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HOW I WRITE:
ONE WRITER'S METHODS
by Susan
Taylor Brown
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I really hate to
admit this, but I have
lousy writing habits. I'm disorganized, my office is a disaster zone,
and I never seem to approach a project the same way twice. My mother
tried for years to help me get more organized, but I just don’t think
my DNA is programmed for organization. I have books and pens (I’m very
picky about them --- just ask my husband) and scraps of paper
everywhere and in every room in the house.
To be quite honest,
I don't know if I could work any other way.
I write
everywhere...in the car, on the couch, at my desk, in bed, and even in
the bath. I love to play with words, which makes my fun and not just
work.
Because I do
several different kinds of writing, I work in a variety of ways, but
they all seem to start with 3 things: an idea, a piece of paper, and a
pen. To me, there's something physical about writing, and I almost
always start a new book, story, or article in longhand. Later, when I
go to transfer it to my computer, it seems to grow all by itself. When
I hit a rough spot in the writing, I generally go back to pen and
paper. I'm partial to steno tablets, since I can carry them easily with
me back and forth to my day job or anywhere else I might go. I also
like their size because I don't get intimidated seeing so much blank
space around me, waiting for words to fill it up.
Like all writers, I
spend a lot of time thinking. People who don't write often think we're
just wasting time, but we're not. If I try to write before an idea has
simmered properly, I have a much tougher time of it and I turn out a
crummy piece of writing that usually doesn’t go anywhere. So I sit and
think. A lot. I spend many hours sprawled on the couch with my dog or
curled up in bed with pillows all around me. I jot down any ideas, no
matter how crazy they might sound, that have to do with the project at
hand. Sometimes this goes on for days or weeks or months, depending on
the project.
That's why I work on many different projects at the same
time. When one idea isn't working for me, I can turn the page in my
notebook and work on something else. I'm always forgetting what
notebook I started in, though, which is why I have so many of them all
over the house. And sometimes I get ideas when I don't have a notebook
with me, so I have scraps of important things to remember on the back
of napkins, deposit slips, and grocery receipts. These usually land in
a basket in the office for me to sort through later.
When the thoughts
are coming almost too fast and too intense for me to write them down,
that's when I move to computer. This is where it gets sloppy. If I'm
writing by hand, my letters get huge and loopy. If I'm on the computer,
I'm punching the keys hard and fast. It's the big adrenaline rush I'm
after, and I want to nab as much of it as I can before it disappears.
When I'm first racing to get everything down, I don't worry about
spelling or punctuation or much of anything else. Some people call this
free-writing. I just spew words on paper without thinking about whether
they're the right words or what someone might say or think. The meat of
the story is what I'm after. Later, after the heat of the moment has
passed, then I go back and clean it all up, rearrange, add, delete, and
rewrite. I do this no matter what I'm writing — fiction or non-fiction,
books or articles. There are times when, rereading what I wrote fast
and without thinking, I am absolutely amazed by what I've written. To
be honest, there are just as many times when I reread it and know that
it's not very good, but that's okay. The important thing is that I
finally have something down, in some sort of order that looks like a
story.
The second
run-through is usually the toughest for me. That's when I see all the
holes in the story that need to be filled in. When I don't know what
happens next, it's back to the couch to think some more. This is
usually when I start second-guessing myself, sure that what I thought
was such a great idea is now nothing but garbage. It takes a lot of
tough-love for yourself to keep writing at this point. At least for me.
Depending on what I am working on, and what kind of a deadline I have,
I repeat the above process over and over again. Sometimes it’s a matter
of days, sometimes weeks, and with books, it could be years. (Yes, you
heard me right – some books can take me years to write.) If I'm working
on an article, I'll often go to the Internet to do some research on the
topic, looking for experts in the area to give me some meaty quotes.
That's usually enough to get me back to the computer to finish up the
article.
If it's a book I'm
working on, and I'm trying to fill in the holes or decide what happens
next, it can often be a lot tougher. I try bouncing ideas off a writing
friend. I do a lot of brainstorming and mind-mapping. I play outlandish
games of "what-if," hoping to jumpstart my brain in a different
direction. Sometimes I'll grab a stack of index cards and write a
single sentence describing each scene I have already, on a separate
card. Then I shuffle through the cards and see what my mind fills in by
itself. We writers are great procrastinators. Mostly it all comes
down to just applying the seat of my pants to the seat of the chair and
doing it.
After I feel I have
a complete story, then comes my favorite part. Revision. I love to
polish my manuscript, sort of like rubbing a genie's lamp and knowing
something wonderful is going to be the end result. In the process of
revision I ask myself a lot of questions. Do I use strong, picture
words? Does one chapter flow into the next? Do my characters act and
react consistently throughout the story? Is my plot interesting, filled
with enough conflicts to make the reader want to keep turning pages?
Each chapter of my book should be filled with questions. When you
answer one question, you need to ask another one. Once you've stopped
asking questions, the reader has no reason left to turn the pages, and
the story is over.
Everyone wants to
know where writers get their ideas. Ideas are everywhere and all around
you. I have so many ideas, I think I have to live to be 157 before I
can write about them all. My ideas come from watching and listening to
the things happening in the world around me. Like a lot of writers, I'm
usually the quiet person in the back of the room, not the life of the
party. Everywhere I go, I watch people and observe how they react to
the world around them. In New Orleans I used to love to ride the ferry
back and forth across the Mississippi river, just to people-watch and
to write in my notebook. Ideas can come from TV shows that don't end
the way I want them to, stories my kids share with me about school,
conversations at parties, a line in the newspaper, or from entries in
my journal. And a lot of my ideas come from those scraps of paper I
have tossed all over the house, in my purse, on the floor of my car,
and tacked up on my bulletin board. Ideas are the easy part...it's the
writing that makes all that hard work.
It's a long
process, from thinking of the idea, to getting it all down on paper,
and then finally, hopefully, seeing it in print. Even after a book is
accepted, it can take quite a while for a publisher to actually bring
it out. This is especially true for picture books, since the publisher
doesn't start looking for an illustrator until after your book has been
accepted. Then, and only then, does the illustrator begin to work on
your book, and all those pictures. Most of the time, the illustrator
has other work to finish first before they can start on your book, so
it is not at all uncommon for a picture book to take two or three years
to actually appear in print. Oh, and just in case you were wondering,
beginning writers have no say in who illustrates their books.
Many books are
rejected again and again before they are published, if ever. My first
two easy readers were rejected 27 times before they sold. You have to
have a healthy dose of perseverance and stubbornness to survive the
writing business. Rejections are a part of the business. Learn to roll
with them and don't take them personally. Pick yourself up and start
over again. The more you write, the better you write.
How I write is just
that, the way I write. If you find some ideas here that work for you,
that's great. If you write in a completely different manner, that's
great too. If you want to be a writer, the important thing is to write.
And if you want to sell your writing, then you have to take your
chances and submit your work to publishers. No one's going to come
knocking on your door begging to see your latest novel. It's up to you
to get it into the hands of those people who can help you bring your
dreams to life.
Write on,
right now!
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