Category Archives: the writing life

The Three “Selves” of a Writer

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell

Gregory Peck in The Gunfighter (1950)

Gregory Peck is one of my favorite actors. Most know him for his immortal portrayal of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. But he turned in many brilliant performances over his long career, sometimes unappreciated because his acting was subtle and low key. (If you want to sample Peck’s acting chops, two of my favorite performances are in The Gunfighter and The Big Country.)

Once, Peck was standing in line with a friend, waiting for a table in a crowded Los Angeles restaurant. They’d been waiting for some time, the diners seemed to be taking their time eating, and new tables weren’t opening up. Peck’s impatient friend said, “Why don’t you tell the maitre d’ who you are?” Peck said, “No. If you have to tell them who you are, then you aren’t.”

Reminds me of the old saying: “Be who you is, ‘cause if you ain’t who you is, you is who you ain’t.”

Which brings me to you, fellow writer. There are three “selves” we spin like plates.

First is the self presented in the writing. The major aspect of this is voice, often talked about but rarely defined. (Someone wrote a book about it). Voice is at the center of the whole AI debate. If you use AI’s words, you ain’t you who is.

By the way, you may have read that Anthropic’s Claude is now adding “watermarks” to generated text (and text that has been edited with it). That invisible coding stays with the output when it’s copied and pasted into a document. This has teed off a large number of Claude users who’ve canceled their accounts. But other models will probably follow suit. The way to avoid this detection is to write your own words. Shocker! 

The second self is your public profile and social media presence. Choose wisely how you go about it. I try to follow Ben Franklin’s admonition: “Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation” (and, I would add, ranting and raving. That never brings in new fans, but it does alienate a segment of your current and potential readership. Up to you whether you want more readers or fewer).

Also be wise about how much time you spend on social media as a marketing tool. Don’t make the mistake of thinking social media is a great way to sell books. It never has been. Recently, a trad-pubbed author dropped $10,000 on a “TikTok influencer campaign.” Result? Three (3) sales. “It just doesn’t convert,” says the author. “Views are not sales. People watch a 40-second video about your book the same way they watch a video about a raccoon eating grapes: entertained, moved even, and then they keep scrolling.”

The last self is who you are in private, with friends and family. This is the place to “let your hair down” (obviously just an analogy for some of us). You get your support here, your solace, and sometimes a needed kick in the pants. But it’s all done “behind closed doors,” which is a good place to keep it. Guard your writing time, but don’t hoard it. Be present with people, knowing that your writer mind will always have a little wander in it. Many a time Mrs. B has said something like, “Jim? Jim, are you listening to me?” And I’ve thought, That’s an odd way to start a conversation.

If I may paraphrase Polonius: “To thine own selves be true, give each due consideration, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be a phony baloney to the reading public.”

What about you? Have you given much thought to your own three “selves”? Any other advice or warnings to offer?

Playing The Writing Game

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

It helps to think of writing as a game.

We all want to make some scratch from our efforts to tell a great story. We all, at one time or another, have a dream of appearing on Today touting our upcoming #1 NYT bestseller. Then we wake up.

Side story: I was once in a Starbucks when Bruce Jenner, the Gold Medal decathlete, came in. I’d been a Decathlon fan as a boy after watching The Bob Mathias Story (starring Bob Mathias himself) on TV. Mathias was the first two-time Gold Medalist in the Decathlon, and one of the greatest athletes we’ve ever produced. So, wiseacre that I am, I sidled up to Bruce and said, “Say, aren’t you Bob Mathias?” To his credit, he cracked up, and we had a nice little conversation, in which I said, “I dreamed of being a Decathlete.” Bruce: “And then you woke up?”

I relate that because part of being a champion in any sport is a matter of two things: natural talent and hard work. I could have worked harder at the Decathlon than anyone in the world, but I just didn’t have the industrial springs in my legs that Jenner and Mathias were born with. My sport was basketball and I worked at it, got to be good enough to play in college, but I didn’t have the hops of a Michael Jordan, though I humbly assert that had I been six inches taller I might have given Larry Bird a run for his money (I could shoot lights out).

So there’s talent and work involved in any successful enterprise. Which is why I often think of this writing gig like my favorite game, backgammon.

This ancient game has been around for 5,000 years, and is brilliantly conceived. Dice are involved, so there’s always an element of chance. A player who is way behind still might win if the dice give him a roll he needs at just the right time. But there’s also strategy, which means you need the ability to think, which is something you’re born with. You can develop the latter through work, which is what education used to be about. (Don’t get me started.)

There’s one other element of backgammon—risk. The “doubling cube” allows a player at any point to double the stakes. The other player may decline and forfeit the game for the original bet (playing for penny stakes is enough, which is a good reason to keep pennies in circulation!). Or he may accept the risk and later, should things change favorably, double back.

So someone who knows how to think strategically, can calculate odds, and take risks at the right time will win more often than the average player who depends mostly on the rolling bones.

Early on I studied the game by reading books. I memorized the best opening moves for each roll. I learned how to think about what’s called the “back game,” what the best “points” are to cover, and when it might pay off to leave a “blot.”

And I played a lot of games with friends and, later, on a computer. I discovered a couple of killer, though risky, opening moves. I use them because they can pay off big time, though when they don’t I find myself behind. But I’m willing to take these early chances because they are not foolhardy and I’m confident enough in my skills that I can still come back.

This, it seems to me, is analogous to the writing life. There is luck involved. I sold my first novel because I happened to be at a convention with an author I had met on a plane. This new acquaintance showed me around the floor, introduced me to people. One of them was a publisher he knew. That publisher just happened to be starting a new publishing house and was looking for material. I pitched him my book and he bought it a few weeks later.

But I was also ready for that moment. I had been studying the craft for several years and was committed to a weekly quota of words. I’d written several screenplays and at least one messy novel before completing the project I had with me at the convention.

Thus, as in backgammon, the greater your skill, the better your chances. The harder you work, the more skill you acquire. The old saw “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity” certainly applies.

There are different talent levels, but that’s not something you have any control over. And someone with less talent who works hard often outperforms the gifted but lazy writer.

Now, that doesn’t mean you’ll always win big in any one game. Far from it. If the dice are not your friends, things might not turn out as planned. That book you thought was a sure winner might not be.

But if you love writing, you don’t stop playing.

And don’t ever worry about the dice. You cannot control them, not even if you shake them hard and shout, “Baby needs a new pair of shoes!” The vagaries of the book market are out of your hands.

Just continue to work, write, play and take some risks. It’s a game, after all.

Comments welcome.

NOTE: This post partially adapted from and brought to you by How to Make a Living as a Writer and The Mental Game of Writing.

What Type of Writer Are You?

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

John D. MacDonald and his lunchpail

I have been musing about something of late. Call it a typology of writers. Here the categories I’ve come up with, recognizing there will be some overlap. Let’s discuss.

1. Nothing But Fun

There are some writers who believe writing fiction should be nothing but a joy, carefree, never a matter of sweat or concern. Under this category, there are two sub types. The first believes that a carefree first draft is the only draft it should be written. Cleaned up a bit for typos, perhaps, but left mostly alone. The other subtype writes that first draft and then looks at it and wonders what the heck to do with it, and tries to apply some actual craft and editing.

2. Hate Writing, But Love Having Written

I know a few colleagues who fit this category. They find writing a first draft to be a somewhat difficult trudge. Sometimes this is because their standards go up with each book. The bar is raised. And they seriously want to meet that challenge.

But when they are done with the whole process, including editing and polishing, and the book is the better for it, they find tremendous satisfaction.

3. Lunchpail Type

This is a writer who goes to work each day. They’re not looking for a rapturous experience, though that may happen when they’re not looking. They set out to write a certain number of words each day and do that job. They know their craft and care about it, because they want to sell to readers, and readers care about good stories. The great pulp writers of old were like this. They could type 1 million words a year, sometimes more, and sell their product for a penny or two per word.

4. Doesn’t Care About Sales

In truth, I think every writer cares about sales. Who wouldn’t appreciate a little green from what they write? There’s that famous Samuel Johnson quote: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” But this type of writer rejects that notion and finds their satisfaction in writing alone. Nothing wrong with that. Writing can be a form of enjoyment, diversion, mental exercise, or escape.

5. Only Cares About Sales

Finally, there is the writer who is in this strictly for the money. There’s never been anything illegal about that. If somebody write something and there’s a market for it, that’s a fair exchange. But these days it’s possible to make money producing acres of “AI slop.” We all wish this weren’t true, but it is. This type shouldn’t even be categorized as a “writer.”

On the other hand, someone who sees writing as a way to make money, or at least side-hustle dough, and works to figure out how to write a good product, fine. I suspect this is the least populated category.

In reviewing this list, I would put myself as a #3. I’ve always written to a quota. I have also found tremendous satisfaction in learning my craft and getting better at it.

So what do you think about the above categories? Would you add one? Modify one? Where would you place yourself?

Should You Go Ahead and Write Mediocre Books?

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Years ago I was walking along Sunset Boulevard on a sunny day in Los Angeles (no surprise there) when I ran into a gent in a hat, with a big smile, holding a plate of cookies. He asked if I’d like to have one.

Being a struggling actor at the time, I eagerly accepted. It was an oddly shaped chocolate chip cookie. Not uniform or perfectly round. Each one was unique. That’s because they didn’t come out of a machine. They were handmade, and each glop that was put on a cookie sheet differed slightly from the others.

What was the same was the taste! My buds broke out into The Hallelujah Chorus. The cookie was a perfect blend of dough, chocolate chips, and nuts. I immediately went into the little store and bought a whole bag.

These were, of course, Famous Amos Cookies, and the man was Wally Amos himself.

As I walked away I thanked him, and he said, “Have yourself a real brown day.”

Wally Amos died last week at the age of 88.

The Famous Amos cookie thrived for a time, became legendary in Los Angeles. But as with many an entrepreneur, Wally Amos got underwater and had to sell. The new business soon went wide, not with unique Amos-style cookies, but with machine-made roundies that tasted no different than Chips Ahoy, which only make my taste buds sing a dirge.

And so we lost a singular savor to a dull sameness.

Which brings me to the state of writing today. We’ve discussed AI several times here at TKZ. Developments continue apace. I wasn’t aware of how apace things were until I read the latest issue of Jane Friedman’s Hot Sheet (subscription required). Jane interviewed Elizabeth Ann West, co-founder of Future Fiction Academy. What jumped out at me was a question about whether Big 5 publishers are using AI not only to create new “brand names” but also to extend established ones. West thinks the latter may already be happening:

I can’t say for sure. But if you read the Look Inside for some recent releases, those of us who write with AI all the time, we see the tell-tale signs that they’re using AI, particularly New York Times bestsellers. There’s one in particular, the first paragraph is like 15 sentences about boats, boats, boats inside of New York harbor. And when you compare that to this author’s previous work, that doesn’t even match.

AI also has a tendency to put four ideas in one sentence. You will open up a book and it will say, “Susie Q walked down the path, chewing her gum, her phone rang, and the scent of jasmine was in the air.” Most humans write in threes. Another big tell is echolalia. In the dialogue, you’ll see, “Jane, how are you feeling today?” And Jane says, “I feel fine, Elizabeth.”

And this is not to mention the thousands (tens of thousands?) of indies using AI to publish dozens of novels and novellas in the time it usually takes an old-school author to write one book.

The question is, are all these AI-generated books like the generic cookies that followed the Famous Amos sell off?

Does that even matter?

Some time ago, one of the leading voices for indie publishing, Joe Konrath, wrote a cheeky blog post asking:

Why write longer? Why write better? What’s the benefit?

Readers will forgive me if I phone-in a book. Or four. Especially with a series. As long as my first 12 are solid, I could probably make the next 6 mediocre, or even shitty, and most of my fanbase will stick with me.

Now, I’m not talking about releasing a book with errors in it; plot problems, story problems, typos, formatting probs, and so on, even though Maria [Joe’s wife] forgives authors for those indiscretions, and according to her they happen in about half the ebooks she reads.

I’m talking about releasing a book that would average 3.7 stars from readers, whereas if I spent an extra month on it, I could average 4.2.

Seems like a gigantic waste of time.

Yes, sure, if you want to put out product, lots of it, and fast, without laboring over it, you can. Especially with AI. You can even make money that way.

Now, I’m not claiming to be pure as the driven snow (I live in L.A., so the only snow I ever see is driven snow, meaning I have to drive to see it), but something in me makes me need to hand make my cookies, one by one, with some effort to make them as tasty as I can. I still think there are readers who appreciate that.

I don’t know the financial ramifications of writing with care versus pumping out mediocrities. It’s impossible to design an A/B test without a time machine.

But that’s my recipe and I’m sticking to it.

“Have yourself a real write day.”

Just thinking out loud today. Add your own thoughts in the comments about AI, mass production, care in writing—and does it even matter?

When Can You Call Yourself a Writer?

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

First thing I did when I decided to become a writer (even if I couldn’t learn like they told me in college, even if I failed) was go to a bookstore and buy a black coffee mug with WRITER on it. I wanted to look at it every day, and believe it. I don’t think I ever drank coffee from it. It’s still here in my office. I still look at it every day.

At first, when people would ask me, “So, what do you do?” I could never get myself to say, “I’m a writer.” I was still practicing law and running a small law book business. That’s really what I did to put food on the table.

Then I got published. Only when I had four or five books out there and a new multi-book contract was I comfortable enough to say “Writer.” Even then it took some getting used to.

That’s because the inevitable follow-up would be, “Oh! What do you write?”

“Fiction.”

“I love fiction. I wonder if I’ve read any of your books.”

I’d then be forced to give a few titles and watch the dead, uncomprehending eyes of my questioner blink, and see a half smile of abject pity crease her face.

Well, like the existentialists say, it is what it is. I’m better prepared now.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Oh! What do you write?”

“Thrillers.”

“I love thrill—”

“Thanks! Here’s my card. You can check out my books on my website.”

So what about you? Do you feel comfortable calling yourself a writer?

Does there have to be a certain level of accomplishment first? (See Kay’s excellent reflections on “success.”)

Early on I clipped this from The Writer magazine. It’s by Malcolm Bradbury, from Unseen Letters: Irreverent Notes From a Literary Life:

I write everything. I write novels and short stories and plays and playlets, interspersed with novellas and two-hander sketches. I write histories and biographies and introductions to the difficulties of modern science and cook books and books about the Loch Ness monster and travel books, mostly about East Grinstead….I write children’s books and school textbooks and works of abstruse philosophy…and scholarly articles on the Etruscans and works of sociology and anthropology. I write articles for the women’s page and send in stories about the most unforgettable characters I have ever met to Reader’s Digest….I write romantic novels under a female pseudonym and detective stories…I write traffic signs and “this side up” instructions for cardboard boxes. I believe I am really a writer.

That’s how I felt at the beginning, though I quickly began to specialize in full-length thrillers. Even so, I love to write. Novels, novellas, novelettes, short stories, flash fiction, micro fiction. I’ve written a lot of nonfiction on the craft, starting with Writer’s Digest and moving from there to Writer’s Digest Books, to a spot on TKZ, and by publishing indie books on several aspects.

And still I want to write more. There’s a kind of nonfiction piece that’s not easy to categorize, and as far as I know only two collections of such exist: Obituaries by William Saroyan, and Some People Are Dead by yours truly. You might call them Eclectic Musings, or Eccentric Escapades. But I’m calling them Whimsical Wanderings—Reflections From the Fringes of Normalcy. They are riffs that follow a random thought through a mind maze and into an unanticipated point.

You will find this on my Substack, and I’d like to invite you to join. Just type in your email and you’ll get it spam and ad free. For a paid subscription there’s extra content and a podcast, too. (Yes, podcast. Gilstrap isn’t the only one around here with a mellifluous voice!)

The purpose of all this is to provide a lift in the middle of your week, an oasis away from all the ranting and raving and name calling and general hooting.

So yes, I finally believe I am a writer.

Comments welcome.

Have Fun in the Writing Game

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

On this day in history, in 1936, the Baseball Hall of Fame selected its first group of inductees. They were inarguably the five best players of their time: Ty Cobb, the greatest hitter. Babe Ruth, the greatest slugger. Honus Wagner, the best all-around player; Christy Mathewson, the most skilled pitcher; and Walter Johnson, the man with the greatest (and most feared) fastball. No one seriously questioned this inaugural class.

But during the first two decades of the 20th century, the question of who was the best player of all boiled down to a choice between Cobb and Wagner.

Thy Cobb, the ultimate (and many considered dirtiest) competitor.

Honus Wagner, quietly dominant as both hitter and fielder.

Cobb, an outfielder, trim and fast as an antelope.

Wagner, a shortstop, bow-legged and built like a beer truck.

Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner in the 1909 World Series

The one time they faced each other was in the 1909 World Series. Wagner’s Pittsburgh Pirates beat Cobb’s Detroit Tigers in seven games.

In one game, Cobb got to first base and yelled at Wagner. “I’m gonna steal second, krauthead!” The mild-mannered Wagner said nothing.

On the next pitch Cobb took off. The catcher threw the ball to Wagner, who knew Cobb’s penchant for sliding into bases spikes high, often ripping flesh from an opponent’s leg. Wagner gracefully avoided Cobb’s dreadful skewers and slapped his glove across Cobb’s face. Cobb was out and with a bloody lip for his troubles. (This account comes to us through oral history. If it isn’t true, well, it should have been.)

In the series, Wagner outhit Cobb, .333 to .241.

I bring this up because I am a baseball history buff, and recently ran across a YouTube video of Honus Wagner, age 59, talking about how he still loves being around the game of baseball. It was during spring training for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1933, and Wagner, now a coach, was out there taking batting practice and fielding with the young players.

It’s wonderful to see! Here he is, smacking fastballs and scooping up grounders. And not like some old man. His swing still had power, and his fielding was beautiful.

Then we see him coaching a runner at third, clapping his hands, chattering, “Come on now, here we go now, let’s go now, come on, baby!”

He is having so much fun. He played the game because he loved it, not because of the peanuts players were paid in those early days. He did eventually get paid the princely sum of $10,000 a year. (In 1930, Babe Ruth managed to squeeze $80,000 a year from the Yankees. When a reporter asked how Ruth could accept a larger salary than President Herbert Hoover, and during the Depression yet, Ruth said, “I had a better year than he did.”)

So…have fun when you write! When I’m typing, I try to stay loose and let the words flow. I tell myself, “Come on now, here we go now, let’s go now, come on, baby!”

You know who was the Honus Wagner of writing? Ray Bradbury. You can sense the joy he had when writing his stories. He talked about the need for this mindset, especially in Zen in the Art of Writing. His prime output was the 1950s, but he never stopped, all the way until his death in 2012. “Every morning,” he wrote in Zen, “I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.”

That’s the sense of play we need to nurture.

Yes, there’s work involved with this craft. Of course. But treat it like practice. You can still have fun knowing the effort it making you better.

Another thing about Wagner (which was the opposite of Cobb) is that both fans and fellow players loved him. On the field, he played fair. Off the field, he was humble and thoughtful of others. He famously demanded that the American Tobacco Company stop distributing his baseball card with their product because he didn’t want his likeness to entice kids to smoke. As a result, the few of those 1909 cards that remain are the holy grail for collectors. Last year one of them sold for $7.25 million.

Remember that, writer, when you put yourself out there on social media, which pretends to “reward” rudeness, confrontation, and ranting with “likes.” That becomes a drug from which you will inevitably crash.

Keep it fun, keep it clean, keep writing.

So what about you? Do you do have a sense of fun when you write? Is there anything you purposely do to keep it that way?

And here is that two-minute clip of the great Honus Wagner, talking about the game he loved:

Writing to Save Your Life

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

We had a good discussion recently about writer obituaries, and what you might want yours to say. Several comments talked about writing for other than professional reasons. I liked what BK Jackson offered:

Above all, writing is my enjoyable escape and I want it to stay that way, regardless of volume. When I’m old, I want to be as excited about writing as I was in first or second grade when I was taught how to write my first sentence and that huge lightbulb went off in my head as I began to think about the power I would have of stringing sentences together to form stories.

Sure, most writers write in the hopes of bringing in some dough. They believe, as I do, that if you love your job you won’t work a day in your life.

Of course, by work I don’t mean the effort and toil that is required for success at anything. I mean in that colloquial sense of hating what you do. (Drew Carey: “Hate your job? There’s a group for that. It’s called everybody, and we meet at the bar.”)

I have a good friend who worked 20 years for a company where every day was a slog, and the culture chaotic. Being classically educated, he had his license plate changed to SISYPHS, a contraction of the mythological figure doomed for eternity to push a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll to the bottom again.

Not so with writers who work for love and loot.

But that’s not the only reason to write, as BK noted. Indeed, there may be a reason even more important: to save us from a nasty, brutish, and dismal existence.

We all know our culture right now is a roiling sea of hate, anger, vitriol, scorn, and mendacity—and that’s just on Twitter.

So it is a noble task, in my view, for writers to provide a few hours of entertaining escapism. Indeed, the best thrillers and mysteries offer readers a form of “fear management.” They extend the hope that things like justice and love are still possible in a dark world. Time spent in a book like that is infinitely superior to hours ranting on social media, kicking the dog, or opening a new bottle of Beam.

But the act of writing itself, for yourself, is also balm for the spirit. We all know what it’s like to write in “flow,” to get lost in a world we create and the lives of characters who begin to live and breathe on the page. We know the feeling—rare though it may be—of sitting back and thinking, “Wow, that’s a great line” or “This scene really cooks.”

When a writer experiences the joy of creation, it’s good for the spleen.

Ishmael, when he felt a “drizzly November in my soul” and the desire to go around “knocking people’s hats off,” went to sea.

Writers go to the keyboard.

Maybe you don’t have a contract with a publisher, or a huge footprint in the digital space. Write anyway. Write because it’s good for you. Write novels, short stories, flash fiction. Write essays and poetry. Write whatever strikes your fancy. Then show this work to the people you love. Share it with friends. Write for your kids and grandkids (see Hooley, Steve). Write because for a few hours every day you can escape a drizzly November of the soul.

Commenter Barry Knister put it this way recently:

I am grateful for the unignorable impulse to write. Most people never have this impulse. If they write at all, it’s forced on them by the demands of work. When I stop to think of how much writing has meant to me, what life would be like without having long ago tested positive for the writing virus, I am hugely thankful for the disease.

A lawyer named George Bernau, in the hospital after a near-fatal car accident, had a revelation. “I decided that I would continue to write as long as I lived, even if I never sold one thing, because that was what I wanted out of my life.”

So he wrote a novel, Promises to Keep, an alternative history of the JFK assassination. It got a $750,000 advance from Warner Books, a record at the time for a debut novel.

That’s not going to happen for the overwhelming majority writers, of course, especially in these risk-averse economic times.

But you can still write if that’s what you want out of your life.

Is it?

Read, Write, Suffer

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

James N. Frey, author of the popular craft books How to Write a Damn Good Novel I & II, once gave a talk to a group of wannabe writers. He told them he’d give them ten rules which would guarantee they’d learn to write great fiction. Here they are:

Read! Read! Read!

Write! Write! Write!

Suffer! Suffer! Suffer!

Actually, that’s only nine. His tenth will be revealed anon. Let’s first do a little unpacking.

Read! Read! Read!

By this, Frey meant not just reading fiction, but also widely in all areas. “A fiction writer needs a grasp of history and philosophy, art, religion, poetry, and so on, in order to understand different viewpoints and world views, to make his or her characters whole. As a fiction writer, you need to be curious about the world and read about things you might not be interested in personally. Professionally, you need to be interested in everything.”

I like that. I am always reading nonfiction to expand my knowledge base. I even read random articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica set left to me by my grandfather (who sold them during the Depression). Inevitably, I find something which I’ll work into a short story or even a WIP.

Frey does advise reading fiction in your genre to know what’s going on in the market. True that as well.

Write! Write! Write!

We all know you have to write, a lot, to get good. That’s why I’ve always stressed the quota. As Frey puts it, “The more you write every day, the faster you learn.”

I’d add a caveat to that, however. The basketball coach Bob Knight once said, “Practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.”

In other words, you can write, write, write, but if you’re not also learning how to make your writing better, you’re just ingraining bad habits. You don’t want to be like those thousand monkeys hammering typewriters for a thousand years to randomly come up with Shakespeare.

So you get feedback and study the craft along with your daily writing. When I started on this road I bought craft books by the barrel, because I’d been told you can’t learn how to write great fiction. I knew I couldn’t, so set out to see if I could prove that admonition wrong. I think I’ve made a pretty good case. When I got a five-book contract I started calling it “The Big Lie.”

So write, write, write and learn, learn, learn.

And write not only for publication, but to practice various styles. Find that elusive thing called Voice. Frey offers the sage advice of taking stylists you like and copying their prose, word for word. Not to be them, but to get their cadences in your head, the sound and the flow of the words. Let that all meld in your head and you’ll soon develop a style of your own.

Suffer! Suffer! Suffer!

“Learning the craft of writing is difficult,” says Frey. “Creating stories is sometimes agonizing, rewriting is torturous. Dealing with editors is like being tossed into the lions’ den at lunch time. Then when you’re finally published, often your publisher will not do enough publicity and the critics will probably crown you with thorns.”

Frey wrote this before the self-publishing revolution, but the advice still holds. Even as an indie you have to work through obstacles, like an indifferent or hostile public (file this under “Reviews, one-star”).

So why do we do it? Frey: “To experience the ecstasy inherent in the act of participation in the creation of the world, my friend….Living a writer’s life, a life of reflection, of personal growth, of accomplishment, of working and striving and suffering for one’s art, that is its own glory.” (See also the responses to Garry’s recent post.)

I’m reminded of the famous “Soup Nazi” episode of Seinfeld. Remember? His soup is so amazing everyone lines up to get it. But you must order it a certain way. No talking in line, no extraneous comments, or you’ll hear, “No soup for you!”

“No soup for you!”

Kramer becomes his one ally, and says to him, “You suffer for your soup!”

The Soup Nazi nods. “How can I tolerate any less from my customers?”

Indeed! We all want to make the best soup. We want to gift our readers the best writing we can muster. That takes work. But when you see the results…when you get an email—that’s not from your mother—telling you how much they loved your story….that is its own reward.

As good old Aristotle put it, “Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”

And what of Frey’s tenth rule? It is: “Don’t use too many exclamation points!”

I agree with that!

My eleventh rule would be this: “Repeat over and over the rest of your life.”

Because you’re a writer. It’s what you do.

So what do you think of this list? What would you add or expand?

Mr. Frey’s article can be found here.

On Setting Word Count Goals

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I’m a goal setter, but it didn’t come naturally. When I was a young pup I tended toward the Walt Whitman school of life: I loaf and invite my soul.

That had to change when I went to law school. And then when I joined a big law firm; even more when I went into private practice.

Later, I started running a small business and really had to get into goals, for they are an essential part of Entrepreneurship 101. Those were good self-study years for me. What I learned back then has served me in good stead ever since. (If you’re interested in the details of those lessons, I put them into a monograph available here.)

When I was just starting out on this writing gig, I got some invaluable advice: set a word quota, not a time quota. Don’t say, “I’m going to write for two hours every day!” because there are too many ways to waste that time. You could stare out the window for an hour and a half and call it creativity.

A word count quota produces pages. A page a day is a book a year. (A page is approximately 250 words. A Ficus tree can write 250 words a day. Don’t be shown up by a Ficus tree.)

Over the years I’ve been asked about my quota and system for keeping track, so here it is.

My quota, as it has been for most of my career, is 6,000 words a week—312,000 words a year. I try to write six days a week and take Sundays off to rest the noggin. Having a weekly quota helps because if I miss a day for some reason, I can make up the words on another day.

This works for me, though it’s nothing compared to what some of the great old pulp writers used to do. A few of them pounded out one million words or more per year, and on manual typewriters, too!

Sheesh. They must have driven their neighbors crazy.

Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, was one of the million-plus boys. Sometimes his fingers would bleed. He’d tape them up and keep typing.

Then he discovered the Ditcaphone. At the peak of his productive years Gardner was dictating his books and had a team of secretaries transcribing them. These days there are several options for speaking your words. Google Docs has a pretty fair dictation mode. So does Mac OS. I’ve done some dictating via my phone (into Google Docs) and on the computer, but it never feels quite right to me. With the editing that’s involved after I dictate, I wonder if the actual word count + time equation isn’t just about the same.

Anyway … I wrote 313,508 words in 2018.

I keep track of my words in two ways. When I compose in Scrivener, which I do most of the time, it has a handy-dandy word count tracker for both the overall project and the current session. If I’m writing in Word, I first jot down the word count of the document. I type, and when I finish I simply subtract the old word count from the new.

I tally these words on a spreadsheet, and have been doing so for twenty years. On my spreadsheet I have four categories: novels, non-fiction, short fiction, and writing. That last category is specific to my craft teaching. So I can look at my sheet and see how many words I’ve written in each category per day. I have a daily tally, and a weekly tally. I have a cell next to the weekly tally that keeps track of my cumulative output.

Next to that latter cell I put in a number. The number is a sequential sum of 6000. So at the seven-day mark, I put 6000. At the fourteen-day mark, 12,000. And so on, right up to 312,000. That way I can see if I’m falling too far behind. Here’s a portion of my spreadsheet from 2018 (click to enlarge):

Okay, does all this seem too complicated? It really isn’t. Once you have the spreadsheet figured out you can reproduce it easily each year. And once you’re in the habit of tracking your daily word count, it will become second nature.

What should your quota be? I advise writers to figure out how many words they can comfortably produce in a normal week, then up that by 10% as a stretch goal.

So what is my word count goal for 2019?

312,000.

What’s yours? Do you have a system for keeping track? Or does the thought of goals for your writing make you nervous?

***

FYI, tomorrow is release day for my new Mike Romeo thriller. It’s available for pre-order now at the special launch price of $2.99.

What I Wish I’d Known When I Started Writing

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Next year will be my 24th as a professional writer.

When my first book hit the shelves nobody used a cell phone (Seinfeld had that big brick handset with the antenna, remember?) O.J. Simpson had been found not guilty and Bill Cosby was still America’s most beloved dad. Microsoft released Windows 95. And a guy named Bezos launched a website that was purportedly going to sell books to consumers right over the internet! Everybody thought he was nuts.

For the seven years previous I’d been studying the craft of screenwriting and fiction, and writing every day. I devoured books on writing and gobbled up each monthly issue of Writer’s Digest. I have several shelves of my beloved writing books (and binders full of WDs), all highlighted and sticky-noted in some form or fashion. Every so often I like to pull one off the shelf to see what I highlighted, and relive some of the excitement of discovering something that worked for me.

The other day took down The Complete Guide to Writing Fiction by Barnaby Conrad, published by Writer’s Digest Books. It’s a collection of articles and interviews from the famous Santa Barbara Writers Conference, which Conrad directed for many years.

There was something tucked inside the book. It was a pamphlet titled 12 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started Writing by Ben Bova, the science-fiction writer and editor. I think this came as a freebie with a book ordered from the Writer’s Digest Book Club, of which I was an enthusiastic member. So I had another look at Bova’s lessons and thought I’d reflect on them with you today. The first two are unsurprising:

  1. Write every day.
  2. Read widely.

All serious writing students know this, though I would edit the first one thus: write to a weekly quota. Figure out how many words you can comfortably write in a week, then up that by 10% for your goal.

  1. Write about WHO you know.

Bova stresses the importance of well-rounded characters. Basic, of course, but coming from the sci-fi genre Bova knows it’s a temptation to overemphasize world-building.

  1. Character + Problem = Story.

I would change Problem to Plot, where plot is defined as a life-or-death battle which the character meets by strength of will.

  1. No villains.

This is Bova’s most important tip. The “villain” does not see himself that way. “Every tyrant in history was convinced that he had to do the things he did, for is own good or for the good of the people around him,” Bova writes.

I always counsel writers to know the bad guy’s “closing argument.” If he were on trial, what would he say to defend himself? And mean it?

  1. Start in the middle.

My heart sang. Had Bova anticipated Write Your Novel From the Middle? Ahem. No. He was talking about the opening pages, and he echoes one of my constant refrains: act first, explain later. Bova explains:

[Start] your story in the midst of brisk, exciting action. Start in the middle! Don’t waste time telling us how your protagonist got into the pickle he’s in. Show him struggling to get free. You can always fill in the background details later.

Particularly in a novel, it’s tempting to set the scene, explain the protagonist’s background, describe how she got to where she is. Cut all that out. Or, at least, save it for later. Start in the midst of action. Hook that reader right away or you won’t hook him at all.

  1. The chain of promises.

Don’t present a problem on page one and then solve it. Pile them up. “Each problem you present to the protagonist is a promise to the reader that there will be suspense, excitement, adventure in solving that problem.”

  1. Use all five senses.

Bova rightly notes that writers tend to favor sight and sound. Add touch, taste, and smell.

  1. Point of view.

Bova makes a case for close 3d Person, so you can be intimate with a character in one scene, then cut away to another character, and so on. He does not favor First Person because he finds it too limiting. Hmm. Tell that to Raymond Chandler.

The last three tips come from another world, when hard-copy manuscripts were submitted to agents and editors. Imagine that!

  1. Make your manuscript readable.

“Typed, whether on a typewriter or a computer printer.”

Remember when that was an actual choice?

  1. Study the markets.

“Publishers think in categories. You must too.”

  1. Cover letters.

“And always remember to include the SASE.”

(For you kids out there, SASE stands for “Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope.” Ask your parents what that means.)

All this got me thinking: what is something I wish I’d known when I started out? I’ll give you a twofer:

  1. Scene Structure.

I wrote four or five screenplays that didn’t generate any interest. What finally broke me through was an epiphany while reading Jack Bickham’s Writing Novels That Sell. Specifically, his chapter on scene and sequel. More specifically, understanding the scene beats of Goal, Conflict, Disaster. No more weak or meandering scenes after that. The next script I wrote got me an agent.

  1. The Mind is as Important as the Keyboard

The initial thrill of being published eventually ran into a new set of challenges familiar to all writers who make it inside the gates of the Forbidden City. Stuff like comparison, envy, self-doubt, bad reviews. All of which interfere with the joy of writing. Faith and family were in place for me, but I also studied specific topics like gratitude, contentment, focus, and discipline. So important are these that I wrote a book to help writers prepare for and deal with the mental game of writing.

So, TKZers, if you’ve been around the block, what is something you wish you had known when you were starting out?

And if you are just starting out, what is something you want to know? Ask away, and one of our crack team of bloggers will take a flyer at an answer—for I am in travel mode today and my check-in may be sketchy.