What If You Could Not Fail

William Goldman

"The easiest thing to do on earth is not write."

"One way an author dies a little each day is when his books go out of print."

"Life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something."

"As far as the filmmaking process is concerned, stars are essentially worthless - and absolutely essential."

 

Tom Clancy

Traditionally I try to limit the quotes from a writer to four, but it turns out that Tom Clancy had a lot to say about writing, some of it pretty good stuff. Read on:

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

 The only way to do all the things you’d like to do is to read.

You learn to write the same way you learn to play golf. You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A lot of people think something mystical happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn’t divinely inspired—it’s hard work.

Two questions form the foundation of all novels: “What if?” and “What next?” (A third question, “What now?”, is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it’s more a cry than a question.)

I’ve made up stuff that’s turned out to be real, that’s the spooky part.

Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world.

What happened to me was pure dumb luck – I’m not the new Hemingway. Of course, fortune does favor the brave. In battle, you forgive a man anything except an unwillingness to take risks. Sometimes you have to put it on the line. What I did was take time away from how I earned my living. My wife gave me hell – ‘Why are you doing this?’ – but she doesn’t complain anymore. I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book. If your name is in the Library of Congress, you’re immortal.

Books and movies are different art forms with different rules. And because of that, they never translate exactly.

All Writers Know a Strict Teacher They Can Thank

An article in last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal talks about the value of tough teachers, those teachers—we’ve all had them—who expect the best and have little patience for anything else. Those of us of a certain age remember teachers who inspired us and made of work and learn. Many of their methods would not be allowed in the classroom today.

More interesting, though, was that the author of the article, writer Joann Lipman, suggested eight principals—she called them a manifesto—for education. I was surprised how much these observations can also be applied to successful writers:

A little pain is good for you—Like good education, in which you study till it hurts, good writing is not a painless process. Hemingway said it best: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Drill, baby, drill—I took a writing class in college in which the professor opened every class with five minutes of silent writing. Didn’t matter what we wrote about. We seldom shared it. What was important was that we wrote. It was something to warm us up. The same goes for flash fiction, working on grammar, or anything else. The good writers have drilled in the basics. They paid attention in school. They understand the value of taking some time and going through a few exercises to help develop characters and plot before you dive right in.

Failure is not an option—We all know writers who send out to a few agents or publishers, get a rejection or two, and then fold up and walk away. You don’t see them at the critique groups anymore and they don’t share their writing. The successful writers are the ones who don’t give up. They query agents, they write and rewrite, and then they query again. These are the writers who get published. A friend of mine who has been published in many literary journals tells about how he wrote and rewrote a short story for a year. It got published last month.

Strict is better than nice—This goes back to my observation, one I have often repeated when talking about critique groups. You should avoid those groups that serve as little more than mutual admiration societies. You need critique groups that will kick your ass, haul you over the coals, and hold you to a higher standard.

Creativity can be learned—The more I write, the more I see stories in situations that I might have once overlooked. There are stories all over. Just a few weeks ago I saw a middle-aged woman—probably in her sixties—with an incredible set of legs. From the waist down she looked like a teenager. I can’t get it out of my head. There is a story there someplace. If I was not actively writing, I don’t think I would have seen her in the same way. This happens to me all the time. I know I learned it.

Grit trumps talent—The writing version of this is that the best writers are not always the ones who get published. The ones who do get published are those with the most persistence, who can hear the word “no” from agents and publishers and still persist. Winston Churchill said it best” “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never.” 

Praise Makes You Weak—This can be a problem with critique groups. In an effort not to offend you, members tell you that your writing is great when it’s really not. Most of the time the new members will listen to more seasoned writers and gradually come to appreciate what good writing is. Occasionally this does not happen. Sometimes critique groups have to be more direct, and you as a writer have to be prepared to take it. Writing is hard, or else everyone would do it.

Stress Makes You Strong—Screenwriter William Goldman once talked about the plight of the writer on the movie set. “Electricians know about electricity,” he said. “Lighting folks know about lighting. Make-up people know about make-up. No one ever bothers these people. But everyone thinks they can write.” Listening to criticism is stressful, and sometimes can be annoying. It makes you work harder, though, if for no other reason than to prove those people wrong who say, “Oh, so you write. What a nice little hobby.”

See ya’ later.

WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.