I’m breaking Hemingway’s rule on writing about writing—he said it was bad luck. But I figured I’d run the risk to reflect a little in this short article about what I’ve learned in my past year of writing.
1. Write in a way that comes naturally to you.
At the beginning of last year, I was trying to follow in the footsteps of Hemingway and Stephen King by writing 1,000 to 2,000 words per day.
I would wake up early in the morning on weekends, trek to a coffee shop, and plop myself down with my laptop. I probably got to 1,000 words about half of the days, but only about 10% of those words were anything I wanted to keep, and 10% of that was what I would be willing to show to anyone. There are a couple reasons it wasn’t working.
First, I wasn’t inspired. I’m most inspired in the moment. It comes to me all at once and I write what I feel. This is hard to do when you’re seated in the same scenery, having the same experience, for hours on end.
Second, I couldn’t sit still. It’s one thing to sit down and write when you’ve got a plot developed, but to sit down and pull the creative process out of a void is pretty tough.
Not to mention, I didn’t have the time to sit in a coffee shop all day. I had to work during the week, and by the time I got home I was too tired to write.
So I started writing on the bus on the way to work, in line while waiting for lunch, when I woke up in the middle of the night, on a hike, on the plane—in all these places where scenery and characters are constantly moving around me, so there was no shortage of inspiration and no interruption to my schedule.
And this has been my most prolific year yet—having written over half a million words, five thousand poems, and two books.
2. Publish often.
When is the right time to publish? Will it negatively affect my writing career later on if I publish my amateur works now? Will I miss my chance if I wait too long? I have these thoughts all the time.
I have a friend Keith who makes music. He refuses to release anything to the public until it’s absolutely perfect. I wonder if this strategy is outdated. Maybe it made more sense when a lot of effort went into publishing and releasing. But now it’s as easy as uploading your track to Spotify (for music) or self-publishing on Amazon (for books).
Nowadays, I think the Gary Vee model for content creations wins (he puts out 100+ pieces of content per day). Granted, not everyone is Gary Vee and going viral might not be your goal.
But at the very least, I think it’s healthy—especially for artists. There is a natural flow, similar to metabolism. You consume inputs (thoughts and feelings) and produce outputs (works of art).
Those outputs create experiences (more thoughts and feelings) for yourself and others. You have interesting conversations, meet new people, find new artists with similar styles, and then the cycle continues. But the cycle stops when you stop publishing.
3. Editors are invaluable.
You can only read your own work so many times. You start to miss things. Your mind will skip over mistakes because it has already read over the mistakes a dozen times.
Also, your readers are not you. If you want to be read by people other than yourself, you need to be edited by people other than yourself.
Your unique identity is important to your writing, undoubtedly. And you cannot pander to all opinions. But you need the help of a few that you trust to catch the parts in your writing where you are just being selfish and ignorant of how others will read your work.
4. Ask for edits early on.
It’s hard to show your work to others, especially when you’re not sure if it’s good enough. But you need to ask for edits and second opinions as early and often as possible. This will save you from going off into the completely wrong direction and wasting time when you could have course corrected sooner.
Be careful of asking for edits if the feedback is consistently poor. This might be a sign that you need to hone your craft in certain areas before making your next attempt at producing a completed work.
In the startup world there is this concept of MVP, which stands for Minimum Viable Product. The term was coined by Eric Ries. An MVP is a product that has just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development.
It’s the same with writing. As soon as a body of work is ready, show it to someone before you go any further. Make sure it’s someone that knows what they’re doing. They’ll tell you whether you should keep going or pause to make a change.
5. Be prepared to cut 99% of your work.
Your readers have much less time to read than you have to write. People only read during a small percentage of their time, and even then, they have a literally (ha) endless supply of books, magazines, articles, blogs, and podcasts to choose from.
Like Faulkner said, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” Remember this when editing your work. There might be a chapter or a poem that seems decent to you. It’s a B+ and you spent a lot of time creating it. You think to yourself that it’s “good enough” and readers probably won’t notice it amongst the rest of your work. In times like these, there is only one thing to do: cut it.
Part of the beauty of being able to write a lot is that you can cut a large percentage and still have as much as you need. After you’ve cut 99%, take the remaining 1% to your editors, and then what’s leftover should be the best of the best of your work.
Buy my new book!
My third book of poetry is a collection of free verse poetry inspired by a girl who lives on California Street in San Francisco.
The poems are about seeing art and finding gratitude in the little things. I think we are more inundated and overwhelmed with information and emotion than ever before. My poems in this third book are meditative and simple. I read them myself sometimes as a reminder that it’s alright to slow down and enjoy the little moments that are otherwise rushed past or overlooked.
You can buy the book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Girl-California-Street-Book-Poems/dp/0996360832/
Lots more to come in 2020, stay tuned! You can follow along on my Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/colefeldman_/