A writes:
When I was in high school I won a few short story awards but never really thought about writing anything bigger. In November I got a wild hair and decided i was going to write a book. I was extremely excited only because I had this story in my head that had started with a dream when I was like 14 (dream cheesy I know) and the last piece that made it all come together sort of clicked. Any way on the first night that I started writing I had roughly 4000 words. The next day I finished the second chapter and had just under 7000. I didn’t want to write something that people wouldn’t like so I let my best friend read it and my aunt and uncle. My Aunt and Uncle loved the concept and wanted me to keep writing so they could read more (I don’t think they were lying they are extremely blunt and don’t spare feelings…ever). However my best friend tore it apart. I’m glad she did I wanted her honest opinion. But now I see all the things that are wrong with it. I knew there would be a lot of grammatical errors (i have a learning disability with spelling and grammar) and that it would take a ton of work. I was fine with that but I feel like all the changes she made would having me rewriting everything. Also I feel like I’m “telling” the reader everything not having them I guess “experience” the story, if that makes any since. After I had their input I tried to wright the next chapter and it sucks… bad. I want to keep writing but I’m afraid all the mistakes are going to make the story fail. You and Gordan are my favorite writers and I absolutely love your writing style, I was just wondering if you have any suggestions for taking the criticism but still having the book be “mine” and if you have any suggestions for helping me with not “telling” the reader everything. I will gladly take any and every suggestion/help/advise you could possibly give me.
On Telling vs Showing: here is an article.
I’ve seen this before. You’ve been thinking about the story so much that when you sat down to write, it just poured out. That doesn’t happen very often, and when it does, you have to guard yourself against input, because any input, even positive, can kill it.
Creating and editing are two different driving forces behind writing. Creating is like running forward through a wide field: you don’t look back, you just go in whatever direction makes you happy. You see only the field and the possibilities. Editing is like looking at that field from a Goodyear blimp and pondering where in the the world that fool down below is going. You see the big picture and its flaws stand out. If you try to write and be critical of yourself at the same time, you will stall.
Some things to help you through this:
1. Your first draft is going to suck. It’s just a fact of life. It’s inevitable. My first draft sucks and first drafts of 95% of the writers suck.
2. Give yourself permission to write complete crap. Your first draft will suck anyway and you can always fix the crap in the revisions.
“You can fix anything but a blank page.” – Nora Roberts.
Just write. Don’t show it to anybody, don’t worry about what other people think, just go.
3. Get a grammar book, something simple like this one. Keep it on your desk – or on your Nook/Kindle, and when you come across something you’re not sure of, check it. I also recommend putting a copy of it in the bathroom. We will read just about anything in the bathroom. You may want to read the punctuation section carefully. 
4. Don’t show your work to other people until you’ve finished or until you absolutely can’t stand not getting any feedback. Relatives and friends are not your best audience for this. Some people will try to be super-helpful, because they know you and care for you and they think they’re helping by pointing out every wrong comma. Others might feel so proud that you wrote something, that they will just enthusiastically love anything you show them. You want a critique group or a workshop. I usually recommend the one mentioned in this post. Please remember that people are mean, so if you’re feeling at all fragile, this may not be a good idea.
5. Keeping on track: every day before you sit down to write, think about the scene you’re writing and take five minutes to jot down a very rough outline. For example,
Lady Charlotte de Ney finds out she is infertile. She confides in her mentor, who is a nice lady with regal manners. Her mentor tells her it will be okay. She tells her husband about it and he wants to annul the marriage, because his inheritance depends on babies.
It doesn’t have to be anything super-spiffy. Nobody but you will ever see it. It’s just a rough guide to know where you’re going. Don’t plan for more than one scene ahead. If you do this, I promise you writing the actual scene will be much easier.
Good luck!
I love your writing posts! Thank you for the insights and encouragement.
Good luck, A! Don’t worry too much about the mistakes. Find a grammar nazi friend later, after the story’s on paper, to help you with that. Lots of people are good at grammar but not that many can tell a good story. The story is the hardest part.
Writing and being edited, reviewed and having your work commented on is not for the thin-of-skin. Once upon a time I thought I’d try writing, but realized I’m not armored well enough to survive the process.
I enjoyed reading your previous posts about becoming a writer and dues you paid to get where you are in your career. It seems fitting that you’re willing to mentor another up and coming writer. I’ve done work-related review and editing, and it’s taken me forever to learn to focus on the issues and not on the grammar and sentence structure. I leave that job for our support staff pros.
You know, I love you for so many reason but this blog is a big part of it. It’s funny and it’s a learning experience. I’m a reader, I’d never be able to write anything but I really enjoy your take on the process. It makes me appreciate writers all the more. As a long time reader, before the internet, I had a romanticized vision of a writer’s life and boy, was it ever wrong.
This is the jist of what I was going to say, but Vinity said it first, and better!
Also, I just bought that book for my oldest. Thanks for the rec!
I think thick skin is the most important thing. And as for the first draft.. Having a general plotline is essential. Fanfiction writers are the worst with that as 99% of the time it is first draft and it goes nowhere and when you review the story and tell them that you are lost or that it doesn’t make sense they take offense. Proper writers should be able to take whatever a mean bastard like myself can dish out. Good Luck A!
Ilona,
I love love love your books. And I love love love your blog. I appreciate your humor, your honesty and your common sense. Thank you for writing and sharing it with me. Just wanted you to know.
I just want to say that I totally agree with this. You have to learn this the hard way sometimes, but DO NOT SHOW YOUR BOOK TO ANYONE until you are so miserable with it that you cannot stand the thought of looking at it again and you absolutely don’t know what’s broken but you desperately want it fixed.
When you get criticism on a book and you are ready, you think the person is the most brilliant genius in the world. When you are not ready, you think they are jerks.
Jill Myles recently posted..No longer at Smashwords
I think you give some of the best, most practical writing advice I have ever seen and you’re very generous to share your insight.
Having said that, I am so, so glad I don’t have a creative bone in my body and don’t feel compelled to write — it sounds like such a painful process.
Concur wholeheartedly. I have, I’ll admit, taken works-in-progress into writer’s groups (I have a group I’ve been a part of for several years now). Before I read, I usually caveat this with, “I just started this, I’m not looking for line-by-line feedback, I just need your overall thoughts and impressions.” For me, it helps me figure out whether it’s an idea worth pursuing or not. Plus sometimes bouncing it off of other people helps me get new ideas or directions. But that’s just how I work.
Friends and family are definitely not the best people to read your work, especially so early in the process. I don’t let friends/family read anything until I have something closer to “done.”
I really want to encourage A. I think it’s great that you’re writing a book. Don’t let disabilities slow you down.
Don’t forget… it’s OK to make mistakes. ALWAYS. Nothing comes out perfect. EVER. The thing that makes a book great is that you KNOW the author has slapped it all down and then gone back 987569475869405684056 times to fine tune exactly the ideas/concepts/emotions/feelings/smells/whatever they were going for. I tell this to my middle school kiddos all the time… NOTHING is perfect. A first draft is the single brick in your foundation of a story. Then I give them the stink eye and tell them not to give me a first draft as a final or I will flunk them back to kindergarten. I am so mean!
KEEP WRITING!
Thanks
You all rock! You make it sound simple to get thoughts together (not easy mind you…) Thanks for the great advice!
Thanks for the writing advice. You absolutely rock. I finished two books for Nano and made the mistake of giving the first few chapters to my mom to read. She kindly informed me of my habit of writing dangling participles.
Like I cared.
I wanted to know if the logic worked, if the story had some flow to it and if it bored someone half to death. Instead I got grammar correction. And anyone who edits for a living…you’re insane. I HATE this part. It sometimes takes days or even a week to edit a chapter that took me an hour to write.
So our next question for our esteemed writing awesome duo…how do you two edit?
Oh, and thanks for any advice!
Wonderful advice, and A, keep writing. I’m a voratious reader and we need new authors.
Excellent advice, as usual.
Keep writing, A.
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Hey I just read on your Twitter feed where you said, “I have officially written the saddest scene ever” and you told Jeaniene Frost who was going to die in Edge 4 and she said “Can’t one of them survive? and you said NO.
I read your books when I need to feel happy. Please don’t kill off people who will make us very, very sad. So I will add my opinion to Jeaniene Frost’s and say, “PLEASE, PLEASE can’t almost everyone survive?”
No! Kill them! We need sorrow! It makes the joy so much brighter.
This reminds me of the first time I read “A Game of Thrones”. I THOUGHT I hated the book and author because of the killings. I did not want to read “A Clash of Kings”. But some wild thoughts crept into my mind and I thought I would give the second book a couple chapters to prove itself. Well, it did. That’s GRRM’s style.
Great post! Years ago when I had finished writing my very first ever comic book script I showed it to the artist who is also the co-creator and his wife and they both basically told me that they absolutely LOVED it and it was brilliant. I didn’t write another word for two months. It scared the bejeebus out of me. I was certain I had used up all the good words and I would never find any more. Seeing as I had agreed to write a six book series…well that was going to be a problem. Luckily, like A, I wrote to a favorite working writer (Neil Gaiman) about it and he wrote me back saying I had just found out something very important about myself or at least about this particular project and that I should pay attention to that and proceed accordingly. He also said to write something else to break the fear and then go back to the series after that. I did and it worked. So thanks for another experienced writer who answers our questions with wisdom and kindness and good solid suggestions.
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Um that was “Thanks for BEING another experienced writer…”.
Miss Bliss recently posted..The Trade – Holiday Story 2011
You are a LEGEND
I enjoy editing much more than I enjoy writing. Yes, I am also a grammar fiend and will point out every wrong comma. For me, usually the first draft is the final draft with only grammar editing left. I do write a couple hundred pages per year for work and I am happy doing so.
I wrote reports for work, which was the best part of my job in that it allowed me to tell a story, research, plan strategy and make recommendations. However, the format was fixed which made the writing so much easier. Like others, I’m so grateful to those of you who find the courage and imagination to write fiction from a blank page. Thank you!
I don’t write, but I found this so interesting it makes me want to try. You could be a teacher, Ilona, but please don’t. No, your calling is writing…much to the world’s delight.
On NOT Telling the Reader Everything.
This is one of my favorite elements of fictional writing. Make the reader WANT TO THINK about various the characters’ pasts, personalities, parentage, connections, etc.(or cities/worlds pasts…) and their unknown experiences by giving them just enough details and allusions to keep them on a single minded quest to read your story. This can be hard to pull-off. Only in the end of the story/series does the reader USUALLY find out the whole or most of the details (or maybe not) and the implications. They then pat themselves on the back for thinking of the answer(s) or most of it before the finale.
It is FUN and destressing (sp?) to think about the unknown connections (etc.) in a story and how they fit in with what is known. Better than the alternative thoughts: the job you hate; the bills; health problems; etc. You get the picture.
P.S. I am a horrible speller who somehow became a high school’s runner-up Spelling Bee Winner some time ago. Hum… I think either I was lucky and was tested with words I did know how to spell OR I went to a school whose students were horrible in English class.
Thank you for this post – I love these ones.
My tutor calls it ‘Writing shitty first drafts’ – it is so much easier when you just give yourself permission to write crap. You can fix crap, but if you spend ages trying to get it perfect first time you’ll just never finish.
And I agree with other posters – A; we need more books from more writers, keep up the good (or crappy) work
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Always love your advice for writers! Thanks!
Thank you! I am taking a creative writing class and we continually come back to the point of let it all out then edit by making sure things show, not tell. My professor calls showing being a dramatist
Your posts about writing are always so helpful-which is not always the case with other authors whose posts are completely un-relatable. So thank again for your helpful, relatable, AND enjoyable posts!
Hey there. Thanks Ilona for the words. They pretty much stack up with what I’ve encountered with my self.
Your first draft is going to be horribly flawed. that said if you don’t let yourself write a horribly flawed book its going no where fast. I’ve got the first book I ever really started to write still on the proverbial shelf. sure the first part needs work but the middle part is awsome if I do say so myself. But I got bogged down in editing and fixing and just stopped. Its been more than five years since I touched it. Its up to about 55k. Then this last month I basically told myself my life was over if I didn’t write a book and parked my self in front of my lap top all day every day until it was completed.
So I cranked out 104k of a 133k first and very rough draft. and I did it all between jan 6th and jan 31st. Its a completely different series because I still had this tick about not ruining my first book, my baby. Now I’m thinking writing the sequel and am at 30k. I’m also taking a fresh look at my 55k stalled out first project.
I agree with the sentiment here. Write the dang thing and then go for help with the editing. Otherwise you WILL NOT finish your book, be it you wait for years. There are lots of grammer nazi’s that can help you out tremendously. But only as soon as you’re ready for it. That said when you go line by line with them, you have to listen. But its a different sensation FIXING something than it is trying to FIX and CREATE at the same time. The one quite natrually drags down the other.
Entrepreneurs call it having a relentlessly positive mood. And its hard to be relentlessly positive when you are specifically opening yourself to critisism, constructive or otherwise.
I’ve known guys in unrelated fields. Business start ups that said to me, yeah you know you’re probably right about all of the ways I could improve or fix what I’m doing but you know what. The way I’m going now works and I won’t keep going if I slow down and stop to nit pick the details. I’ll fix it later for now I just have to launch this thing.
I think writing is the same thing. You’ve got to get that plane in the air or it’ll never fly. You can’t let it turn it into a hanger baby.
The Deposed King
The Deposed King recently posted..30k and on a roll
Congratulations A on writing the story and having the courage to show it to anyone. So many times when people have found out I write they say “I’ve always wanted to write a book.” And when I ask them why haven’t they give a stack of reasons why they can’t. Then I tell them they don’t really want to write a book, they just like the idea of writing a book
A rough outline can be a good idea. Some writers find outlines are essential to how they write, others find it stifles their creativity. Letting others read your work can be scary. Wonttorit can tell you how well I’m dealing with that at the moment. 
as she is reading one of my babies. Yes it is harder if you have a learning disability. I have the unfortunate one of being finger dyslexic. (Typos, typos typos!) from not actually knowing how to type properly. I do my best but not swiftly. As for the comments of those reading your book, listen to what people have to say and then step back from it. Write notes if you have to, then go back and look at your work. Ask yourself if the comments they’ve given will help improve the story or are just personal opinion. There is a difference. If its opinion you may wish to ignore it unless you get the same one from several sources. Only you know what the heart of your story is about. Most books waver on a fine line between brilliance and outright mediocrity. Anyway I shall get off my soapbox now as the rain here is making it too sudsy. Good luck and all the best.
This kind of blog sounds interesting ..I want to try it your such an inspiration Ilona your a great writer..Keep up the good work!!!
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Your such an inspiration doing some writing..Thank you for sharing..
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Same thing happened to me. I have the story in my head and started the run with it. Got over 33000 words when a couple of friends offered critiques, some at my request, some others not so much. I lost my momentum and now its a struggle to put down anything. I am questioning everything, including going from 1st to 3rd person. I am ready to just go back to piling though the story and then working to edit it and if I want to change it to Deep 3rd person, I will do it then. I was able to get it back but I I talk about it with NO ONE! LOL Good luck and no you are not alone out there!