Jay's Guidelines for Writing Fiction

Based on my experiences of the past few years, I've come up with four
pretty simple rules. These guidelines only apply to me -- writing is such an
inherently idiosyncratic pursuit that what works for me may well be disaster
for another writer. Accordingly, take them with a large grain of salt. The
core point is that habit is very good for you, and good writing habits
eventually generate good writing.

1) Write a story every week.

2) Finish everything you start.
3) Don't self-critique while you're writing.
4) Work on one thing at a time.
1) Write a story every week.
The point here is to set an achievable goal that is completely under your
control. For example, setting a goal of selling a story a week (or a month, or
even a year) is out of your control. Setting a goal of having a story critiqued
every week isn't even fully under your control -- it is easy to miss a group
meeting, or for your critiquers to get busy. Writing, however, you can
control.
Length is irrelevant. This is important for two reasons -- time management
and idea sizing. Even on a terrible week with sick kids and overtime at
work, you can carve out an hour somewhere to rip off a 500 word flash
piece. Then you've met your goal. On an easy week, you can work on a
novella. This helps you meet the goal more consistently, where a wordcount target would be in greater jeopardy. (Obviously that rule is different if
working on a novel.) The same thing applies to idea sizing -- a small, clever
idea that might be worthy of a thousand words should only be written in a
thousand words. You don't have to stumble over fattened-up work, or pare
down a Big Idea story.

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(Note that some writers find a weekly writing schedule or word count goal
preferable to a weekly goal of story completion. This is especially true of
novels. Experiment -- see what works for you.)
Writing a story a week also helps improve craft. Just like going to the gym
or practicing a foreign language, you get better with repetition. Consider
this -- many newer writers write a story a month, as that is often the
frequency at which writers' groups meet. In a year, you'd write twelve
stories. At a story a week, you'd write fifty-two stories. (In my case the
number seems to run into the high sixties for a variety of reasons.) If you
consider twelve stories a year to be a reasonable annual output, a story a
week will put you four to five years down your developmental path in one
year.
Like craft, habits improve. At the professional level, writing is much more
like athletics than it is like office work. Serious athletes need to work out all
the time, to practice their game. If they don't, they get irritable or worse.
The exercise is a physical and psychological addiction. Serious writers need
to write all the time. If you can train yourself to that state, through sheer
force of habit, you will become more productive than most people think
possible.
Writing a story a week drives inventory. Inventory drives sales -- you can't
sell what you don't have. I expect that 50% of my first draft stories will be
throwaways, 25% will be worth investing redrafting or editing time in, and
25% will be ready to go out the door with light editing. (In actual
experience, the ration is more like 25-50-25, but I've improved with
practice.) Back to the fifty-two stories a year, that yields twenty-six salable
pieces, at a minimum. At twelve stories a year, that yields six salable
stories. How widely read do you want to be?
I'll discuss editing in 3) below, but a quick comment is on order. A story a
week is quick writing. Many writers and teachers of writing will tell you
that quick writing is sloppy writing. That may well be true for them -writing is after all a distinctly idiosyncratic pursuit as I said before -- but it is
not a universal truth. The most distinct counter to that is something I learned
at the Oregon Coast Professional Writers' Workshop Master Class: to
consider the role of voice in writing. Some of the most successful writers
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are those with strong voice. Voice is impossible to polish in to a manuscript,
but it is very easy to polish out of a manuscript. Your first draft may be very
sloppy at the craft and consistency levels, depending on what type of writer
you are, but it will be the closest to your natural story telling voice and
intentions for the story. Working it over and over for polish, as M.F.A. Lit
types will insist you do, has at least as much danger of filing off all the
interesting and worthwhile parts as it has chance of improving the story.
Writing a story a week forces you to concentrate on voice, and you may well
find stronger, more vibrant writing emerging from the work.
I've broken this rule perhaps twice since I began following it, for family
emergencies -- it's my first and oldest rule of writing -- and both times, I
made up by writing two stories the following week.
2) Finish everything you start.
It's a truism that far more stories are begun than ended. Endings are hard -when you sit down to write, the idea or image glitters with interest.
Somewhere around page four, or seventeen, or thirty-two, you begin to
break down. There is a powerful tendency to say, "this isn't going where I
want it to," and abandon the work in favor of a new idea. This is closely
related to item 3) below, as well.
This is writing death. It's a terrible habit to get into, and even worse to
maintain and reinforce. It also makes writing a story a week a lot more
difficult, because of your lost investment of time in false starts. Unfinished
stories can't be critiqued, improved, placed in inventory, submitted or sold.
You don't learn very much from them, either. You can always throw a story
away after you're done. You'll never know if it deserves to live if you don't
finish it.
Ultimately, this is about self-discipline. Pushing through the hard stories
makes it easier in the future, keeps your habits consistent and fills inventory.
In the past two years, I think I've abandoned two drafts unfinished. That's
with over one hundred twenty stories started.

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3) Don't self-critique while you're writing.
Let the writing flow. You can read it afterward, and decide whether or not
you like it. Very few newer writers can judge their own work when they're
in the middle of it. I certainly can't.
There are a lot of writers, especially those who have been through creative
writing tracks in college or graduate school, who will start a story, exclaim,
"This is shit!" then delete over and over, so they write two or three thousand
words before they get to the end of page two. This kind of perfectionism is
the worst form of self-sabotage. It may well be shit on page two, but the
story may blossom on page five. Delete one through four during the editing
process in that case.
Also, per the earlier note on voice, some of the best writing can come from
an unencumbered burst of creativity. The critical voice is the creative
voice's worst enemy. They're both important, but keep them separate.
You can always critique and polish later, to whatever degree your writing
process requires of you. If you self-critique while writing, you'll miss some
of your finest creativity, discourage yourself, and lose what may be some of
your best work.
Of course, once you've finished a draft, you can edit like Maxwell's demon if
that pleases you. It's a lot easier to edit a manuscript that exists than one that
does not. The more experience I get, the less willing I get to edit
manuscripts beyond basic line editing, typo patrols and checks for major
errors-of-fact, errors-of-plot and errors-of-continuity. Other writers find
profit in days, weeks, even months of reconsideration of a story. That's very
much a part of each individual writer's process.
I almost never, ever break this rule. On the rare occasions when I find
myself tempted to do, I stop, think carefully about what's bothering me -- or
even take a break -- then tell myself to "trust the process." These rules give
me a framework in which my process can take place. Trusting the process
hasn't steered me wrong yet.

2003 Joseph E. Lake, Jr. | [email protected]

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4) Work on one thing at a time.
This is important, at least for me. The integrity of a given story idea, my
thinking about plot and character, the natural voice of the story, all the
factors that go into quality writing, can be substantially muddied by
interruption. It's hard enough to deal with the necessary interruptions of
family, work and sleep -- you can't control those. Interrupting one story
with another is something you can control. Also, when you jump back and
forth between multiple in-progress stories, it's a lot harder to meet a
completion goal such as writing a story a week.
Of my four rules, this is the one I most often honor in the breach. For
example, I've been able to compartmentalize my creative thinking
sufficiently to have an in-progress novel with a separate goal of a chapter a
week, while continuing to create a story a week. Clearly I'm working on two
things at once when I do that. From time to time, I get a sales opportunity
with a short deadline, and find myself stopping one story to quickly write
another. Occasionally, I'll be struck by an idea so powerful I have to deal
with it immediately.
Even in those cases, I only pull back one step -- have a second story open or
in progress. As quickly as possible, I return to my original effort. I don't
recommend breaking this rule, for myself or others, but it is the softest of the
four.
Are These Guidelines For You?
I can't tell you what works for you. I can't even tell you for sure what works
for me, though these rules have served me well. I have two suggestions for
implementing them, based on my own experience.
First, back into them. Go easy. Commit to a story a week for a month. See
how it works out. At the end of the month, promise yourself you'll go to the
end of the quarter. At the end of the quarter, give yourself the rest of the
year.
If you sit down and say, "I'm going to write a story a week for the rest of my
life," you won't. It's like trying to lose fifty pounds. The goal is
overwhelming. Incrementalism is your friend. It also gives you a chance to
find out in easy steps if this system works for you.
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Jay's Guidelines for Writing Fiction | Page 6

Second, have some reading or writing buddies you share this process with.
With their agreement, email each story out when it's done -- in first draft.
Your buddies won't care if your verb agreement is broken. They can
function as first readers, giving you one-line reactions, or even full critiques
if their time permits. That will help you evaluate the stories, and give you a
support system to keep going. Even better if a few of those folks are also
trying to write a story a week. You have someone to trade with.
My first reader list is about twenty names long. With any given story, I may
hear from three or four of them. Some readers are silent for months, only
speaking up occasionally, some readers are almost weekly responders. It
works for me.
For what it's worth, I have a fifth, shadow rule, which is keep everything I've
finished in the mail. Some stories I don't consider finished -- I abandon
them as unworkable once I've completed a draft and evaluated it or
workshopped it. But once it is finished, keep it in the mail!
What works for you? Only you can know. These rules might serve as a
launching point. If you find something else that works well, let me know.
I'd like to learn it, too.
Jay Lake
PO Box 42611
Portland, OR 97242-0611
[email protected]
http://www.jlake.com/

2003 Joseph E. Lake, Jr. | [email protected]

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