rule #1
And now ladies and gentlemen, my golden rule of writing fiction:
Don't write anything you don't absolutely love.
Writing, for me, represents a serious investment of time and energy, especially emotional energy. Life is short and writing is hard and I have decided that if a story idea doesn't make me as giddy as a schoolgirl just thinking about it then it's not worth wasting another second on.
Aside from such lofty philosophical considerations, I find that rule #1 is invaluable when it comes to the actual process of writing. Stuck on a scene? Not sure where to go next? Ask yourself the question: what don't I love about this scene? Maybe the scene seems like a necessary evil which you just have to paste a grin on your face and slog through.
Well let me tell you my friend, your readers will know instinctively which bits you slogged through and which bits you loved. You don't want that section that you phoned in to be the section where they put the book down. So maybe it's time to go back to the story, figure out what you do love about it, and approach the scene that way. Maybe you'll find that that scene doesn't belong at all and you need another approach entirely.
I find that writing only what you love is a great filter for unecessary fluff. It's a great indicator for what direction to go next. And I hope, in the long run, that it is going to make the stories that I write, whether short or long, meaningful to people.
Sometimes I think that maybe I should just bite the bullet and write a military sci-fi novel or some YA involving kids with magical powers, just so I can get published and make some money off my writing. But I wouldn't love it, and I think that that would come through in the writing. Even if such a book made it past agents and editors and was published, it wouldn't be memorable. I few people would pick it up as part of the year's latest book fad, then they'd put it down and forget about it.
I want to write memorable stories, books that move people in some way. How can I expect someone else to be passionate about my story if I'm not? So, I'm not going to write for anyone else but myself. Because if I don't love it, no one will.
And hey, at the very least I'll have one fan.
Don't write anything you don't absolutely love.
Writing, for me, represents a serious investment of time and energy, especially emotional energy. Life is short and writing is hard and I have decided that if a story idea doesn't make me as giddy as a schoolgirl just thinking about it then it's not worth wasting another second on.
Aside from such lofty philosophical considerations, I find that rule #1 is invaluable when it comes to the actual process of writing. Stuck on a scene? Not sure where to go next? Ask yourself the question: what don't I love about this scene? Maybe the scene seems like a necessary evil which you just have to paste a grin on your face and slog through.
Well let me tell you my friend, your readers will know instinctively which bits you slogged through and which bits you loved. You don't want that section that you phoned in to be the section where they put the book down. So maybe it's time to go back to the story, figure out what you do love about it, and approach the scene that way. Maybe you'll find that that scene doesn't belong at all and you need another approach entirely.
I find that writing only what you love is a great filter for unecessary fluff. It's a great indicator for what direction to go next. And I hope, in the long run, that it is going to make the stories that I write, whether short or long, meaningful to people.
Sometimes I think that maybe I should just bite the bullet and write a military sci-fi novel or some YA involving kids with magical powers, just so I can get published and make some money off my writing. But I wouldn't love it, and I think that that would come through in the writing. Even if such a book made it past agents and editors and was published, it wouldn't be memorable. I few people would pick it up as part of the year's latest book fad, then they'd put it down and forget about it.
I want to write memorable stories, books that move people in some way. How can I expect someone else to be passionate about my story if I'm not? So, I'm not going to write for anyone else but myself. Because if I don't love it, no one will.
And hey, at the very least I'll have one fan.
posted by braun at 11:31 AM
1 Comments:
If you don't love it, why should your readers?
If I can't get enthusiastic about an idea, it goes nowhere. Because, as you say, writing is hard work and why go there if you don't like what you are doing?
That's what we have our day jobs for, after all.
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