Writing Bill Novels (In Ten Easy Stairs!)
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- July 1st, 2009 |
- Comments
During a recent phone conversation, I mentioned having conveyed off the last revisions for my ordinal novel, “Great Sky Black.” Thither was a quiet on the other broadside of the phone, followed by the question “How in the class do you do that? Bill novels!”
The actuality is that I know many writers who have written far more than bill novels. It is not that different. In fact, if you are a employed writer, the “perfect” output is real close to a book a year. Less often than this, and the readers act anticipating your next book, and swan to another writer’s literary pasture.
Thither is a commonality to the behavior patterns of booming writers, and a commonality to the behavior patterns of writers who just can’t get started, can’t get finished, or booth out at their first or 3rd book.
Booming, prolific writers:
1) Compose every day. That’s EVERY day. They sit, open their veins, and bleed into their computers. Yes, it can be painful, but if you don’t maintain this kind of regularity, rust creeps in. The connection between heart, mind and fingers is broken. And we mistake the attempt for our natural country.
2) Read every day. Reading is priming the pump. It is modeling booming behavior. It is increasing cognition, perusal plot and characterization, and entertaining the little mind demons and angels who actually do the deep activity. Never neglect this.
3) Set deadlines and quotas. Thither is a certain amount of activity to be done, on a daily basis. It need not be any huge amount&ndasha page a day will create a book a year!
4) Create a writing area, a place that feels comfortable to them. This is both a physical area (a desk) and a psychological area (created with music, posters, familiar objects, etc.) It may also be a temporal space&ndasha circumstantial time of day or night that they compose.
5) Have circumstantial goals. They have committed to being professional writers. This is how they define themselves, and they never forget it. If you accept this definition, so you MUST behave as a professional writer, on a daily basis, or it causes emotional discomfort. They are choice to accept this friendly prod.
6) Don’t listen to the negative voices in their heads. Everyone has them. The voices tell you you can’t, you mustn’t, it isn’t good enough. You must find a artifact to tell the voices to closed up, to ignore them, or to quiet them. Any flow-based activity will help here: meditation, Tai Chi, yoga, running, Sufi breathing exercises, martial arts…the list is endless. Find one.
7) Are committed to the long-term. They know that if they drop an hour or III a day, every day, for a decade, they will build their career.
Expose themselves to criticism and rejection. In other words, they FINISH their projects, and so Apply those finished projects to editors and agents.
9) Involve other people in their “master mind” group. Booming writers know other writers. And readers. And editors. And agents. They befriend them, recruit them, get feedback from them, and listen to the feedback. This is their “brain belief.” Attempted writers hide in their offices, never finish their activity, never send it out to risk rejection.
10) Have W.I.T.—they will do Whatsoever It Takes to ethically reach their dreams, to become the best they can be. They never quit. They know that achiever is based less on endowment or “who you know” than persistence, hard activity, and honesty.
Thither are more distinctions, but I’m out of time&ndashgot to start employed on book blackjack!