The first book I wrote took me over a year to complete, and it’s only 85,000 words. Not a long book. There were several factors that went into my prolonged writing journey, from being inexperienced to time management. Things I have improved since then. I would like to share what made me successful and what is sustaining me. We all need discipline and inspiration. However, this not about being an expert in writing, we all are at different levels, and that’s okay. I’ve read somewhere that it takes a person 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything. Having the knowledge that a calendar year is equivalent to 8,760 hours, that breaks down to about a year and a half. Which in turn will probably be longer. Most people don’t have a straight 8,760 hours to lend to writing. It just doesn’t happen that way unless you have no life. We all have lives. This post is about tips that I have personally done or researched, that made me into the writer I am today. I think these are all tips that anyone can use to improve their writing. Being Black and gay, sometimes it’s hard to get the correct information from a source you can trust. Everything doesn’t always work for particular person, and it needs to come from a reliable, proven source. That’s where I come in.
First thing is first. You can’t call yourself a writer without writing. And that means writing more than an hour a day or when inspiration hits you. If you put two hours into writing more every week more than usual, that will accelerate and give practice to your improvement. I am constantly writing. Because of my work schedule and other commitments, I only can write on the weekends. What I do is try to give myself at least four hours each on Saturday and Sunday to write, especially when I am writing a novel. It sounds like a lot of time but it’s not. Those four hours can only equate to 2,000 to 4,000 words. That’s equivalent to a three-page scene. Not even a whole chapter. So, it’s really not a lot of time to be productive. It simply improves that product being produced. Some side effects to writing more are: getting to know your own writing habits better. Like the time of day that you produce more work or a location that inspires you; you’ll develop discipline, an essential skill if you ever hope to write a novel or another long form project; you’ll discover what you like to write; and you’ll form new ideas.
Secondly, read books by other authors. If you don’t want to read books, read something else, but just read. Reading creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing. When you are ready to write, you would have been exposed to different styles and ideas. You will see examples of another writer’s use of vocabulary, sentence structure, and rhythm. It will seep in subliminally, beneath the surface of your consciousness, quietly sharpening your perceptive skills. Discovering plots, you’ll be actively learning the creative strategies of other writers. I know this, I stand by this ideology. In my case, I am in graduate school at the moment. I do not have time to read books for recreation. I mostly read academia at the moment. I try to find courses that have texts that are similar to literary fiction. Whether it’s a psychology text or work of fiction, as long as it tells a story you can pull from it.
Moving down the line, you can pick up writing skills from other texts. Reading is one way we can subconsciously learn, but you also need to put in serious, active effort. That means taking apart passages that impress or move you and dissecting another writer’s methodology. In my creative writing course, my instructor told us and showed us examples of how to analyze work. What is the writer telling us about the plot? How is the writer using exposition? How is the writer introducing characters? This will be most helpful if you focus on texts in your genre or form. If it’s fiction, read novels; if it’s journalism, read newspapers; and if it’s academia read research papers. Read each sentence carefully, asking yourself how you would have gone about writing it.
In fourth place, study examples of writing theory. This is not to scare you. All writers do not have an academic background in writing, and you don’t need one, but it is good to understand writing theory. There are specific structures in writing that readers respond to. It could be the Universal story line, or the classic Hero, or the Character Driven story structure. These are basic writing structures that are interwoven into every good story. It even gets into romance, crime, horror and mystery. Time to do your homework. You can go online and search these writing theories for examples. Learning about structure within stories and the different models that actors, playwrights and fiction writers rely on, like Freytag’s pyramid or the classic structure divided into three acts, is valuable for any aspiring writer. I usually use a Character Driven structure. I set my scenes up as three act scenes in a chapter. Writing theory helps me stay on track with telling and writing a story that readers want to experience.
Coming right behind that is outlining your book. Some people are Pansters, but I don’t adhere to that school of writing any longer. I did that when I was inexperienced. Inherent in all good writing is story: a narrative with a full-fledged arc that must start and end in places that make sense and add value to the entire text. It is very important to write out a chapter synopsis (not a formal one, but some ideas of what the chapter is about). It is equally important to break down the scenes you want in each chapter. And lastly, write out scene notes, outlining the scenes in your chapter. This will ensure your opening and endings are coherent. It will also balance out if a story opening is delayed or slow, or if an ending is incomplete. You will have every detail written out that will give your chapter the right balance and pacing needed to make a good story.
We can’t forget about self-editing for errors in your prose. I’m not talking about misspelled words or other grammatical errors. I’m talking about the actual writing style. The best way I can explain this is giving you an example. Cluttering up your prose, these short words sneakily crawl into your writing and distract your reader from the essence of your point. In her free Reedsy course on self-editing, Lisa Lepki identifies the most common words in the English language as the culprits of literary clutter. Lisa advises writers to avoid “meandering around [their sentences’] meaning”, and offers this sentence as a wordy example:
“Andy went over to the far end of the playground to see if there was a rake that he could use to tidy up all of the leaves that had fallen down in the night.”
Lisa offers this distilled alternative:
“Mountains of leaves had fallen overnight, so Andy checked the playground for a rake.”
Moving right along, understanding the ideas behind your work. Now that you understand the importance of plot outlines, and crafting your opening and endings, it’s time to look at all the extraneous stuff outside your text: in other words, situate your writing within a wider framework of similar work. In fiction writing, you can use beta readers or AI to find similar works of fiction and get opinions. But in nonfiction, understanding the ideas behind your work is very crucial. It’s important to contextualize your claims (or the claims you are describing) by providing similar as well as alternative viewpoints, citing parallel research to posit your work as part of a larger conversation.
And lastly, get feedback from an editor. Nobody is the perfect writer. Nobody writes flawlessly. Most published writing undergoes significant editing both by its author and professional editors. No matter what you’re writing, give your work time to cool before stepping back into it with the fresh eyes of an editor. Assess the clarity of your meaning, expressions, overall structure, your tone, and the mood of the piece, and compare these to the vision you had when you were writing. Any writing intended for publication should also be professionally edited — and lucky for you, you can hire some of the most experienced fiction or nonfiction editors in the publishing world. You might want to consider writing agencies as well. I went on Reedsy trying to find an editor and ran into many problems. Some didn’t want to edit my work because it was gay material saying they had no interest in the topic, so forth and so on. Not to knock Reedsy, they’re great. But follow up with a writing agency, their sole purpose is to get your book publisher ready.