Advice for a First Time Author

Well I've reread first drafts and ended up loving it. But the next time the anxiety is there again.

 

Somewhere I read that Mark Twain used to give this advice to would-be writers: First write and get your stuff into print for free. Do this for a few years. After you've made a name for yourself, then start charging. Then you know whether you're really a writer or not.

On the other hand, Samuel Johnson said "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." So you can take your choice of savants here.

 

Every first draft sucks.

 

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are."
--W. Somerset Maugham

I think we all break someone's ironclad rules of what makes good writing. And that's okay, because the only requirements for a novel are that a writer finish the book, and readers enjoy reading it. Whatever gets you to that destination is the right way for you, so don't lose sleep that a professor or famous author wouldn't do it in the same way.

 

Well my driving instructor once said to me (I say once, really he said it repeatedly...)

"You only made one mistake today, and that was getting in the driver's seat..."

I jest. The moment someone starts to write is a victory, wherever they are in the process.

Best advice I've been given is the difference between active and passive narration. That really helped. Oh, and the storytelling being the most important thing, no matter what.

 

This is just about the most important thing for me. At the start @izzybot brought up the design principle 'fail faster' which I learned so much from.

You can't be paralysed by the thought that some of your first ideas will be bad or your first attempt will be flawed. They almost definitely will be, and everyone who ever did something great went through a period where they were just getting the hang of it and making all their inevitable amateur mistakes. Some people are lucky that they got a start at developing a major skill when they were very young and lacked adult self-consciousness, while other people have to overcome the basic hurdles when it feels much more humiliating to make mistakes.

I've seen this pattern in people who are treated as 'gifted' for their writing, or drawing, or athleticism, or charisma, or all kinds of things that they just got a start at as a kid when they didn't mind making a fool of themselves. Then there are adults who catch up with them just fine once they overcome their self-consciousness enough to really make a go of it, while other adults who are too embarrassed about the fact that they never developed these skills will say admiringly 'I could never do that' as if it's a comfort to them to think of these skills not as the product of long-term practice (that most people are capable of), but something that you either do or do not passively receive at birth. I don't understand why people think that's more admirable, but I think it has something to do with protecting one's ego, and not having to think that it's 'your fault' that you suck now.

There's no reason for your ego to get caught up in the idea that you suck just because your first attempts follow this rule of the universe: no one starts out great. What makes you not suck is the fact that you work at what you have and make it better. You're condemning yourself to suck if you refuse to face failure as a starting point.

For me this has meant learning to think of not attempting something that I want to be able to do as a kind of failure, and doing something badly on the first attempt as a first step on the path to success.

Almost every brilliant idea came after or out of a lot of mediocre ideas. Masters who can whip something great seemingly out of thin air spent years practising, producing things that weren't worth showing, to get to that point.

So my best advice on this topic is:
1. The sooner those first failures are out of the way, the sooner you'll be able to succeed.
2. Evaluate yourself by how diligently you work to improve, not by your current level of ability.

 

I like this idea (Growth Mindset, etc.) but don't necessarily connect it to the idea that every first draft sucks. Everyone improves, it's okay for a first draft to suck, to get better at writing you need to write--I like all those.

So mostly I'm quibbling. And I'm sure everyone's first drafts can be improved upon. But some people's first drafts are pretty damn good, while other people's first drafts are pretty damn bad. Saying they all suck seems to be an over-generalization that may get in the way of people accurately assessing their own stage of writing.

 

I agree. Saying 'all first drafts suck' is oversimplifying the issue. As you say, some people's first efforts are much better than others. "Sucks" implies awful, where some first drafts just need a bit of tweaking, if the author is experienced and thinks things through before writing them down.

I also get annoyed when I hear "Oh, a first novel is always shit," if the implication is that you should always discard your first novel and write something else. If you believe in your first story and are committed to making it as good as you possibly can—whatever it takes—there is no reason your first novel needs to be shit. Instead of writing something else, just work on the first novel until it's not shit any more. I think this not only can produce work that has meaning to the writer, but can also help to develop the habit of not giving up.

 

I think I got this piece of advice from the Writing Excuses podcast. I don't recall the exact phrasing but I tend to paraphrase it is: "Seeing a problem doesn't mean you know the solution." It has really helped me to process feedback I receive. If someone tells me that the pacing sucks and I could solve it by removing this subplot and this character, I'll take the first thing to heart, but I'll refrain from acting on the second one unless I'm sure I agree. On the other hand, it has also taught me to put some good thought into repairing scenes that don't work. Just rewriting it without actually trying to think about the solution doesn't work.

 

i've been trying to view my opportunities for improvement as something fun. this is supposed to be FUN, dammit. authors should work to view their mistakes with less white-knuckle panic and more light-hearted amusement. or something close to it.

i read a book by Loretta LaRoche called "Relax- You May Only Have a Few Minutes Left". One piece of advice she gives is to pretend your life is a sitcom. When something happens that makes you really upset, you sit back and ask yourself "would i laugh at this if it happened in my favorite show?" the answer is usually yes. sometimes i'll play a canned laugh track in my head when i catch myself getting overly upset about something (particularly when i'm stuck with my writing), and it works surprisingly well.

 

You can do something similar if you pick a theme song and mentally sing it to yourself when you face adversity. I chose the Indiana Jones theme song, and it adds some real drama to the most mundane frustrations of life.

Stuck in traffic when you're already late? Bum ba dum BA, Bum ba da...

Bonehead boss wants you to work late to fix HER mistakes? Bum bu da...

Stupid editors don't realize how brilliant your story is? Bum ba dum BA, Bum ba da da DA!

 

I am so doing this.

 

You may find yourself fighting the urge to strike bold action poses at inappropriate times...

 

@BayView @Megs33 One of my favorites is Within Temptation's cover of "Titanium"

 

Funnily enough I've always had the audacity to laugh through life, even when encountering enormous adversity or going through hell. Extreme situations can bring out the mad hatter. Humour is a deadly weapon indeed.

 

Steven Kings' early works went into a desk drawer while his later works were published.
He later pulled them out and his life began as we know it now.

 

That reminds me of something that William Cumpiano, one of the finest guitar makers and teachers around, wrote:

"A master is someone who has made more mistakes than you, has made mistakes you haven't made yet, and has learned how to embrace them--thus learning to see them coming before they happen. So you go towards mastery one mistake at a time. How many mistakes can you stand? As many as it takes to be a master. The master has persevered past the errors until he's made all of them."

 

Choose a story and make it your own.

 

This is from a popular sitcom in my country, but I think it rings true to me:

"Write about the life you'll never have. All those wonderful things you want to do, how fabulous you wish you'd look, the adventures you'll never have. That's your book."

 

Good advice for fiction writers. Not so good for non-fiction, though.

 

It's also an invitation for writing a self-insertion MC.

 

I'm not a professional writer at all. I actually think i might be too young for that I just do this as my hobby for the most part, Because i love creating. Whether it's drawing, or writing.
So i haven't exactly got any writing advice. Instead, i've been inspired by a hip hop artist, Logic. What i learned from him was to spread positivity, set goals for myself, and do what i love. Which for me is to create.
So that's about it

 

That's not necessarily a bad thing.