Alysoun Owen, Editor of Editor of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook and the Children’s Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook, on how best to commit to your writing . . .
Be a committed writer. Write often. Perfect your craft. Be more like Trollope.
Most likely as a fledging author, you will be dipping your toe in and out of the literary waters in a cautious and possibly apologetic way. How dare you have the temerity to suggest that you can sustain a 300-page romantic fiction, police procedural or fantasy doorstopper that readers might actually want to read. If you do want to be a writer, then WRITE.
Devote yourself to your craft
Commit to your writing. Be confident that wanting to be a published author is a realistic ambition, if you put in graft, think positively and accept that there are likely to be knockbacks along the way to achieving this goal.
If you are spending time attending conferences and festivals, researching compulsively online and in libraries, working creatively with children in a school, you are raising your profile and immersing yourself in the world of books and words, being an advocate for your craft. But you are NOT writing. Don’t kid yourself you are. You may be involved in a very positive way, interacting with your potential audience and readership and you may be doing something that you enjoy.
John Braine (author of one of my favourite books on the writing process, How to Write a Novel, Methuen, 1974) cites the possibly apocryphal tale of Sinclair Lewis (recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1930) arriving drunk to a Harvard lecture on writing and yelling at the assembled audience ‘Hands up, all those who want to be writers?’ Of course, all hands went up. ‘Then why the hell aren’t you at home writing?’ he asked, before staggering off the platform. He had a point.
Being strict with yourself and establishing a routine and self-discipline is an important part of proving that you truly are a writer who takes your chosen profession and your craft seriously – seriously enough to carve out minutes and hours each day to dedicate yourself to it to the exclusion of all other distractions.
Your Writing Environment
You might be networking in writing environments and amongst writing communities out of financial necessity to supplement your paltry and unsteady income from the sales of your books. It’s not true that ‘thinking is writing’ – as I heard at a recent ‘How to Get Published’ day in Bristol. At best it is research, and useful preparation, but is more likely to be an example of procrastination. It’s easy to faff, delay and find displacement activities to fill the hours when you could be writing.
There’s nothing quite like a publishing contract with a submission deadline you have signed up to and a firm publication date in sight to make you get your scribbling skates on. But you are not going to be forced to write (the publisher can always take back the advance they entrusted to you). Writing has to be an activity you want to do or want to make yourself do. You can improve your chances of completing a manuscript by getting down to it and getting at least some words on the page, by being organised, focused and doggedly rigorous with yourself.
When I commission pieces for the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbooks each year, agents and authors will not infrequently politely decline a request to compose a short piece, the reason being that the author is very busy writing to a deadline and is not to be diverted by other projects. These writers are committed, disciplined and know that they lose focus every time they are tempted away from the task in hand.
Make a plan and stick to it
Many authors recommend setting achievable goals. Creating a realistic timetable to which you will work is helpful. You can then reward yourself if you hit word count or the date you set for writing a complete first draft of your first chapter, or your synopsis, or the pen portrait of your main protagonist. Breaking down your goals into manageable chunks is a good idea. Setting a mountain of a goal is not. Aiming to write 500 words a day before lunch is a more realistic ambition than a wide sweep of a target such as ‘I’m going to write my memoir’. When you achieve your pre-set goal, reward yourself. The promise of a stiff drink, a run round the block or bar of chocolate might be just the incentive you need to keep your target in sight and not be diverted from your writing.
Anthony Trollope
Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope would get up at five, review the previous day’s output and set himself the task of writing around 2,500 words for two and half hours, by the end of which it was time for breakfast. He sat literally ‘watching the clock’ with his watch beside him and maintained this strict regime most days. He would make a note of when he diverged from this habit so that he might rebuke himself for any dilatory behaviour. ‘In this [his diary] I have entered, day by day, the number of pages I have written, so that if any time I have slipped into idleness for a day or two, the record of that idleness has been there, staring me in the face, and demanding of me increased labour, so that the deficiency might be supplied.’
Most of us may not share Trollope’s work ethic, but we can’t deny it bore fruit as far as he (and, let’s face it, his publisher and ultimately his devoted readers too) was concerned. His output was prodigious; he wrote forty-seven novels in addition to his short stories, plays and non-fiction in fewer than thirty years, all the while working full-time during the early years of his writing for the Post Office and later campaigning to become a Liberal MP for Beverley in Yorkshire’s East Riding. He devoted his final years completely to his writing career. Trollope claimed that he never submitted his work late and always hit his deadlines.
(c) Alysoun Owen
Writers’ & Artists’ Guide to Getting Published
This is an extract from the chapter ‘Writing, editing and perfecting your manuscript’ in the Writers’ & Artists’ Guide to Getting Published (Bloomsbury) © Alysoun Owen.
Alysoun has been the Editor of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook and the Children’s Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook for 14 years. She runs a publishing consultancy business and speaks about the publishing process at festivals and writing events.
The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2027, the 120th edition, is out now. Read some taster articles here, including one from award-winning debut novelist Jon Doyle on how to fit the demands of everyday life around your writing: Balancing acts: how to fit your writing around other commitments.
Read more from Alysoun on the latest edition of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook on Writing.ie here.
