Develop Your Craft
The author Somerset Maugham once said, “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
Fortunately, we can be more helpful when it comes to developing your craft:
- Read
The Six Golden Rules of Writing: “Read, read, read and write, write, write.”
-Novelist Ernest Gaines
Read what you love to read and write what you love to read. Read for inspiration and to establish criteria for your writing. Become a life-long learner about writing publishing.
- Love words
Like your computer, words are the tools of your trade. Your words will affect your readers in ways impossible to predict or imagine. Every word counts. - Understand what makes books work
Analyze what makes the books you love effective; you will be on your way to accomplishing your literary goals. - Get Experience Writing
There are more ways to make a living as a writer than ever, and any kind of writing experience makes an impression on agents and editors. - Come up with ideas
There’s a cartoon that shows two women nursing cocktails and one is saying to the other: “I’m marrying Marvin. I think there’s a book in it.”There are more subjects to write about than ever before. A publisher will buy your idea in one of two forms: A first novel usually has to be finished. But publishers buy ninety percent of nonfiction books on the basis of proposals.
- Research your subject
Hemingway believed that you should know ten times as much about a subject as you put into a book. The more you learn, the more you earn. - Outline your book
When you set out to construct an enduring edifice of prose, give yourself a solid foundation on which to build. - Establish a work-style
There is only one right way for you to write: whatever way enables you to produce your best work. - Write
Craft leaps off the page instantly. Every line of your copy must motivate readers to read the next line. The essential virtue of salable prose is that it keeps readers turning the pages. Write as if your future depends on it; it does. - Revise
Keep revising your work until it’s 100%, as well conceived and crafted as you can make it. - Share Your Work
Share your work with five kinds of people who can help you make it better: friends and family, potential buyers of your book; literate, objective readers; experts on the kind of book you’re writing; and a devil’s advocate who can spot everything that can be improved or removed. - Do a Final Revision
Follow only the advice that makes sense to you. - Submit your work properly.
***Continue to Part 3***