Before I sat down to work on this blog I wondered what makes a great writer . . .
Here are a few things that popped into my mind:
~ Creativity
~ A knack for words
~ Desire
~ Discipline
Those are by no means definitive answers. They are necessary to every writer's quest. He should keep those as handy as a carpenter would his hammer. This blog is going to focus on one aspect that makes a writer great.
Goals.
Every writer should have them. I don't think you can write a short story, let alone a novel, without having certain goals in mind. Since July 24th I've been working on a story called Thronebreaker. It's unlikely this story will been seen by the eyes of another reader. Part of Thronebreaker is being written to give me the thrill of writing. Part of Thronebreaker is being written to give me practice. Part of Thronebreaker is to establish the mythology of this fantasy world, and the Otherverse (a dimension that will tie all of my stories together). Since the 24th of July I've written 33,142 words. I've filled 135 pages. Thronebreaker started out as a short story. I had planned for it to be around 25,000 words, and I wanted to submit it to a magazine. It has outgrown that goal, and there is no end in sight. You have to understand, I am no outliner. I hate it. It kills my creativity. I'm a discovery writer. I sit down, start writing, and discover the story along the away. I take a lot of rabbit trails, I write a bunch of boring pages, but I stumble upon things, and they turn into beautiful moments of story. Editing will be a bitch, but will be worth it when I'm reading the final product.
I said all that to get to this . . . Before I made goals for myself I was undisciplined and started four novels that I've never finished. One of them is on my computer still and hadn't been thought about in a year's time. Writing Thronebreaker reminded me of this novel. I opened the document to check and see how many words I had written before I stopped. It was somewhere around 30k words. I vowed to myself that I would not stop writing Thronebreaker at that point. I then vowed that I would finish Thronebreaker. I'm close to finishing the fourth chapter of Thronebreaker, and have seven chapters, plus an epilogue, left to write.
Goals.
The kind of goals you make are up to you. I'll share with you the goals I've made for myself.
4. Word Count
Some writers are adamant about having no word count. They claim that the count gets in the way of the quality of words. There's a little truth to that, but I think it's a stupid belief. You can always go back and improve the quality of the words you've written. One of the most important things for me is getting words on a page. One of the ways I do that is having a specific number of words I want to get on the page that day. Back in July I started out with a goal of 500 words. I hadn't written in a while, because as I've said before I'm a lazy guy, and 500 words didn't intimidate me. Some days I slapped the words on the page in twenty minutes. Other days it took me nearly an hour. After two weeks I upped the count to 700. Two weeks later I raised my goal to 900. I'm now writing 1000 words every morning. On a good day I meet the goal in about thirty minutes. I'll keep writing until 9 a.m., and then go about my day. Other days it's a slug fest and it takes me until 9 a.m. to meet my goal. I usually start writing around 7:30 in the morning. Eventually I would like to stretch myself so that I am writing two thousand words a day.
3. Words
Some of you are seeing where words rank in, and are turning your nose up at my goals. Words are important. You can't tell a story without them. The problem is that sometimes words get in the way of a story. If you want to understand what I'm talking about read nearly anything by Ursula K. Le Guin. That's no slight against her. There is no finer writer of prose. I believe she is overlooked. One, because she's a woman. Two, because she unashamedly writes Science Fiction and Fantasy (unlike Margaret Atwood). Reading The Wizard of Earthsea is always a chore for me. It's so beautifully written I read passages two, three, four times. I'm admiring her prose and have forgotten what's going on with the story. I don't shy away from writing prose that is beautiful to read, but at the same time I do my best not to let it take away from the story I'm writing.
2. Write Everyday
Just before I started working on Thronebreaker I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts The Nerdist. The special guest was Neil Gaiman. Mr. Gaiman is one of my absolute favorite writers. The first book I ever read by him was Anansi Boys. To this day it's one my favorite books I read. I was then led to read American Gods which I enjoyed in an entirely different manner. If you're a writer you must read Neil Gaiman. The man is so brilliant, and such a phenomenal story teller, it pisses me off just a little bit. You should do yourself a favor and download the episode of The Nerdist he was a guest of. He made a comment that scared the day lights out of me, and is the reason I do not fail to write everyday:
If you don't writer everyday you'll never write a novel.
That was a hard pill to swallow. I'm naturally a pretty lazy guy. If I don't have to do something I won't do it. And if there is something that I must do I'll put it off until the last minute, and get it accomplished with haste. That's just the way I am. The above comment lit a fire under me and I wake up every single morning at 7 a.m., and I am writing by 7:30 or 8 o'clock because I'm determined to write and finish a novel.
1. Story
Of the goals I've listed Story is the most important goal of them all. You can't write everyday, put words on paper, or meet a certain count unless you have a compelling story to tell. Stories are why readers read. It's seldom for the words. The fact that Twilight has been guzzled by millions of readers is testimony to the fact that readers read for story. Whether or not Twilight is good story I cannot say, but people - millions of people - picked up a book and read. Kids around the word followed Harry Potter from beginning to end because of a great story. Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, C.S. Lewis, Homer, Dante Alighieri, J.R.R. Tolkien, etc. etc. have been read for years and years because they all told wonderful stories. All other goals pale in the light of telling a great story. Making the story the most important goal gives you the desire to write everyday. Words force themselves on the paper when you have a great story to tell. If the words you write aren't so beautiful at first the great thing is that you can go back and edit. Forget about the words you're writing and tell a story that will make someone pick up a book and read.
These are my goals. Each of these things motivate me to write when I don't feel like it. Over the past month I've wanted to stop working on Thronebreaker, but I've written no matter what. Except Sundays. I take that day off from writing so my mind can rest and refuel. If you have no goals when writing you should take some time, between now and the next time you write, and make some. Who knows what may happen.
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