Some Advice To Writers
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Some Advice to Writers
A friend of mine is planning to write a story. Several other friends decided there would never be an OCR that could read my handwriting, and
have been planning to do thisfor years. Having a few books and so I discarded those sheets. Some of the modern OCRs are pretty
several hundredweb-articles and blog-pages under my belt, I will throw impressive, so perhaps I should have scanned those sheets before I threw
in my tuppence worth. them. But I didn’t, so there is little point in dwelling on that. Those ofyou
Rummage around the internet and you will come across Neil writing now will not have such worries, providing you actually write it!
Gaiman’s eight rules of writing. These appear flippant but there is On the subject of modern technology, ideas, scenes and dialogue may
actually a lot of wisdom within these few lines. Make a copy and reread occur to you when you are away from your computer. Make use your phone
them occasionally. or PDA. While you are riding into work thisis a much better use of your
phone than texting or facebook.
Write Write stuff down, but backup, backup, backup! When my first book was
Gaiman’s first rule is “write”. Get your ideas and scenes down on nearly ready, the floppy disc it was on developed a fault. Modern media are
disc. It doesn’t matter that they arenot yet perfect. Modern technology more reliable, but you can still lose them.
means you canrewrite, rearrange and polish them as much as you
want, once they are in bits and bytes. Personally, I regard writing as a Distractions
type of exorcism. Some ideas will rattle around my head for ages unless Mention of facebook brings me to the subject of distractions. You should
I write them down. Perhaps getting them out makes room for the new do your research, particularly if you are writing about something thatyou
stuff. think you know something about. Chances are that what you know is
Get as much as possible down. It doesn’t matter if it is scene twelve, wrong. See my essay on “Common Mistakes in Military Writing” for
or the finale and you haven’t written the start yet. You can sort that examples from just one field. Why I started this topic with mention of
later once it is in your system. I have written a lot of articles by diving distractions is that I have acouple of friends who always fall into the trap of
into the main text and then shaping the introduction when the main too much research. They will start a project and begin reading related material.
body had taken shape. Very soon they canquote the opinions of numerous famous authorities in a
subject. But their projects never progress.
Backup!
Recently I was thinking of a novel I planned in my younger days. Write Clearly!
Most of it, I now realize, nevergot out of my head. What did was Gaiman’s second rule includes “Find the right word, put it down.” This
handwritten in pen. (Yes, it was that long ago!). About a decade ago I reminds me of other friends. Every couple of months a friend used to send
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me some of his stuff. The layout was horrendous, with every line of and refusing to save new documents. Experiment with using a good “text
text centrally justified. English was of what might charitably be called a editor”. I use Notepad++. It opens up quickly if I want to jot down
“sub-adult level”. Use of apostrophes was random. If there was a choice of something that has just occurred to me. It seems to be very robust and
homophones, hewould choose the wrong one, resulting in sentences stable. There are a number of plug-ins that let you select the features you do
that said something quite different to what he intended. I could work really need, such as autosave, word-count and spell-check in my native-
out what he wanted to say, but he was making his readers work way too English. Saved files in plain text are much smaller than those in WP formats.
hard. Writing is about communication, and it is on the writer to Depending on your intended publication medium, you may need a WP to
communicate his idea orstory, rather than the reader to infer it. We all format the final document, but there is a lot to be said for doing most of the
know the internet is full of grammar nazis, and usually it is just an actual writing in a text editor. It is how I created this.
excuse to be a dick. Grammar is often used as a social shibboleth. Many
grammar rules you may have been taught are false and really Break the Task Up
prescriptivism. This obscures the fact that when used constructively, I have read that Jules Vern would start writing at five in the morning and
grammar can facilitate communication and clarify meaning, which is would continue until one in the afternoon. He would also spend weeks in
the essence of good writing. One of my friends protests that he does libraries researching his subject before beginning. Most of us cannot follow
know grammar. Like my friends who do too much research, he fails to Vern’s regimen. Find what works for you. The Pomodoro Technique breaks a
grasp that it is the using rather than the knowing that is important. To task into regular chunks and breaks. You may opt for something less formal.
my mind, “Use the right word” applies to both grammar and technical Occasionally doing something else can be very productive when you are
terms. writing. Go make a cup of coffee or have a drink of water. Just walk around
I used to tell my friend how the format and spelling mistakes could a bit or curl some weights. If you are stuck on something, do something
be corrected in a few minutes. A couple of months later, an apparently else. Write another section of the book or do something entirely different.
identical document would be sent to me. From someone else I might Towards the end of writing “Anatopismo”, I got stuck on how toconnect the
have expected this to be a deliberate insult or trolling attempt. Now I current narrative and the end I wanted. I went out for the night and visited
just glance at it and bin it when there appears to be no obvious changes. my girlfriend’s cafe, spending a pleasant evening talking to some interesting
Don’t make your reader work toohard. Communication is your job. people. As I got onto the train home, two sentences popped into my mind,
and from these came the two chapters needed to complete the book.
Start with a Text Editor
On the subject of format and distractions, I am a convert to the no- Don’t Write a Novel!
WP school of writing. For most of your writing needs, word Common piece of advice is to hone your writing skills with short stories.
processors have far more features than you need. Too often has one A short story can be defined as less than 7,500 words, or something that can
done something weird with formatting, and bythe time I have comfortably be read in one sitting. When you think you are ready for
corrected it my creative thread is lost. Add to this the freezes, crashes something longer, my advice is: “Don’t write a novel!”
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The wide use of electronic reading devices has apparently created a novellette length. Instead the story reached 36,000 words. A shade long for
market for shorter (5,000-30,000 words) works of fiction and non- an eshort, but a nicely sized story that is as long as itneeds to be. Make your
fiction, collectively called “eshorts”. Fiction in eshorts includes short story as long as it needs, and don’t stress that you do not yet have a
stories, novellettes (7,500-20,000 words) and medium novellas (20,000- 100,000-word novel.
50,000 words). With Anatopismo, I set out to write an eshort, possibly of
The Books
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