ASK MJ: LET’S TALK ABOUT WRITING

Megan asks: How do you manage to come up with an idea and stick with it throughout an entire novel . . . Also, I was wondering how you were able to continue with your novels without getting bored with them or without quitting half way through one? I know a lot of people who start writing only to stop because their novels don't interest them anymore.

Well, I don’t quit because I’m not ALLOWED to. Don’t think I haven’t tried. I’ve explained the basic process of what I go through in my post on how to write a book.

But okay . . . you want to know what you do when everything slows down and goes splat. The problem PROBABLY isn’t that you’re bored, it’s that you don’t know what comes next. When you know what comes next, you rarely get bored. When you know what comes next, you often become an anti-social weirdo who spends all his or her time attached to the writing machine, eschewing food and sleep and the contact of others.

But scenes often get broken, or the next step is elusive . . . and then, the brain fog seeps in. This is because it’s actually quite hard to write a good story. It’s pretty rare for someone to just sit down and pound out a whole novel (or one that makes any sense) without having practiced the smaller steps that teach you about story, voice, and general writing discipline.

All that really means is that I think you have to start small and work big. I mean, I could probably build a house if someone taught me how.* But first, I would have learn all the basic skills—how to hammer, how to drill, how to put boards . . . in places boards should be . . . or whatever houses are made of. Plastic, concrete, ice, seaweed, ghosts in solid form . . . I have no idea.

The point is, I would have to learn the small, basic skills and do them a whole bunch of times. Then I could start fitting them all together to make an entire structure. Which is why when I get notes from people who are in high school or younger, worried because they are having trouble with their novels . . . well, first of all, you guys are brave to be working on them! I LIKE IT! But it’s no shock that you’re having problems. You’re trying to build a really big thing when you probably haven’t had the opportunity to work all the building blocks yet.

Does that mean you shouldn’t try, or should stop? HELLS NO! You learn to write BY WRITING. This is an annoying truth that every writer will tell you. Which is why I think doing things like Blog Every Day April is a good idea. Setting a commitment to yourself to sit down and produce something every day—even when you think you can’t, or don’t want to—it builds the muscles you are going to need. You must dare to suck. You must try even when you’re not sure where it’s going.

It helps me, I can tell you. I’ve written eleven blogs in eleven days. I can’t believe it myself. Since my blogs average in at 1500 words (sometimes much more, but that’s the average) . . . I’ve created about 16,500 words that I wasn’t really planning on. I just decided to do it, and I found them. It took time. It occasionally had me sitting at my computer until 2am. And I’m going to have to find about 28,500 more before the month is out. (This is all on top of my normal output.)

I’m not saying that to dazzle you with my fancy numbers. I just like to count.



Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I COULD do it, but I just did it anyway. The fear of failure really just has to be set aside.

So . . . my suggestion to you is to do something like BEDA, or NaNoWriMo, or a group or a class . . . anything that commits you to writing every day, so you build up the habit, build up the muscles, and stop worrying so much that you might be doing things wrong.

Say you finish your draft.

Amy asks: How do you deal with the internal critic when editing your book arrives? Or, if the annoying voice doesn't bother you, how did you frighten her off? Finally finished a first draft of a novel, but for the life of me, can't get through the next draft.

If you HAVE finished a draft of a novel . . . WELL DONE! And I do have some suggestions for what you should do now.

1. Take some time off

When you first read your work after you complete a draft, it often seems crazy. That’s because your brain is still hot and overworked and knows the words too well. You can’t read them correctly. You’re basically insane when it comes to your draft. You have to walk away for a while. A few days, a week, a few weeks. Don’t look at it! The critical voices are craziest right after you’ve finished.



At first, you won’t feel quite right.


2. Read the whole thing

When you return to your draft after a reprieve, you should be a little more kindly disposed to it. You might even have missed it. And here it is, an old friend, waiting just for you. Read it at least once without stopping—no pens, no notes. I often try to make this reading as pleasant as possible. Make yourself comfortable! Get a nice drink!



Have a nice read.

3. Now read it again

You have probably noticed a few things on the first read that you know need to be fixed. If you didn’t . . . if you read through your first draft and thought “Well, that’s perfect! Nothing to change!” . . . I’d admire your self-confidence, but, that’s not a good sign, really. First drafts exist to be wrong. You’re probably going to see things on all levels—wide-ranging story issues to individual lines. Worry about the big stuff first.

For myself, I usually take the entire first draft apart with a hatchet and dynamite. I kill characters and rip out scenes and change locations and endings and major plot issues. The book you see at the end rarely looks anything like the book you see in the beginning.



You must destroy the draft in order to save it.

4. Killing your darlings

This is a phrase you’ll hear a lot when people talk about writing. What does it MEAN? I’ll tell you. The “darlings” are those pieces of writing you LOVE, but you know don’t really belong in the story. Oh, they sound great! And you spent SO MUCH TIME ON THEM. But if they don’t add to the story, you have to remove them. You can certainly save them. Many a story has been created out of the scraps of a previous story. But you can’t leave them in if they don’t belong.

To illustrate this principle, here is the same video from above, just with key words left out. See how much better it is?



Naturally, the world of writing advice is LARGE, and there is no one way of doing things. There’s no right or wrong. HOWEVER you manage to write a book is the right way of writing that book. These are just some ideas.

As always, please SEND IN MORE QUESTIONS, as I have many days to go! You input is APPRECIATED!





* You probably wouldn’t want to live in it, though.