Oh, hello.
Fancy meeting you here.
Well not, like, here-here. I have no idea where you are. I’m currently sitting in a crowded Starbucks, squinting against the garish crimson-red Christmas decorations stationed all around me. Songs I’m too old to recognize blare overhead, mocking me and my hairline.
And speaking of being buffeted against the grainy sands of time, I am, as we speak, currently in the second week of my thirties. Oh, how time flies. Before you know it, I’ll be scowling at young people, complaining about my various aches and pains, and bemoaning my rapidly-melting looks. Oh, wait! I’ve already been doing all those things for years.
Time makes fools of us all.
And in honor of these changing tides, guess what else has reared its ugly head again? NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month! For those not in the know, it’s an international event where anxious, overcaffeinated creatives across the globe band together and try to belt out 50,000 words before the end of the month. It’s a tradition as rich with history as it is rich with blood and tears.
“But wait!” I hear you sputter over your coffee. “Are you competing this year, Mr. Michael, sir?”
Well, I’m glad you asked. I’m happy to report that, against all odds, I am, in fact—
—not competing this year.
Yeah, I’m sitting this season out. I’m currently still recovering from the first draft of The Crimson Spider and waiting on edits from my writing mentor. In fact, now that I think about it, I’ve sat every NaNoWriMo season out. I think I attempted it once, way, way back in 2013, but I didn’t make it very far. I guess that must have soured me towards the whole event.
Nothing personal, friends! I just have never found NaNoWriMo all that useful. For me, anyways. The whole purpose of the event—as far as I understand it—is to give young scribes a hard deadline to scribble towards. That kind of wordcount goal, in such a constrained amount of time, will force those aforementioned anxious young creatives to toss aside the shackles of perfectionism, roll up their sleeves, and make a big, fat mess all over the pages.
You must embrace your inner squid. You must spray as much ink, on as much blameless sheets of white paper, as humanly (squidfully?) possible.
That said, I’ve kind of already embraced my inner squid (actually, now that I think about it, some asshole in high school used to call me Squid. And more than one woman has compared me to “Handsome Squidward.” Huh. I wonder what I could possibly have in common with slimy creatures that dwell in the darkest parts of the planet?) In fact, after injuring my hands, I learned how to dictate with the help of that same writing mentor.
Pro tip: If you really, truly, actually want to toss aside perfectionism and belt out as many words as possible, pick up a portable microphone and start howling into it. Trust me, it’ll be a bitter, difficult slog for a while, but eventually, you’ll learn how to hit those same sweet spots with your tongue instead of your fingers (ew). Get good enough at it, and 50,000 words a month will turn into child’s play.
But that said, for any struggling scribes reading this while putting off hitting their wordcount goals for the day, I would like to share some novels that will help you shit or, ahem, get off the pot.
A short (and I do mean short, I think it’s only 30,000 words) by the prolific Walter Mosley. This book is a great starting point for any beginners. It gives you pretty much everything you need to start rolling the boulder up that hill.
Favorite Quote: “If you want to write believable fiction, you will have to cross over the line of your self-restraint and revel in the words and ideas that you would never express in your everyday life.”
This book is a great read for any intermediary writer. It helped me out a lot when I was suffering through the awkward phase between my first novel and my second.
Let me elaborate – I was very proud of my first novel and received no small amount of praise from the people who bothered to finish it. But that was just it! A lot of the people I gave it to never bothered finishing it. Part of that is to be expected. But I couldn’t help but wince at their forced smiles and feigned praise.
“It’s sooo good, Michael. You’ve worked sooo hard on it. What? Oh, yeah. Sure, that part was great. Ummm. Hey – [hard left turn into a new conversation topic]”
So, I took a long hard look at my work and my process. I realized pretty quickly what my work was lacking:
Plot! Tension! Suspense! Conflict, conflict, conflict.
All the prettiest sentences in the world can’t overcome poor scaffolding. And this book by James Scott Bell will give you all the tools you need to craft a story that won’t just hold your reader’s hands – it will grip them by the throat.
Favorite Quote: “Keep writing. Get to the end. Don’t allow yourself to abandon the project. You must finish what you write. But what, you ask, if I have a chaotic mess at the end? Celebrate. This is the way it usually is, even for veteran novelists.”
3. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
Yeah, yeah. I know. As if Horror Daddy needs more publicity. Putting On Writing on a list of the best books… on writing is almost a cliché at this point.
Well, funny thing about cliches. Sometimes they’re cliches for a reason.
This book is fucking awesome. It’s some of Horror Daddy’s best prose. It includes some vignettes on his childhood, followed by a section on writing that reads like someone unfolding a toolbox. Horror Daddy is going to sit you down and explain what each and every utility knife, file, and combination wrench does.
It also includes one of the best encapsulations on all writing advice: namely, that most writing advice is bullshit.
But more on that later.
Favorite Quote: “Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
4. The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle by Steven Pressfield
I read this book recently, while wading through the edits on my second novel.
And, wow. Just wow.
I was pursuing my local Indigo one day, killing time, hardly working, running out the clock on my twenties, when my hand drifted over to this slim white volume. I flipped through it. It seemed interesting. I was surprised to learn that it was authored by Stephen Pressfield, the writer of the excellent Gates of Fire.
And boy, if you thought Pressfield’s descriptions of the Ancient Spartans could make your blood boil and your testosterone levels reach your ears, then try reading him talk about the craft of writing. Pressfield paints our solitary, often stressful little profession with broad, mythic strokes. He describes a day pecking away at the keyboard as an ancient hunter chasing a hare up a rocky mountain.
And it’s fantastic. A little ridiculous, but fantastic.
If you’re struggling with excuses and perfectionism, then read this volume.
Favorite Quote: “If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), ‘Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?’ chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”
5. 5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter by Chris Fox
Another great ass-kicker for all writers, up there with The War of Art.
I struggled with perfectionism on my first novel. I would write a couple paragraphs, double back, rewrite them, write a few more, double back, rewrite them, then hopefully launch myself through the rest of the 3,000 to 5,000 word chapter.
And that’s not an explicitly terrible way to write a novel. But, it’s often a little constraining. For me, at least.
Chris Fox gives you some helpful tools for getting more words out, without sacrificing quality. He advises on writing fast—in a dead sprint—in order to tap into that often-elusive Flow State that athletes are always drooling on about. He advises creating a Turtle Enclosure—a special place where all you do is polish your chair with your butt and hammer out those juicy words.
He also shared a technique pioneered by Mark Twain: to eat the frog. Basically, it goes something like this:
“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
It’s a piece of advice I’ve stuck to for the last couple years. And it’s worked wonders for me.
Write first thing in the morning. That way, you can enjoy your afternoon and evening without any commitments looming over you.
And on the good days—the really good days—you’ll go to bed at night looking forward to your first cup of coffee in the morning and the next scene you’re going to write.
Favorite Quote: “If eating a frog is the toughest thing you have to do every day, then you should start with that or that frog will croak at you all day. Do the hardest thing you need to do first thing, because then you know it got done.”
6. 2,000 to 10,000: How to Write Faster, Write Better, and Write More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron
I read this back in 2018, when struggling with a bout of serious writer’s block.
I read it again in December 2020, right after reading 5,000 Words Per Hour. And holy fuck, it almost reads like a companion piece.
Chris Fox is going to give you some helpful tools to push through the first draft of any manuscript. 2k to 10k is going to help you find ways to optimize your wordcount.
And what’s more, it’s going to help you find out what works for you.
Try out different methods. Do you write better with an outline or no outline? Do you write better at night or at the ass-crack of dawn? Do you write better at home or at a café, squinting at the crimson-red Christmas decorations?
Figure out what works for you and discard everything else.
Oh, and by the way –
At the start of On Writing, Horror Daddy writes something especially profound:
“This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad.”
And boy oh boy, if that isn’t the understatement of every last century.
I want those two sentences tattooed on my inner thighs.
So, here’s my piece of advice for you sweaty, sleep-deprived little darlings reading this: your job, as young writer, isn’t just to learn how to write—it’s to learn how to write.
Stephen King himself discourages writers from making an outline. He encourages every scribe to read and write for four to six hours every day. And that’s sound advice for any writer… named Stephen King.
I write with an outline. A loose outline, no more than two pages, that roughly outlines my two different act breaks and my ending. But it’s not sacrosanct. It’s vague enough that I can fill in the gaps with whatever nonsense my neurons decide to start firing that day. And I write first thing in the morning, frog legs trickling down my jaw, howling into a microphone.
That’s what works for me. It doesn’t have to work for you. If you write best at three in the morning stabbing at a sheet of butcher paper with a red crayon, well, hey, more power to you.
Remember: there is some fantastic advice out there. Some of it will work for you, some of it won’t.
Ultimately, don’t let anyone else tell you what to write or how to write.
Because remember, it’s all bullshit.
And on that note, I should probably head off. My cup of coffee is empty and all these Christmas lights are starting to give me a headache.
So, Happy November everyone! And happy writing to those of you struggling with the same genetic disadvantage that predisposes you towards a life in letters.
Squidfully Yours,
The Thirty-Year-Old Artist Formerly Known as Michael