I see a lot of How To Be A Writer posts and they always cheer me up.
The internet is full of other people who seem just as anxious as I am to nail down the process into a series of simple instructions. Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t it be super if you could buy “On Writing” by Stephen King, follow it page by page and end up with a novel, very much as one might follow a recipe to make apple crumble [peach cobbler if you come from a place where apple crumble does not exist].
Sadly it doesn’t work like that. There are too many variables. Every single writer has something about themselves that nobody else can quite manage to emulate. Every single writer NEEDS to work in their own particular, unique and sometimes peculiar way.
- Yesterday on the Women and Words site I saw a brilliant illustration of this. Jack Kerouac provided 30 ‘How To’ tips for people who wanted to know how to be a writer. Here they are in no particular order of importance:
- Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
- Submissive to everything, open, listening
- Try never get drunk outside yr own house
- Be in love with yr life
- Something that you feel will find its own form
- Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
- Blow as deep as you want to blow
- Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
- The unspeakable visions of the individual
- No time for poetry but exactly what is
- Visionary tics shivering in the chest
- In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
- Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
- Like Proust be an old teahead of time
- Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
- The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
- Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
- Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
- Accept loss forever
- Believe in the holy contour of life
- Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
- Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
- Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
- No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
- Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
- Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
- In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
- Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
- You’re a Genius all the time
- Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
Elmore Leonard’s “10 Rules for Writing”
So now you know! I bet that’s a sure fire recipe for writing something that looks a bit similar to Jack Kerouac.
Sure you can follow Elmore Leonard’s advice and that will be fine if you want to write stuff set in the same kind of places and periods as Elmore Leonard enjoys writing about. But the tight terse laconic style that is fine for hard bitten PIs investigating contemporary crime capers is going to look a bit odd if you apply it to Regency romances.
I’d be inclined to read the advice – some of Elmore’s ten are spot on – but how the hell do you guess which bits readers skip? I know that I often skip the bits that other readers say are the best parts. What do you think? Sing in your own voice or try and lip synch to one of the great operatic tenors who write ‘how to’ books?
Elin Gregory 
Well Elin your posts always make me feel a whole lot better!
As to how to write a novel – I have no idea whether or not I will manage to do it. I do know however that I am going to try. I also know that I am making up how to do it as I go along, taking bits of advice from here and there, using it for a while, then discarding it whenever it starts to feel like a strait-jacket.
Yes I own lots of how-to writing books and I love every one of them, but, and here’s my confession, I have yet to read all of any of them. I merely pull them off the shelf and peruse them, maybe managing a chapter in total, maybe not. Usually something sticks and I think, hey I could try that here…..So I’ll keep buying my books, enjoy looking at their spines on my shelf, and then do it my way. But if you ask me what my way is…it changes every day! xxx
🙂 That’s the way to do it! Dip in and out, grab the best bits and put the rest aside for later. Next time a bit of advice that doesn’t ring true NOW might be just what you need.
Some advice is always excellent – like “Use dialect sparingly” – but there’s no need to follow it all. I get worried sometimes when I see people who should be LOVING writing their stories [short, novella, novel, three volume series] but instead are worrying because they do something that Stephen King or whoever doesn’t. That’s such a pity.
Storytelling is probably the oldest profession and is definitely the most fun anyone can have on their own.
Good luck, have fun. If you need a beta reader you know where to find me 🙂
ok here’s something embarrasing about me (in addition that I can’t spell) When I tried my hand at writing about eeek 30 years ago I actually wrote: it was a dark and stormy night….. who knew?
I wonder if the writers who worry cause they don’t follow Stephen King’s rules are the same people who worry that they’re not raising their kids right because they don’t follow the “experts”
g’night
It’s sue by the way lol
Hey Sue. I recognise you from your lovely rose icon.
That weather thing is so unfair. What’s the first thing two Brits say when they meet? “Lovely weather, we’re having” or “Damn but it’s cold”. It’s natural for us to consider the weather, something that folk who have been raised with the certainty of a climate don’t have to worry about. Poor Bulwer-Lytton.
People write how to raise a baby books but, sadly, babies can’t read. If they could we’d be in with more of a chance. 🙂
Babies reading! love the image.
The Canadian line is: too humid in summer and too windy in winter. One never has to worry what to talk about while waiting for the bus
Write what you want bottomless from bottom to mind – THAT’s the one I’m going to follow. Jack Kerouac wrote the brilliant “On the Road” and you can’t get better than that. OTH, who is Elmore Leonard? Of course you can use an adjective and describe a character fully – just do it sparingly and don’t bore the pants off your reader. Love the advice, Elin. I must remember not to get drunk outside my house tonight 🙂
You can get drunk outside your house if you WANT, but arrange for a man with a wheelbarrow to take you home afterwards. 🙂
Elmore Leonard writes terrific novels and short stories some of which have been made into films starring people like Randolph Scott and Burt Reynolds. I suppose the best known is “3.10 to Yuma”. All his heroes are men of very few words and the stories are filled with action. His style wouldn’t suit every subject.
I too dip in and out of “how to write” guides. I wonder sometimes if I follow the bits that I like or if I like the bits that I follow 😉 Out of each one I pull at least one gem. I am a fan of Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ (“throw out your television” – which I did in 1993 – “ditch the adverbs” – which I keep in mind at every rewrite – and “write what you like to read” – which allowed me to pursue my WIP, instead of ideas which may be more “legit literary.”
I’m dipping in and out of Priscilla Long’s extraordinary “The Writer’s Portable Mentor” at the moment- a book which I wish I could upload into my bloodstream.
BUT. “Every single writer has something about themselves that nobody else can quite manage to emulate. Every single writer NEEDS to work in their own particular, unique and sometimes peculiar way.” Elin Gregory
Yes. It is far more important to write than to read about writing. I want my voice to be my own, not a regurgitation of axioms pronounced by the experts. I want to ‘blow as deep as I want to blow’ to ‘write what I want bottomless from bottom of the mind’ I want to bend rules, break a few, stumble over my own feet, to believe in ‘my own Genius, all the time’ (thanks Jack, thanks Elin!).