Don't Just Sit There: DO SOMETHING
Getting Started
by Gwynne Forster
You want to walk into Barnes & Noble and see your
masterpiece on the shelf beside the works of Kimberla Roby, Donna
Hill, Timothy McCann and the rest of us published authors. You want
to pick up the phone one morning and shriek with joy when you hear
an editor's voice say, "We love your book; how does a three book
contract sound?" Those of us who have had that experience, heard
those words share at least one more thing: we sat down and wrote.
Put aside the pipe dreams; stop jumping from theme to theme, idea to
idea and manuscript to manuscript; decide that you intend to be a
published author, and give yourself a deadline by which to complete
ONE credible work of fiction.
Decide what you want to write and stick to it
The mind set of a short story writer differs markedly
from that of a writer of full length novels. Decide which you will
write and whether it will be romance, romantic suspense or women's
fiction, for examples. Having decided, don't change unless you've
demonstrated to yourself that you can't do it.
How much time can you invest in your writing and when can you write?
Set aside a time and place to write, and decide how long
you can write with minimum interruption. Get the cooperation of
family and friends to ensure yourself the period of solitude that
you need. If you've chosen the hours
five to seven am,
for example, always write at that time, and do it every day.
Be prepared to sacrifice something.
If you could only find the time, you say. How many
papers do you read daily? Magazines? How many hours do you watch
television, gossip with friends on the phone, shop aimlessly out of
habit? Put on your answering machine, ignore the calls and return
them when you've finished writing. You don't have to answer the
phone just because someone wants to talk to you. That is their
program, not yours. It takes discipline, motivation and drive. You
want something big? You have to give up something.
Decide how much you will accomplish each day.
Set achievable goals. One paragraph at a sitting. One
page a day. When you've shown yourself that you can write a good
page each day (if you do that every day, at the end of the year
you'll have a 365 page book), try to write a thousand words each
day. In this way, each day will be a triumph, and you will be
encouraged to reach higher.
Set up a filing system
Accomplished writers keep good records. Computer files
can be damaged, so consider keeping correspondence separately on
hard copy. At the minimum, you will need records of expenditures for
tax purposes, story ideas and correspondence with editors and
agents. For your writing, it is important to keep records of your
major characters as you have developed them (speech patterns,
habits, education, eye color, length of hair, occupation, heroine's
favorite color, perfume, etc), outlines, sequential scenes and so
on. Your files should include the results of your research, eg.
symptoms of your heroine's affliction, the name of the highway that
leads to John's town, number of people who live in the town, its
industrial base, names of its schools, monuments, etc. Finding
information on a diskette can be time consuming, and you may lose
your train of thought; a note book is handier. Later, you will need
a more comprehensive filing system. Store your manuscript on your
hard disk plus two CDs or a USB drive. Once you have either a
computer crash, you'll be glad you did.
Chose the best tools you can afford
Use a PC (personal computer) with a DOS system, if
possible. Fit it for extensive and easy access to the internet so as
to facilitate both research and communication with others in writing
and publishing. Get a thesaurus, The American Heritage Unabridged
Dic-tion-ary (1996 or later edition), a dictionary of similes
and a thesaurus of slang.
Be
prepared
Take pen and paper every place you go. Once ideas play
around in your head, they seldom if ever return in the same mold.
See you at your booksigning.
Copyright Gwynne Forster
2001,
New York,
NY
