Observations on Writing

In my last post, I went into some detail about my experience with writing and being a self published author. I don’t want to be a person who tries to give advice or tells you what to do or not to do, but I will tell you of some of the things that I have come across and the things that I have observed. I apologise now if a snippet of advice slips out, I will try to keep it to a minimum.

When I started writing, my knowledge of grammar was minimal. Imagine all that you learned in school, and then subtract all that you have lost since then.

Saying that, we know more about grammar than we think we do. It’s just that we do not know the technicalities and jargon of it. You might already know the difference between a noun and a verb and an adjective. You might have even known these words and what they meant. If so, great, but some people might not, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

When I started writing, I learned grammar from three sources.

The first was Lynne Truss’s book Eat, Shoots and Leaves. It is a simple and enjoyable read that I would recommend looking at. I still have this book on my shelf.

The second thing I used was Microsoft Word, which I used for writing. This is not without its flaws. It will make suggestions to your grammar that are simply wrong. And you will know this as well, if you pay attention to what it suggests and think about it for a moment.

Lastly, I have found that reading, and reading often, will teach you so much about grammar, in a number of different ways, too. Not just grammar but about the structure of writing. I’m not talking about the three-act structure that is used, but when commas are used, where a semicolon comes into it and, what I have also found, how many authors avoid the semicolon. I thought that learning where to correctly use a semicolon would make my writing better. It doesn’t. I don't fully understand it and I am happy to ignore it.

Do you think that is an amateurish point of view? Well, as mentioned, there are multi-million-selling authors who avoid it too. I’ll follow their lead on this one.

Talking about following people’s leads, in the early days of my writing, not long after I had finished my first book, Isaac’s Fall, I looked into ways of marketing and building a reader base. I fell down a bit of a YouTube rabbit-hole with this, and found a couple of things. The main thing I found was that there is an abundance of people who claim to know the secret to becoming a successful, selling author. And they will share with you these secrets, for a price. Ok, sure, nothing comes for free, I understand that. And in the words of Heath Ledger’s Joker, “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.”

What stuck with me, and irked me somewhat, was the people who say that they have done it themselves. They are successful authors who make a living from their books. I came across a number of videos featuring one person, being interviewed over and over, telling of how they are a successful author making a living from selling their books. Have I heard of this person before? No. Have I heard of them since? Definitely not. What books did they sell? Only books about how to sell books. No fiction, nothing historical, no biographies or poetry, not so much as a short story. All of their books were on selling books.

Now you might think, well, they are still selling books, aren’t they? And you’d be right. But look at the customer demographic they are aimed at. It is us. Me and you. People who have written a book and want to get it out into the world for as many people to see and enjoy. It’s a very specific demographic, and not the same one that authors of fiction and non-fiction are aiming for.

I could very easily go on a full-on rant about this, and I am very tempted to, but that would not be useful to anyone. Instead, I will take advice from the people who have done what I am trying to do.

Firstly, I am a huge Neil Gaiman fan. I recently came across a trailer for his Masterclass course. There was one line that stood out for me in this trailer, and said, “The process of doing your second draft is the process of making it look like you knew what you were doing all along.”

How great is that line? What does that tell you? It tells me that even someone like Neil Gaiman, when he starts writing a story, doesn't always know how it’s going to play out, how the story will form, or what he is doing.

I mentioned previously that I am reading Stephen King’s On Writing. I think that if you are going to take advice from anyone on writing, Stephen King is a pretty good place to go.

Similar to Neil Gaiman’s words, Stephen King says that the first draft is when you tell yourself the story and the second draft is when you tell the reader the story. He also says that he doesn't have full stories in mind when he sits down to write, only scenarios, something that he finds interesting. Then, he starts to write a story dictated by the characters.

I found this to be true myself. I started writing The Wrong Apocalypse because of a funny scenario that I had come up with years before, even before I had started writing. What if the zombie apocalypse happened and you were forced to seek shelter in a sex shop? Such a simple, amusing premise to start with. And with everything going on recently, with The Pandemic and Lockdown, it felt quite relevant. So, I sat down and started writing.

Last thing. People will say that you need to be consistent with your writing. This I have found is true and also the hardest part of writing. We all live our lives and our days are full. We have jobs, families, friends, other hobbies, we might care for people, and we might be struggling to care for ourselves, so having a set time devoted to sitting down and writing might not always be possible. Sometimes you need to steal those moments whenever you can. Sometimes you will need to feel motivated. You might be waiting for inspiration to hit before you sit down to it.

In Mark Manson’s book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life he makes a good observation. He says, to paraphrase, that usually you need inspiration to be motivated into action, but that this is not always true. Sometimes if you start the action, in this case writing, it will lead to inspiration and then to motivation to continue. This goes beyond writing. This goes for anything you want to turn your hand to. If you’re not feeling in the right mood for something, give it a try anyway. You might find that the right mood will catch you by surprise.

Oops, I think a little bit of advice might have slipped out there. Sorry.

Thank you for reading this post. If you’re interested, checkout my author page on Amazon to see the books I have written. I promise that none of them give advice. They are just fun reading.