"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
My Boog Pages
Monday, April 19
How To Write In Two Easy Steps
Step One: Plant butt in chair.
Step Two: Put pen to paper (fingers on keyboard, or whatever works for you).
And that's it! There's a memegoingaround the Internet about the process of writing, and if you ask me, it's just this simple: practice, practice, practice.
One misperception about writing is that once you have an idea for a story, the rest is just transcription, almost dictation. That's just not true. The act of writing down words is a creative act. No matter how much you plan ahead of time (and I tend to plan a lot - when I don't I invariably get stuck) there will always be more details to fill in, more texture to add, more of what makes a story yours and not someone else's.
Although I haven't published a lot in the last year, I've been writing pretty steadily (for me), and I feel like I've reached the point where I can achieve my goals for any particular story. Sometimes, if I get a good idea while I'm working, it comes out *better* than I'd intended, but if what I get is what I wanted, I'm usually satisfied.
Other than that, what can I say? I still get restless when I'm writing. When I start work on a story I get a sort of adrenaline rush, and I have to get up and pace every few minutes. If I keep at it long enough I settle down and get quite a bit done, but I don't have a lot of time, and usually I'm lucky if I get a solid 500 words in.
I guess I envy guys like Michael Bracken, who can consistently turn out good stories relatively quickly, but the truth is I probably wouldn't get that much more done if I had more free time. I just like to think about stories for a long time before I write them. I have a couple of good ideas I've been kicking around for almost 5 YEARS that I plan to get to by the end of this year.
One other thing that's true: success feeds on itself. Whenever I sell a story, I'm so stoked I practically run to the computer to write another one. I hope I never lose that high - it would be too expensive to replace.
