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In This issue... 7 Steps to Start Writing a Book, By A P von K’Ory

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The Disastrous D’s for us writers are these: Distracting, Discouraging, and Disheartening things that books screaming to be written hurl at authors. ... (continued below)

7 Steps to Start Writing a Book
By A P von K’Ory (Germany)

The Disastrous D’s for us writers are these: Distracting, Discouraging, and Disheartening things that books screaming to be written hurl at authors. The book screams away in their heads, yet the words don’t flow to typing fingers. The empty page glares back while the creative in you screams for you to start writing that book from beginning to end. This adds another d-word: Daunting.

But take heart, you’re not alone. Even the masters get that book that floors them. It’s the nature of the art. Yet a persevering percentage of writers achieve their dream. Just block the negative self-speak – you are good enough and your book idea doesn’t suck; it’s great. You simply need the right way to handle it. The following seven steps from NV should get you started and keep you going:

1. Find your greatest challenges and create a plan (my plans have included hitch-hiking from Europe to Africa and accepting that I’d need to do it with European friends in order to be safe and succeed – just a fact of life).

2. Post encouragement near your writing space (mine says I’ve created a wonderful son who’s created amazing grandchildren for me. Writing a book has nothing on that!)

3. Get organized and outline if necessary (here’s where I fail myself. I can’t outline; it kills my creative flow. Unto Caesar what’s Caesar’s).

4. Set realistic deadlines and make achieving them a game (when that hero wants a left turn in the road, let them have it, for you can twist their arm later in the rewrites and revisions; if you sit and write for two hours but keep deleting each scene or sentence and ending up with a blank page, let go and take a walk or listen to music or chat with a friend.)

5. Take small, frequent breaks (this one, for me, is another unto Caesar what’s Caesar’s). If the words flow for four hours without me realizing that time has passed, I keep going; if I stare at that blank page with deletion after deletion, I let go.)

6. Get an external perspective whenever you need it (here’s where writing groups come in handy, but not your relatives.)

7. Schedule writing time and create reminders (I always have bits and pieces of paper where I jot down spontaneous thoughts. You can use your mobile phone – I’m simply an old-fashioned girl who likes the feel of pen and paper).

Your turn to get going!

Let’s discuss, starting further:

Find your greatest challenges and create a plan

Making excuses for not writing often follows a format such as ‘I can’t write believable characters’ or ‘I can’t figure out what comes next after this scene’. If you haven’t yet, sit down and brainstorm what you like least about your writing abilities as well as the writing process itself. This is productive as once you know exactly where you are you can plan a route to where you want to be.

If you find that you really hate to write opening lines, plan some time to research opening lines from your favourite novels, for example. Read over each line and attempt to memorize it. Write each line without looking at the original and compare it to your own. This helps to draw your attention to details of language, from sentence structure to word choice and punctuation. In the end, you’ll absorb the skills of writers who are adept at crafting great first lines.

Once you know where your weak areas lie, you can plan to improve them and start writing a book with greater confidence.

Post encouragement near your writing space

One of the big reasons why we might stop writing is that we get used to justifying ourselves for not pursuing our goals. It’s easy to say ‘I don’t have time’ for example, even if you watch an hour of TV every day. Instead, cut it down to half an hour or watch TV every other day, and use the intervening days for your writing.

Printing out a list of the excuses you tell yourself for not writing will help you notice when you begin to make excuses so that you can stop yourself and question these excuses further. This will help you to shake off unproductive habits.

Get organized and outline if necessary The ‘pantser versus plotter’ debate is ancient and it’s true that writers have many different methods for writing novels. Even so, if you’re a pantser and tend to get blocked and create excuses not to write, you should at least try a different approach. (“Pantser” is a term used to describe a fiction writer, particularly a novelist, who writes their story without much preparation or an outline.)

The advantage of having a blueprint for your book is that as you go you will have a sense of the ground beneath your feet. Being a pantser can be giddy, but sometimes you take a step and there’s nothing there to support your developing story. Try one of the 7 different methods of plotting a novel and see if any of them make it easier to start writing a novel. See https://www.nownovel.com/blog/how-to-write-a-plot-outline/

Set realistic deadlines and make achieving them a game

One of the reasons we make the excuse ‘I don’t have time to write’ is that we expect the time to fly by. When the ‘work’ aspect of creative writing appears, it feels like we’ll have to give up our entire lives just to finish a book. Instead, set realistic deadlines for yourself. Work in small increments. When you’re writing 250 words per day, it’s easier to reach your targets and the sense of achievement you feel will help you to press onward.

Whenever you reach a writing target, reward yourself. This is important. You won’t want to make excuses to not write when writing gives you a sense of reward and positive achievement almost every time.

Take small, frequent breaks
The things we tell ourselves and objective reality don’t always match up. For example, you might say ‘I can’t write, and I’ll never finish this novel’ when your mind is really telling you that you need a refreshing break. Give yourself a day or even a week off writing if you need to. Working ‘smart’ depends as much on using your working time productively as it does on using your off time to unwind and not focus on your story.

Read Kate Kellaway’s old but good post on becoming a writer and how 5 successful authors made it.

Thomson, Katrin. "Write. Type. Post. Send… Text-Talk Fiction in English Language Teaching." Lit 21-New Literary Genres in the Language Classroom 5 (2019): 71.

See https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/25/fiction.features7

Get an external perspective whenever you need it Sometimes you’re simply too entangled in your own experience of writing to extract yourself and see your writing process – what’s working and isn’t – objectively.

This is where belonging to a writing group and/or having a writing coach to talk to helps. Another person’s perspective on your work can provide the boost you need to lay aside your most familiar excuses and knuckle down.

Schedule writing time and create reminders

Do you enter writing time on a calendar and forget all about the session? Services such as Google Calendar can be useful since you can set notifications to sound on your phone or emails alerts that remind you of the times you’ve set aside for writing. When you continuously receive reminders, it’s harder to let yourself off the hook and avoid writing.

That’s it. Give these ideas a try and write me at akinyi100@aol.com

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