A hundred ways to fall over

Last week, I got an email which said, in effect, “I want to write, but …”

I get a load of these emails, maybe dozens a year. The actual nature of the “but” varies a little, but some common examples include:

• I have so many ideas that the new ideas jostle the old one out of prominence. I have books full of ideas that I’ve started and then abandoned.
• I don’t know if anyone will want to read it
• I realise I’m going wrong and lose confidence in the whole idea
• The book just feels bad.

And so on.

It’s strange to say it, but these feelings are deeply common even amongst commercially successful novelists. That includes people who have written top ten bestselling novels and whose upcoming novel would certainly be expected to sell equally well.

So – these thoughts have their somewhat crazy edge. But given that they’re so common, they must be grounded in something. And the common denominator is pretty simple:

Most first drafts are problematic

That’s an observation so familiar, it probably doesn’t need much expansion here. But there’s a second issue, especially where less experienced authors are concerned, and it’s crucial:

Purely technical problems manifest as fundamental flaws with the idea or writer.

So let’s say that you haven’t understood something important about (say) creating a sense of place. Perhaps you do the basics – this scene is set in a coffee shop, that one on a park bench, this one in an office – but everything still feels flat and without atmosphere.

How will that feel to you, the author, as you look over your work? And inevitably, given that there will be other issues too (plot awkwardnesses, character issues, some bad prose habits, etc) what are you going to conclude about your book?

The answer, very often, will be that writers think either “this must be a terrible idea” or “I must be a terrible writer”. Or both.

And look: I do think it’s critical you have a great idea before you start writing in earnest. You should spend as much time as you need to get the idea bullet-proof. You (mostly) can’t change that idea once you’ve started writing and if it’s of only mediocre quality, your book will always struggle.

But if your idea is OK, then everything else comes down to two things. Only two.

1. Your ability to identify the technical issues in your writing
2. You having the tools to fix those technical issues.

So take that concern over sense of place. There’s basically a repeatable template for generating atmosphere and sense of place. You have to learn what the template is. Then practise applying it. Then edit, and edit your edits, and edit the edit of your edits. And you’re done. Problem solved.

Assuming your idea is good, and assuming you have the wit to be at least competent as a writer (the large majority of you getting this email pass that test), then the feelings of doubt you are experiencing now are probably the result of technical issues which you haven’t yet properly identified or fixed.

That’s it. That’s why writing craft matters so much. It’s the siege engine which breaks every challenge down into a set of basically solvable puzzles.

If your writing craft isn’t yet all that it might be – something that is true of most pro authors as well as nearly all new writers – then there exist an absolute host of resources to help you out. Ranked (very roughly) from cheapest to dearest, you can consider any of the following things:

• These emails
• Blog posts, podcasts and the like
• Hanging out with other writers (which is helpful, but also dubious as errors can be propagated just as well as truths)
• A decent writing book, like the one wot I wrote.
• A Jericho Writers membership. If you buy for one month and then cancel, you’ll spend very little money and still have the ability to do our complete How To Write course, alongside an absolute ton of other material. That course is there to help you (A) identify technical issues and (B) solve them. That’s it. It’s about actionable help, not airy-fairy nonsense. (More.)
• A cheaper writing course – this will focus on skills, not on your manuscript, but your manuscript will certainly improve. (More.)
• A manuscript assessment – this will focus on your manuscript, not on skills, but you will also learn a ton and become a better writer as a result. (More.)
• Mentoring. This is where you work on your manuscript in the company of a professional author. You’ll get a mixture of technical and editorial type advice, but also a kind of motivational life coaching. For some writers, this kind of relationship is absolutely core to their evolution as authors. (More.)
• The Ultimate Novel Writing Course. This does exactly what it says on the tin – a phrase which will make sense to British writers, familiar with the old Ronseal ads, but which may be perplexing to everyone else. But yes: it’s our attempt to build the most complete possible writing course we could imagine. (More.)

On the whole, I’d urge people to muck about in the shallow end before diving into the more expensive options here. So for heaven’s sake, before you pay for the top-dollar UNWC, do something low cost – like reading a book – to see if the focus on writing craft feels productive. It probably will, but be sure to buy a bottle, before you acquire the whole damn vineyard. Taste the bacon, before you buy the pigs.

That’s it from me. Oh la la, and what a week it’s been. I have news for you, my little buddies, and you can’t guess what it is.

Shall I tell you? Yes. One day I will.