something. Don’t just post articles or stories you’ve written. Instead, choose them for subject matter that may be interesting to your readers, so they’re then actively reading your work. Inform and entertain them.

If visitors reach the bottom of a page on your site, that means they’re very engaged and will likely go to other pages on your site. Use this as an opportunity to add a call to action, such as an email newsletter sign-up or the sale of your book. If you don’t engage them first, you won’t sell anything.

To maximize the effectiveness of your website, install a site analytics tool. Google Analytics is a free and popular tool available to anyone with a Google account. Once you install it, you can  immediately collect data on your Web site traffic and visitors. It will also tell you which pages of your site are the most popular. This will help you plan for future additions to your site. And most importantly, your site statistics will tell you how people get to and use your site.

About 20–30 percent of your site traffic will come from mobile or tablet devices. Is your site optimized for those visits? While it’s important to keep cell phone users in mind, don’t design your site specifically for them, or for that matter, for any particular Web browser. Design your site for the majority of users. Owners of too many sites today are redesigning their sites just for cell phone use which takes away from how they look on a wide computer screen.

Remember, you don’t have to launch and perfect everything on your site at once. In fact, doing so is against the grain of the digital era. Start small but smart, and build your skills and presence over time. Customize and add more complex functionality as you get more comfortable with the technology, and as you develop specific skills and career goals that require the investment.

If at First You Don't Succeed

For most writers, writing a first draft of an article, short story, or book is still a lot better than going to the dentist. For some, cleaning the bathroom or folding the laundry is a lot less stressful. With a first draft you'll start from nothing and creating something, but not the finished product.

Before writing the first draft of any piece of writing, it pays to block out your idea. It makes writing an article or short story a lot simpler. But just because you block out the structure of your piece of writing, that doesn’t mean you have to stick to it religiously. Blocking helps you to think through some questions before you begin writing. If you’re writing fiction, the story, itself, can take an unexpected turn. That can change everything. Sometimes, it’s a dead end, and you’ll have your blocking to fall back on.

Think of your first draft as the clay, not the sculpture. You start out with a hunk of clay that you mold over and over. Much of it will be messy and unrefined. But don’t worry about that now. Your job is simply to get from the beginning to the end. Put down everything that comes into your head. Don’t worry about grammar. You’ll be able to correct any problems later. For now, get everything out.

Remember, no one but you should read your first draft.  Don’t show your first draft to anyone. Asking someone else to read it would be pointless and embarrassing. If you don’t know what your first draft needs, then by all means, ask for help. But just because you don’t show your first draft to anyone else doesn’t mean you can’t discuss your idea with a close friend or colleague if need be. Doing so might give you a different take on your subject.

Don’t stop to do research.  Depending on the type of writing you do, completing all your research before you start may be necessary, such as in writing an article. But if you’re writing a piece of fiction or even a book, it may be better to do some basic research—just enough to get you started—rather than doing all of it. Instead, you can insert words in uppercase letters in your first drafts to indicate where details need to be filled in later.

Set a deadline. It pays to set a deadline for your first draft. Otherwise you may be writing it for much longer than you planned. You really can't move on until you complete your first draft. And without anyone to prod you, you may not even get your first draft finished. Don’t start your next draft as soon as you finish your first one. Give it some time to rest. In the meantime, do some work on another project. When you come back to it, you’ll see the problems immediately.

There’s No Guarantee of Success

Someone once said that success is one of those things that’s often impossible to predict unless you know you have it in the bag. With success, there are no guarantees.

Before you can be successful, you have to figure out just what success is for you. How do you define it? As a writer, is it getting published? And after you’re published, then what? When you first started out in writing—or if you’re just starting out—your main goal was to get published. You probably thought that getting published would prove to others, and more importantly to yourself, that you had made it as a writer. Unfortunately, one article, one short story, or one book does not a writer make.

So to truly understand what it means to be successful as a writer, you first have to understand what it means to be a writer. When someone asks you what you do, can you confidently say you’re a writer? You can and should do that only if you have a volume of work under your belt. Too many beginning writers are more enamored at the thought of being a writer—perhaps to impress your friends and family—than of actually being a writer.

Success can be and often is fleeting. There are those big successes in life, such as obtaining a college degree or raising a family, and there are those little successes, such as finishing the first draft of a novel. All of them are accomplishments. So to get a true handle on success, you must take into consideration all of your accomplishments. There’s something to be said for being an accomplished writer. That’s a person who has written and published a variety of things often in more than one subject area.

Even if you’re one of those lucky writers who publishes a book the first time out of the gate, having the book published, in essence printed, is no guarantee of success. In this case, your success amounts to how many copies of that book sold. And, even more important, how many copies have been read. Unfortunately, statistics only exist for how many copies sold, enabling you to get on a bestseller list. But a best-read list just doesn’t exist.

That said, you shouldn’t define your success as a writer by how many books you’ve written and perhaps published. Books are only part of the broader writing picture. Successful writers publish an assortment of pieces throughout their careers.

Some writers see awards as a gauge to success, collecting them at every opportunity. They figure that if someone chooses to give them an award, that they have made it as a writer. But the afterglow from an award often lasts shorter than a sunset. Once you’ve been applauded, everyone seems to forget, unless you constantly remind them.

To get an idea of just how successful you are as a writer, periodically list your accomplishments. Once a year or even every six months is often enough. You’ll be amazed at just how successful you’ve become. Remember, don’t count only the big successes in your career. Count the little ones, too. They all add up. 

Don't Give Up

Just about every writer has wanted to throw in the towel at one time or another. Whether it’s lack of ideas, piles of rejections, or lack of motivation, the temptation is always there. And whether or not a writer considers quitting, most don’t. Why is that?

Writing for many is a compulsion. It’s a drive that runs deep. For some, it starts in childhood, for others later in life. But either way, writers feel compelled to write. And anything that gets in the way of this desire causes frustration.

To avoid getting into this trap, it helps if you know some of the causes, so you don’t get into this predicament in the first place.

Some writers just can’t come up with enough ideas. Do you begin working on what you consider a super idea, only to get bogged down because the idea isn’t developing the way you thought it would? This problem usually comes about because you haven’t thought the idea through. But thinking about an idea is only part of the process. You’ve got to plan it out, too—even roughly.

But not every idea is a super one, so it pays to stockpile them. The more ideas you have, the better. Not all of them will be winners. In fact, most of them won’t be. Having other ideas on hand will enable to you to try something else if the first one doesn’t work. No writer should ever quit for lack of ideas.

Rejections, on the other hand, have put an end to many a writing career. To get published, your work must be accepted. If it’s rejected, you don’t have a chance. One writer got 28 rejections on a book idea before he realized that it may be too specific or not in line with what publishers wanted. He didn’t give up. Instead, he tried another which got accepted immediately. He jokingly said that early in his career he got enough rejection slips to wallpaper his bathroom.

A young California food writer wrote a Moroccan cookbook. No one was interested in it, so she published it herself. She ended up with a room full of several thousand books. Did she quit? No. She contacted Nieman Marcus in Texas and got them interested in selling it in their gourmet shop. That worked out fine, so she continued contacting department store chains and gourmet shops across the country. Her first venture was such a success that she went on to publish six more cookbooks.

Lack of motivation causes a lot of beginning writers to think twice about further pursuing a writing career. Wanting to write is one thing. But have a purpose is another. Whatever you write should have purpose. Do you want to inform or entertain or advise? Giving a purpose to your work will make it seem that much more important. Ask yourself why you want to write. If you say it’s just to get noticed, you’ll fail for sure.

Finally, if you’ve been writing for a while and have had some success but are now in a slump due either to a lack of ideas or a lack of markets, think about all the work you’ve put into your career so far. Don’t let it go to waste. Keep plugging away and give yourself another chance.

The All-Important First Draft

First drafts are the all-important backbone of any article, short-story, or book. But many writers produce them as if they’re the final draft. There’s a great difference between the two.  And there’s a difference between a first draft in non-fiction and one in fiction.

In non-fiction, you begin with a mass of facts and have to compile them into a cohesive article or book that documents reality. But in fiction, you start out with nothing and have to create an illusion of reality. In both cases, a first draft gives you something to work with.

But even before you get to the first draft stage in your writing, you need to think about what you’re going to write. You’d be surprised just how many beginning writers don’t do this. This comes from bad practices they learned in school. Much of the writing they did was spontaneous writing in class. The teacher would give them an exercise, and they had to start it or even complete it in class. Too many carried this method over to their own writing.

In fact, you should begin by thoroughly thinking out your idea and how you plan to craft it. Then you need to block out what you plan to write. This isn’t an outline but a plan—and a loose one at that. You shouldn’t include too many details in your blocking but, instead, focus on the main and some of the subpoints. The main thing is to keep it flexible. Your blocked plan will help you to stay on course. In non-fiction, it will help you line up the facts in a logical order. In fiction, it will keep you from going down too many side paths and thus drifting away from your plot.

Think of your first draft as the clay, not the sculpture. A potter starts with a hunk of wet clay and kneads it into a pliable mass. At that point, he or she only has a vague idea of what the final piece will look like. And just like this mass of clay, your first draft will be messy and unrefined. But refining comes later. Your job now is just to get started.

So the first thing to do is to empty your head of everything on the subject at hand. In non-fiction, you most likely will have notes to refer to but in fiction, you may just create as you go. In both cases, you have your blocked plan to follow. Don worry about how your writing looks or sounds at this point. This is just between you and your  keyboard.

You shouldn’t show your first draft to anyone. You know it needs lots of work. In fact, you probably know exactly what that work should be. So showing your first draft to someone at this stage is pointless. It’s not called a “rough” draft for nothing.  And while you shouldn’t show your first draft to anyone, that doesn’t mean that you can’t discuss your idea with a close friend or family member. Doing so might help to free up the cobwebs in your brain. Talking about an idea  often helps a person think it out.

Today, both non-fiction and fiction writers do lots of research. But that can bog you down.  You may get so involved in your research that you never get to your first draft. Also, know when you’ve done enough general research on your idea. If you start writing and then continue your research, you’ll constantly be changing what you’ve written. It’s okay to look up details.

If you’re writing fiction, you can always flub the details and make them up to keep the story going. To make sure you know which details to look up later,  put them in bold type. This will make them stand out. If you’re writing an historical article or fictional story, put the year dates in bold type. Then you’ll be able to see at a glance if they’re out of chronological order. The only time they may not be is if you’re using a flashback.

Finally, set a deadline for your first draft. Be reasonable. Give yourself plenty of time to write it, but know when it should be finished so that you can get on with revising in future drafts. If you stop for any reason for a bit of time, insert “START HERE” in your notes or if you’re in a revision draft, wherever you stop within it.

The key to writing a successful first draft is not to revise as you go. Keep revising until after you have the whole story laid out, and you’ve gained some perspective on it. When you’ve finished your first draft, let it rest. Work or another project or do something else for a bit. That way, when you do get back to it, you’ll be able to see just what needs to be done.

Getting and Staying Motivated

There’s nothing harder for a writer than getting and staying motivated. In this high-tech, whirlwind world, it’s often hard to focus on the job at hand. If your cell phone isn’t buzzing to let you know someone desperately wants to speak with you, then it may be vibrating to let you know that you know that someone posted something on your Facebook Page. And then, of course, there’s your family, the stress at work, and who knows what else. What can you do to stay motivated when you’re bombarded with all this?

Well, take heart. There is a way.

There are probably lots of times when your head is just bursting with ideas. You can’t wait to get started—but you never do. If that’s the case, you have a problem with getting motivated. To sort things out, jot down as many of those ideas as you can. Look them over and pick three that stand out from all the rest.

Study those three and ask yourself why each is a good idea. Also ask how relevant each of them is. And finally ask how passionate you are about each one. One of them will stand out after asking these questions. That’s the one to start working on. At this point, forget about getting published and just get to work.

Get yourself excited about this new idea. Dive into researching it. The deeper you go in your research, the more fascinating the topic will become. You may even get so motivated that you ignore that blasted cell phone vibrating in your pocket!

But getting motivated and staying motivated are two different things. That initial surge of writing energy will only last so long, then what?

Visualize where you’d like to be with this project and your writing in general in say six months. Do you see your work being enjoyed by readers? That’s not the same as being published. While the two are intertwined, most writers don’t go beyond seeing themselves published. They forget about their readers. And the secret to success is that you just can’t do that. Your readers are the most important part of the process.

Imagine readers getting excited about what you’ve written. Imagine them laughing or crying. When a reader says they just couldn’t put a book down, that’s a testimony to good writing. Make that happen to your work.

To be sure you stay on track, set a writing time and place. Work writing into your schedule just like eating and exercising. Develop a writing routine (See “There’s Something to be Said for Routine While Working” from Feb. 17, 2014).

Ask yourself what would you like to accomplish with this piece of writing? Every piece of writing should afford you some sort of accomplishment. It may improve your writing skills. It may help you to advance your characterization skills. Or it may increase your knowledge substantially about a particular subject. No writing project is worthless. All contribute somehow to your writing ability and your outlook on life.

To stay motivated, set some goals for yourself. Look ahead. See the bigger picture. Set some long-range goals covering perhaps a year and some short-range goals covering a month or so (See “Setting Goals” from Jan. 4, 2013).

Take time out to read. Reading will stimulate your brain and give you even more ideas. Non-fiction is best. The fantasy of novels doesn’t always stimulate your brain enough because you get involved in the everyday lives of the characters in them. Everything is pretty much thought out for you. But with non-fiction, you’re often forced to think of other things related to what you’re reading.

Above all, decide why you want to write. What drives you? Why do you torture yourself with it? When you know the answers to those questions, you’ll be able to stay motivated, perhaps for a long, long time.