Today I’m going to do something slightly different. Reader and Twitter buddy Philip Braselmann sent me a link to an online app called “The Most Dangerous Writing App” and I’m doing that today.
Of course, I’m using hard mode, which obfuscates the text as well, so sorry for any editing mistakes when I get done writing this thing.
Anyway, this app is basically some crazy idea about killing writer’s block. Essentially, you set a timer and write until the timer finishes. It doesn’t appear to tell you what the countdown is either, so you’re just writing into the abyss. If you pause for five seconds, you lose everything.
All in all, this is a bloody stupid app but I had no ideas and so why not?
I’ve often written about how you should write quickly and work to be as efficient as possible in your first draft. This is something I call Pulp Speed, and I believe the term was coined by Dean Wesley Smith, who writes multiple novels a month and has sold millions of copies of fiction books and non-fiction books alike.
In other words, if he says write a lot, write often and don’t worry about editing, it’s probably good advice. In fact, it’s advice that – if the publishing industry were honest about – most famous writers follow. That brings me onto my first main point for the day about success in writing.
Most Information You Read Is Absolutely Rubbish And Writers Lie… But The Systems Are There In Plain View
If you read some interviews with the New York Times or wherever (seriously do they still do those and if they do, does anyone read them?) with authors, they all say the same thing. “It came from a dark place” or “I don’t know where my inspirations come from” or “I don’t write for money” or whatever other quips.
In reality, the majority of writers write a hell of a lot and throw a lot of material away. Well, successful writers that is… if you go on a writer forum like KBoards or AbsoluteWrite or the Reddit subreddits, you’ll find people that don’t do this. They don’t do this because they’ve bought the lie hook, line and sinker about starving for your art and spending three years on three drafts that you rewrite every time and whatever.
What a load of rubbish.
In a previous life, I used to write music for a living. That industry is even worse. The reality of professional music is that it’s a sweatshop where everyone pays to be taken advantage of. (The good news is that like publishing, technology is opening the whole thing up… but musicians are behind the times.)
Now, aside from the sneaky lies… writing is an easy game and it’s all about picking the right things to write, writing them in the right way and most importantly… writing a lot and putting it out there.
If you don’t put your writing out there, it’s a waste of your time.
Now, the systems… whilst a lot of writers are disingenuous about the nature of their inspiration or their workload… many, MANY writers throughout the ages have written down their methods and models exactly.
Whether it’s Heinlein’s Rules for writing which I’ve written about on this site (Link later) or H.P. Lovecraft’s weirdly concise for him but quite detailed view of how to write horror fiction, through to the encyclopedic Save The Cat series of books… there’s no real excuse for you not knowing where to start.
Essentially, get a system and stick to it. Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction… it doesn’t really matter. Just write and go for it. Hell, find some good blog posts and steal their format. Whatever it takes to get going is what it takes. Don’t worry about the details.
Now, let’s talk about the details.
You’re Going To Make Mistakes
When you watch an interview with an artist of some sort, you’ll note that they’re always talking about the evolution of their style. Now, here’s the thing that nobody talks about when it comes to evolution:
It’s violent, long term and it results in many dead ends.
We see evolution as a gradual process – and a non-violent one – because we only live for a short time. When you think that 99% of all species are dead, gone and will never return… and most organisms live only long enough to respawn a future generation… and if you happen to be born the wrong species or with the wrong mutation, it’s GAME OVER for you before you even begin, you know we’re looking at something pretty bleak… kind of like Lovecraft tale.
Now, that’s not something you need to be aware of as a writer except for this; you aren’t going to “evolve” without killing a lot of creative microbes. You obviously want to minimise those losses, but many writers have lost years because they worked on one book and kept polishing and perfecting it.
That book is a dinosaur and sometimes you need to drop the metaphoric meteorite on your creation and get on with reproducing little rat-like things.
Your greatest creative moments will probably come when you concentrate on little ugly ideas, because those are the blueprints for the future.
Let’s look at some of the systems I mentioned above… Lovecraft’s system is fitting.
How do you think he came up with that system?
Through trial and error, most likely.
Trial = tribulation, struggle and hours of synthesis.
Error = killing your creative kittens.
Don’t be afraid to kill some creative kittens. Trust me, like with biological evolution, if they deserve to survive, they’ll come back anyway in another form.
I almost made the mistake of waiting for five seconds there, which brings me on to the next point.
Concentration
Writing is, by all accounts, one of the easiest jobs you can do. I’m sat here drinking a cup of tea on my bed, with my laptop sat on my lap… and a million miles away in terms of stress from the manual labourer who is knee deep in a ditch trying to install some gas pipes or a soldier who is busy getting shot at in some far corner in the world.
The above is why I don’t have much time for whiny writers… you could be getting shot at. Everything else is really rosy in comparison. When one of my grandfathers was around my age, he was in a concentration camp.
Anyway, my point isn’t to belittle anyone’s struggle. Writing is easy… but you have to concentrate.
You know the thing that’s most likely stopping you from being a great writer? It’s everything that’s not writing.
Regular readers will be aware of my struggle with wasting time looking stuff up on the internet. Now, it’s not getting shot at, but boy does the internet kill your concentration dead.
[I succeeded at 20 minutes of writing at this point. 1200 words in twenty minutes, I’m leaving the errors in and we’ll work from there. Incidentally, that’s over 3500 words an hour. ]
Your concentration is your major resource when it comes to writing, and you need it. The more you hop on Twitter or check your emails, the more fractured your writing (and probably life) is. If you can’t concentrate or you’re too busy to write, then you’ll struggle with writing. It seems obvious, but it’s where nearly all writers fall down.
In reality, you don’t have to be a supreme wordsmith, a grammar Nazi or especially colourful as a character to succeed at writing. Those things help, but they’re not the be-all-and-end-all. If you write a lot of content, you’ll succeed.
And remember… there are no bad guys with guns in this profession. It’s you versus everything that stops you sitting and writing.
Final Thoughts
So let’s round this article up because I’m going to keep it under thirty minutes and not edit in any fashion. It’s going straight up without correction so that you can see how easy it is to sit for half an hour with no plan whatsoever and create something (vaguely describable as) publishable.
Firstly, you need to find a system for writing. It doesn’t matter what you write – especially in the early, early stages – you just need to write.
Secondly, you need to divorce yourself from your work. It’s your baby, sure, but you’re playing god and only the strongest survive. If a piece of work is not very good, not going well or whatever, KILL IT. I don’t necessarily mean forever, even, you don’t have to delete it. Just leave the project and work on whatever else that comes to mind.
What I will say there actually is that you should push through and finish the DRAFT of your work. It can be a first draft or whatever, but don’t flit from project to project. Finish a shoddy draft and then move on.
Don’t feel any emotion towards a particular project and don’t waste time grooming one project when you could write three others.
Thirdly… your writing time is your writing time. If you’re a writer, you need to avoid distractions while you’re trying to write. It’s much easier to fight a project if you’re going full speed at it with no distractions. Take for instance this article… it’s going to take me half an hour and I’ll approach two thousand words in that time.
If that were a short 50k novel or how-to book, then I’d be working at nearly 10% of the project per hour. You’re talking a weekend job to finish something that some people would spend a year on. Or, you know, you could go and see what your buddies are saying about Trump on Twitter or check out Instagram for rich kids burning money or whatever.
So, three steps:
- Find a system and write to it
- Write and throw away and embrace violent evolution of your work
- Concentrate when you’re supposed to be concentrating on your work
Alright, that’s thirty minutes and I haven’t had a break for more than five seconds in that time.
Like I said above, I’ll leave this unedited, but I’ll add in links where credit is due.
Do I Recommend The Most Dangerous Writing App?
Yes… but I’ll probably write about how to use it a bit more sensibly at some other point. The quick version is though; use shorter time periods and save your work until you’re confident you’re not going to waste an hour by losing all of your work.