Writing isn’t easy. Everybody says so – pantsers, planners, linear writers, nonlinear writers, plodders, burst writers … everybody.
So why do so many of us make it harder than it already is?
People who are natural short story writers have their hearts set on writing novels. People who are natural novelists write short story after short story, trying to “learn their craft” or to start selling so they’ll have a track record when they’re finally “allowed” to write a novel. (Hint: Even a novel that’s only moderately good is easier to sell than a terrible short story.) People who are planners try to sit down and “just write.” People who are really pantsers spend weeks making notes and story diagrams and plot outlines that kill the fun of writing for them.
The things that lead to this include:
- Respect for authority. A teacher, a how-to-write book, a professional in the field (critic, agent, editor, famous author), or someone they respect has told the writer that planning (or pantsing, or plodding, or whatever) is the One True Way to “good writing.” The writer believes them, because the advice is coming from someone who has credentials in the field. So they refuse to try anything else, even though multiple attempts show that it isn’t working.
- Impatience. The writer has tried working one way, but it’s so slow. Surely burst writing (or planning, or just slamming things down without planning, or …) would be faster than what they’re doing. Anything would be faster. So they try something else, which (contrary to their assumption) is even slower. Instead of going back to whatever they were doing, they either keep trying to make their new method work, or else they move on to yet another different method, which also is slower than their original attempt. By the time they’re ready to give up on that, they’ve completely forgotten how they started off working, so instead of going back to what worked (at least, sort of), they move on to something else.
- Lack of confidence. The writer has an urge to write a particular way, but they don’t trust their instincts. Everybody says writing is really hard, and their way of working is a lot of work, and yeah, there are hard bits, but it just doesn’t feel as bad as all those other writers make it sound … therefore, this writer must be Doing It Rong. Or they decide that “writing is hard” means they should start with a writing process that they know is going to be extra-difficult.
- Looking for an easier way. Similar to #2, but instead of wanting to produce faster, the writer wants it to be easier. This is a pitfall any writer can fall into at any time – I’ve been doing this for over forty years now, and I’m still looking for tips and tricks and the Perfect Word Processor (defined as the one that will take my vague idea for the scene direct from my brain and put the fleshed-out version up on the screen in two minutes or less). The problem comes when a writer focuses so hard on easy writing that they stop working the minute things get hard again (and they always do). There is a fine line between trying new methods of working or experimenting with new techniques or processes, and giving up on something that does work, but that requires a lot of sweat equity to get results.
My advice – which each of you should ignore if it doesn’t feel right for you – is as follows:
- Trust your instincts. If your head is absolutely positive that you should write a novel, and your backbrain keeps handing your short stories, write the short stories. If you have written out a 300 page plot outline in grim detail, and on page 10 the main character decides to jump down the rabbit hole to Wonderland instead … let them do it, and see what happens. If your favorite author claims the only way to write is to start on page 1 and write in order, but you want to get your final scene down while it’s vivid, go ahead and start at the end of the book and write forward. If it truly doesn’t work, do something else next time, but don’t be afraid to experiment.
- Start from what you know about how you work. By the time someone begins writing fiction, they’ve done a certain amount of writing in school, even if it’s only term papers. Think about what your process for other kinds of writing was like, and try that first (or something like that). Yes, fiction is different from nonfiction, but it’s still writing. If you had ten pages of articles neatly organized on index cards before you started actually writing your term paper, you should probably try planning your fiction first. If you didn’t bother looking up articles until you’d written the introduction and you knew what you needed to look up, maybe you’re a pantser at heart.
- Play to your strengths. If you’re good at making things up, make up a lot of things. If you’re good at characters, focus on the characters. If you’re good at organizing, organize the heck out of whatever bits of story you actually know right now. If you’re good at high drama, shoot for that, rather than low comedy. If you’re good at research, hunt up some real-life parallels that you can repurpose to suit your fiction. If you consistently get ideas that suit short stories, write short; if you consistently get ideas that sound/feel like novels, write novels. If you don’t know what you’re good at, start by figuring it out, and if you can’t figure it out yourself, ask your friends/beta-readers what they like best about your writing and what they think you’re good at. They may surprise you.
And one more reason for making it harder than it needs to be: misjudging your own character. I was aware of the planners vs pantsers distinction and assumed I must be a planner or outliner. I mean, I’m the kind of person that starts writing the holiday packing list a month before I go. But nope. After months of half-hearted attempts at writing an outline, I eventually decided to just try writing the novel. I do have a general sense of where the plot is going and what the ending is, but nothing detailed. 50k words later, it seems to be working.
Yes. It turns out that I’m neither a pantser or a planner, but rather something in-between. My process calls for a very basic plan to start with (beginning, ending, usually one or more way-points in-between) then writing from the start with bouts of more-detailed planning along the way.
It took me years to figure this out.
I’m the opposite. I started pantsing before I learned about planning-vs-pantsing, just for fun in middle school. I wrote a whole novel like that, only to realize after years and zillions of revisions that it had no structure. I after-the-fact outlined it and rewrote it, and now it’s infinitely better. I’ve planned and drafted three more novels since then, and each went faster/smoother than that first slog. (It just goes to show that advice #2 was right—I’ve outlined every essay I’ve ever written.)
And I used to just write the essays, and if I knew the teacher was especially stroppy about ‘show your working’ I’d mock up a draft after I’d finished so that she’d think I did it before hand. So yep, I should have listened to advice no 2
*fistbump*
Brenda Clough used an analogy once, upon which I immediately seized with cries of glee, and have used from time to time ever since.
Consider, she said, a python in the zoo. If it’s healthy, and properly fed, it will go on growing as long as it lives. It must, therefore, be removed from its cage at intervals and measured; if it’s longer now than this time last year, it’s been growing and it’s healthy.
The accepted method (last time I took notice) is to have two or more zookeepers go into the cage, one to grab its head, another to grab its tail. After that, more keepers can go in and grab other parts of its length, haul it either head- or tail-first out of the cage, and stretch it out to be measured.*
If you have the head and the tail of your story, Brenda concluded, you can be reasonably confident of eventually filling the rest of the python in.
*If* you have the tail as well as the head. I have the head, in the form of three chapters, of my current WIP, and I have what I *think* will be the tail, but I could be wrong. (I have a diskful of tailless, bodiless heads.) Maybe the tail I have won’t work, or maybe the potential readers, to a man or woman, will reject it.
*I’m sure we all remember the Charles Addams cartoon in which the zookeepers are all lined up holding bits of the python to be measured and photographed, and the head of the reptile house is saying to an unhappy subordinate, “There, there, Fortescue, with normal growth you’ll be in there next year.”
Actually I find it easier to start with the head and fumble my way through the middle to the unknown end than to start with the head and the tail and have no way between them.
Then that’s your method. Stick with it.
Looking for new tools and being open to trying new things is good. Obsessing about it to the point of not writing, not so much. 😉
There’s a bit in IIRC My Fellow Americans, where a guy is talking about putting his kid through college, and says that he’s okay with it being hard, important things should be hard, he just wishes it was a little easier than it is. Writing’s a lot like that.
Sometimes there’s a gap between what one can write and what one wants to write. There is going against ones strength because one wants to write a full-bore novel, or a gem-like short story, as opposed to doing so because an Authority said “Serious writers write novels,” or “Learn your craft by writing short stories.”
And then there is the desire to write good stories as opposed to the slush-material that one has been producing. “Maybe if I change my process the result will be less slushy and more solid.”
Writing isn’t easy.
But not writing (at least for me) is harder.
I’m not talking about procrastination (which is *way* too easy) but rather the guilt and sense of failure my brain loads on me when I do not produce. No gentle taskmaster, that mind o’ mine.
Play to your strengths is excellent advice. Worry about weak areas in revisions, but first get something done to revise!
I’m particularly fond of the comparison with nonfiction in #2. I was surprised when I first realized that a lot of the skills I’d learned in writing scholarly papers or legal briefs were also helping with the fiction writing. And at this point, *each* type is aiding the others: I find I’m also drawing on the fiction-writing techniques to improve my advocacy writing, because telling a good story in a concise and punchy way is essential to both. Who knew?
Rick
Novels vs short stories is because it’s a lot easier to publish novels nowadays. You can go indie, though.
One problem is that what used to work sometimes stops. I’m trying to work on a plot beat structure because my usual “pants through an outline” doesn’t work as well when I have to develop and resolve a mystery.