Top Ten Writing Tips–Tip #3: Start Something New

Originally posted May 13, 2010.

Yesterday, I wrote about how one of the best things we can do before starting revisions is to put our finished manuscript away for a while before starting revisions. So what do you do while you’re waiting to get back to it?

Writing Tip #3: Start something new.

To help you clear your mind of the manuscript you just finished, one of the best things you can do is start working on another story. It may not be writing—it may be collecting images of characters and settings, doing research of the time period or of the careers you want these characters to have. It may be meeting with your critique/accountability partners and brainstorming story ideas. It may be reading books you’ve determined are similar to, or will give you ideas for, your new idea. The important thing is to move on to something new as soon as possible. Start something new.

On Tuesday, we looked at why it’s important to finish your first draft. In Stein on Writing, Sol Stein compares learning to write with learning to ride a bicycle. It’s great to know all of the basics before ever sitting down on the bike (setting pen to paper/fingers to keyboard). If you don’t have a good foundation of knowledge of what it means to write a bike, it’s going to be a lot harder to learn how. But once you know the “how” of riding a bike (or writing a novel), you aren’t all of the sudden a cyclist.

Your first few forays out on the bike, you find yourself very wobbly; you tend to make jerky turns and movements because of how you manage the handlebar; too much speed is scary, but if you go too slowly, you don’t have very good control over stability/balance; you aren’t sure exactly how much pressure to exert on the brakes to stop in time to keep from hitting that parked car.

Those are the essentials of cycling, but it doesn’t mean you can ride a bicycle. What you need is practice. You learn to coordinate your movements. You discover how rapidly you have to rotate the pedals in order to keep the bicycle moving, and how to redirect the handlebars gradually to turn a corner. Only with repetition do you find out how to slow down and stop without tipping over. Once you master riding, what you have learned will stay with you for the rest of your life. You may abandon the bicycle for an automobile, then years later take it up for exercise and find that, in moments, you are rolling ahead, fully coordinated, your brain responding to what you learned in your practice sessions long ago. (Sol Stein, Stein on Writing)

It’s the same with writing. It’s all well and good to complete one novel. It’s great to finish two. But why should we expect to be “professional” authors if that’s all the practice we’re going to give it? As James Scott Bell wrote in The Art of War for Writers, we learn more about how to write a full-length novel by writing a full-length novel. Professional authors must write dozens of novels—on deadline—so how can one expect to attain that level without putting that kind of work in before becoming a professional?

Look at all of the other professions in the world—concert pianists take lessons for years and practice hours upon hours each day before they are considered “professionals.” To rise to the level of Executive Chef at a restaurant, a cook must do one of two things: survive the rigors of culinary school and then work for years and years and years as a sous chef; or she must work for years and years and years and years—working her way up through the ranks until she knows enough to compete with others who also worked hard to get to the executive level. Doctors have to go to school for years then have to complete more years of internships and residencies before they’re allowed to work independently as “professionals.”

Don’t make the assumption that finishing one or two manuscripts is going to give you the skill-set you need to become a professional author—when being a professional author requires one to be able to churn out multiple manuscripts, one after the other after the other. By writing multiple manuscripts before you’re published, not only are you honing your skill at the craft of writing, you’re doing your internship at being a professional author.

James Scott Bell wrote this in The Art of War for Writers:

I’ve counseled many writers at conferences who have come with a single manuscript yet haven’t got another project going. I tell them, “That’s wonderful. You’ve written a novel. That’s a great accomplishment. Now, get to work on the next one. And as you’re writing that next one, be developing an idea for the project after that.”

Publishers and agents invest in careers. They want to know you can do this over and over again.

On her website, Christy Award–nominated and Carol Award–winning author Mary Connealy says, “I wrote for ten years before I got my first book published. When I did get my first contract I had twenty finished books on my computer at home. . . . The two years before I got published I was a finalist in eleven contests with five different books. And all the while I’m entering these contests, I kept writing.”

In addition to the three completed manuscripts I had before I started writing Stand-In Groom, I had dozens of partially written story ideas on the computer or in notebooks, and a 200,000-word never-ending saga that was a fictionalized view of me and my circle of friends from college and “what could have been.” Without knowing it, by writing every day since I was fourteen or fifteen years old, I was learning the work ethic I’d need to become a professional author. By writing that long manuscript, even though I never brought it to a conclusion, I did learn about character development, about conflict, about setting, about revision. And by completing three manuscripts before SIG, I learned about story and plot development, about structure, about POV, about showing vs. telling, etc.

Though there’s a lot of hard work that comes after the book contract is signed, all of the hard work of learning to be a published author shouldn’t wait until then. It’s a lot easier to learn how to be a multi-published author before signing that three-book contract than it is once you’re on deadline.

So, write something new!

For discussion . . .
For writers: How many manuscripts have you completed? How many story idea files do you have right now? Are you constantly writing down/developing new story ideas?

For non-writers: How many years did it take you to learn your profession—whether you’re a doctor or a homeschooling parent? What do you wish you’d done differently before embarking on that profession that might have made it easier?

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Works Cited:

Stein, Sol. Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Print.