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How to write a book: Part 1: Introduction
Three years is a long time. Three years ago, I was asked to run an online group on how to write books. The posts ended up here. A lot has changed in three years. It’s time to re-issue the posts with updated information. So for the next few weeks, every Wednesday (or for some of you, Tuesday night) there will be a post to do with writing a book, answering a specific question in your email and posted on this blog. What’s your part in this? Well, you are welcome to sit back and read the posts but you can also participate. You don’t need to be writing a book,…
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It's kind of crowded in here…
There are currently about twenty one characters in my head and counting. Each story I come up with or am asked to write, begets more of them. What I am going to discuss in this post is how to create them. It’s not a hard and fast process but it isn’t completely intangible either. As far as I can make out there seem to be steps involved.
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Motivation to write
I once had an alternative life as a dancer. As a dancer, when you move and watch yourself in the mirror in the studio, you can see straight away where you are going wrong. You can see what doesn’t quite look right, what’s not conveying what you want to say and so on. And then you can fix it immediately. But that’s the beauty of dance as an art form – results are more immediate and it is far easier to get immersed into the process of movement, tweaking and fine tuning. And then the costume goes on, the lights come up, the bells ring, the crowd hushes, the curtain…
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Copyright issues
The lovely Janine Ripper requested the low down on copyright issues for writers. Here it is as succinctly as I can put it: 1) Anything you write whether it is recorded on paper or on disk or on the internet in a blog, as soon as you write it, is copyrighted to you. As soon as your work takes on a tangible form, it is copyrighted to you. Automatically. If you write under a pseudonym, the copyright is extended for 70 years after the moment it was first created especially if they cannot figure out the identity of the author. Â Otherwise, it is 70 years after the date of…
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The writing process, step by step
We discussed the process of writing in the last post. This post is about the steps in writing a book and getting published. So the first one was about how to get started with writing as a hobby or getting used to writing in general process wise and this is about the process of writing, editing and publishing a particular book.
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How do I get started?
There’s a simple answer to this question. I get asked it a lot. The answer is this:Â You write. Then there is the question: What do I write about? The answer:Â Whatever you want to write about. Basically what people want to know is what is the next step?
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How to write a book: Part 5: Structure (or Chapter and verse)
Structure. It is kind of strange to be discussing this prior to plot or idea but hey, I am flexible. You can read the discussions in any order you like. Structure refers to the way you organise a book such as chapters and the order of information. An editor who performs “structural editing” service on your work will read it to tell you how well your story or information is structured. In other words, where your chapters go, how many there should be and if you have put material that’s in Chapter 1 in Chapter 42 by mistake.
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Inspiration (or is there a muse?)
Yes. And no. What there is, is this wonderful awesome thing in your head called a brain. There was a reason in Greek mythology as to why Mnemosyne (nem-o-seen) was the mother of the muses. She was the goddess of memory and she named everything. Cognitive science now tells us that memory and emotion are important in the process of creativity. So let me use Sedition (the novel I am writing) as an example so you can understand what I am trying to tell you here.
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7 myths about writing
I thought I’d talk about myths about writing, just so we get all those nagging doubts out of the way. One thing that really depresses me is when I meet someone and they find out I am writing a novel and then they go: “Oh, wow, that’s so great – I could never do that!” Now, I guarantee you that one person out of ten has actually looked at themselves long enough and become sufficiently self aware to know that they cannot write a book for whatever reason. I can also guarantee that I have never actually met this one person. I tend to run into the other nine. I…
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How to write a book: Part 2: And the number one secret for writing a book…
… The Library. Yours at home, the public one in your city/town, the state one, the one at the university several doors down from you, the boxes under the stairs, the geeky flatmate’s comic book collection, the one online via Google Books, the one on your Amazon wish list, the one on your Kindle, the charity book sale, your neighbour’s garage – it doesn’t matter which one really, just whether you use one. Did you see the two writing tricks I just used?
