Robin’s Top 10 Favorite Tips for Writers
Here is a list of my favorite–and most successful–tips for becoming a writer who can write well and consistently sell his or her work. Some of these are based on my own experience, some on the experiences of fellow writers, and some are lessons from my own teachers. We can all learn from each other.
1. Nothing happens until you decide. It’s easy to say, “I want to be a writer,” or “I could write better than that author,” or “If only I had the time, I’d write the Great American Novel.” You want it? Then prove it.
You prove it by changing your behavior–not tomorrow, or Monday, or as soon as you have a weekend free, but RIGHT NOW. If you’re going to take on something new–in this case, pursuing a writing career–you have to get rid of some of the old. That might mean giving up TV (except Lost–come on). Or getting up an hour earlier so you can write, or going off in a room by yourself for an hour before bedtime and writing then, or giving up lunch out with friends or colleagues so you can write for that hour–somewhere in your day you have time to spare. It’s just that up until now you’ve chosen to fill it with something else. There’s nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is complaining that you have no time, then continuing to waste it.
Actually, wasting time isn’t wrong, either. It can be relaxing, especially after a hard day of day job. No, wasting time is fine as long as the life you’re leading is the one you’ll always want. But we’ve already decided that’s not true–we want to be writers. So that means we have to do something different than we are right now. Nothing moves until we decide, and once we decide, we move.
2. The writer is in charge of her career. I’ve had to learn this lesson twice: once at the beginning of my career, when I was just poking along, not writing much, not selling much, just giving the whole thing half an effort. But then I attended a seminar given by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch–two highly-respected and prolific authors–and the scales fell from my eyes. They taught me that fast writing is good writing. That your 36th book may be your best and the one that changes people’s lives, and if you’re only writing a book a year you may never get to it. They taught me that no one can make me do the work but me, and that if I was serious, I’d better start acting like it and take my career seriously and start producing some books.
Up until then I’d been rewriting the same poor novel for about five years. But when I came home from that seminar I started fresh. I wrote three new novels over the course of the next year, and I’ve kept up that pace since then. And just as they said might happen, it’s my sixth and seventh novels that are the first being published. Will any of the earlier ones ever make it into book stores? Maybe a few of them–that would be nice. But I also recognize that some of them were just for practice. I didn’t know that at the time–I thought they were great, and I sent them to agents and editors expecting them to call me right away and say, “You’re a genius! We love you!”–but I don’t regret that those two romances I wrote about American women falling in love with burly Icelandic men they met on vacation might have to live in my desk drawer. Because I know that every time I write a novel I become a better writer. The work is always worth it.
The second time I learned the lesson about being in charge of my career was about two months ago. Things were stalled, I was feeling insecure, I had lost faith in some of my work–and then I got another slap upside the head from Dean and Kris, and now here I am with a publishing deal. A lot of things came together very quickly for that to happen–and obviously my agent and my editor were key players–but I know part of what got things moving again was my own attitude. I stopped living like I was a bystander. I got back in the game.
The flip side to the writer being in charge of her career is that it means you don’t get to blame anyone if it’s not going the way you want. You don’t get to say it’s because your spouse isn’t supportive or your family doesn’t understand you or your agent isn’t doing his job or your publisher isn’t publicizing your book. The responsibility lies with you. All the people on your team–family, agent, editor, publisher, book sellers, readers–play a part, but ultimately the health of your career rests with you alone. If you don’t take yourself seriously, no one else will–or should. If you don’t care enough about your career to pay attention to the details, no one else will. So step up. Be involved. It’s only your life.
3. Learn from people who are further along the road you want to walk. That means seek out writers you respect–whether it’s reading their books on writing or finding conferences where they are speakers. It means finding out if they have websites where they’ve posted articles or blogs full of tips. It means being willing to spend the time–and sometimes money–to learn. I have made it a rule for myself to attend at least one writing conference a year. I ALWAYS learn something–whether it’s about writing better dialogue or knowing which sword a warrior in the eighth century would use, or about how to connect with more readers once you have a book on the shelves. I’ve learned how to be a speaker at a writing conference–what to do and not to do, just by noticing what other speakers do that impresses or bothers me. I’ve learned invaluable business tips and met fellow writers who have turned out to be excellent friends. I met my agent at a conference. The list goes on and on.
4. Invest in the business of You, Writer. If you want to be a professional writer, act like it. Save up your money and send yourself to a conference. Save up your money and buy yourself a computer and printer. Save up your money and buy yourself one presentable outfit that you can wear to interviews with agents and editors, because appearance does matter, and no one will take you seriously if you dress like a college student just tumbling out of bed (believe me, I’ve seen it). You don’t have to go crazy spending money, but some investment is required. You are a business.
I’ve seen the dark side of this, which is people thinking they need to have a bunch of Stuff before they can begin writing. “But I don’t have my new computer yet, I need to build an addition on to my home so I can have an office, I need this, I need that–” No. You’re procrastinating. You can write right now, today. You should write right now. But when you’re ready to start sending things out to real live agents and editors, you must pay attention to how things look. Your neat cursive on some pretty purple notebook paper is not going to cut it. So yes, find a computer.
5. Write something, finish it, mail it off. It’s those last two steps that people find so difficult. Get over it. Get over yourself. Not everything you write is going to be a masterpiece. Practice finishing your work. Don’t worry about its greatness or lack thereof–that’s what rewriting is for. Your first job is to prove to yourself that you can finish something–whether it’s an article, an essay, a short story, a novel.
What worked for me was a very rigorous requirement that I finish one short story a week. I began it on Monday, finished it within a few days, spent another day rewriting and polishing, then had to have it in the mail by Saturday. Week in, week out. I got a lot of rejections that way, but I also got some publication.
If you’re not finishing your work, you’ll never get anywhere. If you’re not sending your work out, ditto. And there’s a school of thought that if you’re not getting at least three rejections a month, you’re lazy.
Which brings us to–
6. The Twenty-Four Hour Rule. I learned this from a very successful freelance writer, and it worked like a dream. Whenever you get a rejection, you have to send that piece out to someone else within 24 hours. No wallowing, no wailing, just get on with it. That story or article or novel wasn’t right for that editor–fine, there are others. So you keep a list of who might be interested, you start at the top, you work your way down. Writing is a very subjective business. One editor may hate your obsession with cats, another may love it. Your job isn’t to question what other people think of your work. Your job is to write it, finish it, mail it off.
Now, if it turns out that every person who rejects it says the same thing–”How could you kill off Fluffy in the opening chapter? What kind of sick freak are you?”–then maybe you’d like to consider a rewrite before you send it out again. But at this stage, your job is to be a machine. We write, we finish, we mail. Rinse and repeat.
And speaking of machine–
7. Your body is the machine. That means if you want to keep going, producing, writing witty and profound and charming things, you have to be alert, alive, and well.
This might mean not drinking at night if you notice it makes you groggy in the morning. It might mean taking yoga classes a few days a week or getting regular massages because otherwise your back will stay crooked and your hands will turn into claws from sitting in front of the computer for so long. It might mean going for a walk every day, or drinking more water and less soda, or having some salad to go with that chocolate (ahem)–whatever it takes to keep your body and all its parts (brain included) humming along at a nice happy pace so you can do the work you’re trying to do.
Sleep is good. Laughter is good. Stretching your back and legs every hour are great, too. Your body will carry your career. If you’re sore or hungover or sleep-deprived or feeling all sluggish and squishy, your writing is going to suffer, too. Keep the hinges oiled. Be nice to yourself. Chocolate is good, but sometimes taking a nap is even better.
8. Cultivate friendships with other writers. I have learned as much about what I’m doing and what I want and how to get better at it from the beginning and intermediate writers I’ve met at conferences as I have from some of the teachers. We’ve been able to watch each other’s careers and see what works and doesn’t. And when someone has great success–like my friend Barry Lyga–I don’t feel jealous, I feel inspired. Why be jealous? He didn’t take my deal. He didn’t steal some spot that was meant for me. Instead, his success is like hot breath on the back of my neck, pushing me to work harder, do more, run faster.
The trick is to find writers as motivated as you are. There’s no point falling in with a group of people who only want to sit around complaining about how impossible it is to get published. It’s not impossible–unless you think so. I’d rather surround myself with people who know they can do it and are going to keep trying until they’re there. And then once they are “there,” they find a new “there” to strive toward.
9. Practice writing every day. One of my favorite writing books is Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Actually, all of Julia’s writing books are fantastic. The cornerstone of her teaching is something she calls Morning Pages. They are three hand-written pages, done first thing in the morning before the filters are on. They are free-flowing, top-of-the-head, unimportant (here’s what I need to do today) or revealing (I can’t believe she said that. I’m done with this friendship). The point isn’t to create Great Art, it’s to get used to how you sound on paper. You can’t try to imitate Hemingway or Dickens or Grisham while you’re sitting in your bathrobe drinking coffee and not even fully awake. That’s the point. You are only your own sleepy petty self, learning what’s on your mind and how to express it. The Morning Pages are not for anyone’s eyes but yours, and you rarely have a reason to reread them yourself. It’s about process and practice. And if you can sort out some issues in your life along the way, all the better.
Just doing this one thing to start–these 3 pages of free-hand writing every single morning without fail–will make the single most dramatic difference in your writing life. Why? Because it will show you how not to be afraid of writing. It will show you that it’s easy and free when you let it be. Not everything you write has to be perfect–as if that were ever possible. Try it for a month and see. You won’t want to stop.
10. Read. Please read. Reading sometimes feels like an indulgence–I should be writing my own stuff, not reading theirs. Wrong. Reading is as much a part of the job of being a writer as writing is. You read to fill your mind with fresh thoughts and images. You read to learn how to write better–to be inspired by other great authors–to know what’s possible, and to climb toward that. You read to improve your vocabulary. You read to support other writers. You read to get smarter. You read because if you didn’t love reading you wouldn’t want to be a writer.
Bonus tip #1: Someone once told me there are only three things you have to do to be a successful writer. This isn’t like law or medicine or farming, which can seem infinitely more complicated. Just three things: Read, write, lead an interesting life. Why the third? Because you need interesting things to write about. That doesn’t mean you have to sign onto a whaler or have an affair with royalty or be the first person ever to contract a new disease. It just means you want to pay attention. We all have our own particular orbits–college, the mall, Baltimore, Chinese restaurants. You don’t have to be anyone other than who you are, you just have to pay attention to what that life brings. And then learn to describe it. Or learn to make up stories about how things might be different. For as many of us who are out here in the world, there are just that many interesting stories–more, if you include all the tales from distant galaxies.
Learn to be curious–maybe even a little in love with–the life you see around you. Everybody is a story. Everyone is material–yourself included. I may not need to know how often you floss your teeth, but I definitely want to hear about what happened at that horrible family dinner a few years ago when your mother-in-law ended up in the emergency room with a fork stuck in her thigh. But that’s me. As I said, it’s all subjective.
Bonus Tip #2: Life is long. Or life is short. Either way you look at it, is there any reason not to start your life as a writer right now?
If life is long, then you have plenty of time to learn your craft, to write everything that’s on your mind, to finish it, mail it, see it published, then write something else. So start now and get all the benefits of time.
If life is short, then why would you want to waste another minute not doing what you want to do? If you say you want to be a writer and you mean it, then do yourself a kindness and get on with it. Those stories won’t write themselves.
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