Three Concepts Aspiring Writers Should Know (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)

More people than you’d imagine harbor dreams of writing. I know this because when someone learns about my writing experience, I often hear a variation of, “I’ve always wanted to write." If I ask the person why he or she doesn’t write, the reason cited most often is a lack of time.

But I don’t buy that a lack of time holds most individuals back. I believe fear holds them back. Fear that surfaces through procrastination and stalling tactics until the desire to write withers to little more than wishful thinking. This stalling occurs because most novice writers, aside from having overly romanticized ideas about the writing process, don’t know what many advanced writers have learned through years of trial and error.

For those who want to benefit from someone else’s trial and error, here are three concepts I wish someone had shared with me before I started.

Reading is Linear… Writing Is Not

When we read a great novel, it’s a linear process. We start at the beginning of the book and finish at the end.

While most of us know better, it’s too easy to imagine the writer penning the work in a linear fashion. This gets lodged in our brains as we sit down to write. Then, if we become stuck trying to perfect the first sentence or paragraph, we get frustrated.

Over many years of practice, I’ve learned this: it’s hard to write well if frustration is your primary emotion while doing it.

Let me give a quick analogy.

If you’ve ever completed a traditional jigsaw puzzle with many pieces, think about how you did it. After turning the puzzle pieces face up, I'm guessing most of you worked on the frame by connecting all the outside edges until you had a large rectangle.

Then you worked on the easy stuff. An old blue tractor in front of a red barn. A dog loping through the grass at the edge of a majestic cornfield. A farmer wearing overalls studying a thunderstorm in the distance.

Once you finish those images, floating untethered in their relative positions, you turn to the tedious work of connecting them using puzzle pieces of similar colors, like green grass and a vast expanse of blue sky. At this point, it’s simply hard work because you don’t have as many visual clues to align the pieces. But you want to finish your masterpiece, so you persevere to get the job done.

Let’s back up.

Imagine you love assembling jigsaw puzzles using the method above, but a crusty authority figure issues a supreme command.

“From now on, you must complete the puzzle from left to right, with no exceptions. You must interlock every piece on the left edge until that column is complete. Then, you must connect all second-column pieces before moving to the third column.”

Even if you love working on jigsaw puzzles, this would be a mind-numbing way to complete one. It’s also a mind-numbing way to write a piece of any length.

But some novice writers sit down to do it that exact way.

If you have a book idea, you probably have a scene or two in mind already. If that scene is at the beginning, sitting down to write it may be relatively easy. But what if that scene happens midway through the book or near the end? Or if you don’t know where it will eventually land? Should you wait to write that scene until you’ve written all the scenes before it?

No.

Write that scene now. Release it from your head and onto the page no matter where it will end up in the linear progression of the book. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect. You will have to edit and refine it at some point. But you will sabotage yourself and that scene if you wait to write it until after you’ve written all the scenes before it.

And unlike assembling a jigsaw puzzle with the luxury of checking the box top to guide the finished product, we usually don’t have a clear idea of how the final story will look. Writing down the key scenes you have in your head now will free mental space to work on the connective tissue that binds them.

And this will lead to other vital scenes necessary for the final draft.

Tale of Two Writing Modes

I don’t hear many writers talk about this, but I believe the best ones know it instinctively or through trial and error. Successful writing originates from becoming adept at two distinct, separate writing modes. Combining the modes usually leads to frustration, and I’ve already mentioned why you want to minimize that emotion.

What are these modes?

I call them the creative mode and the editing mode. Both should be used separately. I like to think of the creative mode as building the raw block of stone I will later sculpt in detail, chipping away everything that doesn’t look like my vision for the piece.

Writers aren’t as fortunate as sculptors who have beautiful, raw blocks of marble delivered to their studios so they can chip away to reveal the masterpieces within. Instead, writers must create the raw blocks of stone themselves. To do this, one must get everything onto the page, including the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Later, we carve away the bad and the ugly using the editing mode so only the good is left. Or so we hope. Then, we continue with a second editing mode session. Or three. Or four. We continue to refine and elevate the piece until it’s ready.

You may be wondering how to create your raw block of stone best.

Start by banishing your inner critic. Barricade the ugly monster outside the door. Be assured it will huff and puff and beat on the threshold, demanding to be let in.

But you must be strong. If you can’t muster the strength to silence the inner critic during the creative mode, you will forever struggle when you write. Once you’ve shown the nasty monster who’s boss, it will slink away, leaving you to write, write, write.

At this point, let everything pour out. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, word choice, or any other writing advice your ninth-grade English teacher tortured you with, including how it’s not legal in 48 states to end a sentence in a preposition or use a fragment. DO NOT, for any reason, stop writing to edit while you are in creative mode.

I know. It’s hard to do.

The temptation to edit is monumental when writing on a computer, especially when you can slice a sentence in two with your cursor and wreak havoc with the delete button. If you have trouble resisting the temptation, take a page from my book and use a good old-fashioned notebook.

I’ve mostly trained myself to avoid editing when using a computer during creative mode. But the dangerous urge still wells up on occasion.

Most of the time, I resist.

But if the impulse becomes too strong, I whip out an old-school notebook and trusty ink pen to write longhand. This technique removes the temptation to edit and lets me focus on getting all thoughts from my head onto paper.

WARNING

When you spew everything onto the page in creative mode, you will likely cringe at the junk you’ve produced.

I do.

That’s okay. It happens to the best writers. But write this way often enough, and raw gems emerge from the junk. Later, after you remove the bad and the ugly in editing mode, you polish these gems to a gleaming shine to make something beautiful.

But before you do, put some space between creative and editing mode by walking away from the piece for a while. It will look much different when time has passed, making much of the necessary editing work more apparent.

Want more good news? The more often you write, using the creative mode followed by the editing mode at a later time, a benefit typically occurs. Over time, your writing during creative mode needs less editing. Your brain automatically incorporates some of your sharpened editing skills before the words hit the page.

I’ve mentioned these modes should be kept separate, but there are exceptions to everything. When I knowingly sit down in creative mode, I rarely let myself drift to editing mode. After all, I’m in that mode to build my block of stone.

But I never hesitate to drift from editing mode to the creative mode if something sparks my imagination, and I must get a series of new thoughts down fast. It’s easy to return to the editing mode when needed. But, if you consistently let yourself drift from creative to editing mode, you not only short-circuit your creative process but also develop negative habits that will stunt your growth as a writer.

Train Your Brain

With some exceptions of prose prodigies, excellent writing is a lesser percentage of innate talent and an overwhelming percentage of working hard to learn the craft while developing solid writing habits. To do this, you must train your brain.

Outstanding accomplishments happen with training and practice. Ask any millionaire sports figure or Grammy-winning singer. But some think a great novel can be written without dedicating serious and consistent practice to the craft. Writing is difficult to do well if you’ve never trained your brain to write often over time. Magic happens when we develop good writing habits. Below are worthy ones to establish:

• Write often.

• Write often, even if only for a short period. Daily is best, and anything is better than nothing.

• Learn to clear your mind of life’s endless distractions for a predetermined time. Sorry to break it to you, but you will never get all your non-writing tasks done anyway. Train your brain to block those to-dos out for a short time so you have a clear mental space to write.

• Use the creative mode often, not allowing any editing, so you create numerous blocks of stone to work with at any given time.

• Write often. (Did I mention that one already?)

Embrace the above, and you will strengthen the neurological pathways in your brain to become a better writer. But know this: if you are a fledgling writer or haven’t done it in a while, expect low quality before you get high quality.

This shouldn’t need explaining, but I bring it up because many beginning writers get frustrated when their perfect story concepts don’t transfer perfectly from their minds to the written page. Many aspiring writers have read works by published authors and thought they could have done better. But excellent writing is more complex than it looks. We may learn it took an author nine months to write the novel we read, but that’s most likely not accurate. It may have taken the author nine months to produce and assemble the words in a pleasing manner, but developing the skill to do it fast and well may have taken twenty years.

You’ve probably heard my advice to write daily from someone else. That’s not surprising because it’s sound advice for aspiring writers. But what’s missing, and where fledgling writers often stumble, is they believe they must write something good, or even great, every day.

Not true.

Permit yourself to write badly at first. If you keep going, you will improve. But also know everything you write is a culmination of all you’ve written before it. Those crumpled pages in the trashcan from yesterday’s lousy writing session will help your progression as a writer if you don’t let too much time pass between sessions.

New York Times bestselling author John Hart has two unpublished novels sitting in a desk drawer. But he knows those first two efforts weren’t wasted. They trained his brain to become a better writer.

Some last words on this from James Thurber:

“Don’t get it right; get it written.”

This applies to training your brain and writing in the creative mode. Mr. Thurber was a better writer than I because he explained the creative mode in seven words instead of the hundreds I dedicated.

Writing well is not a mystical ability granted to a chosen few. If you love words and descriptions and stories, you can learn to write better. But it only happens with concentrated effort.

Now go write. Your block of stone is not going to create itself.