How To Become a Better Writer

First off, let's get this myth out of the way. Why? Because for many, it is the fear of manuscript rejection that prevents them from writing. Fact is, publishing has nothing to do with writing, let alone writing well. Publishers want authors they can promote, character they can glamorize, and a story they can sell. In other words, getting published is all about image. In the publishing world, image is everything and writing counts for little, good writing is a dime a dozen while good image is hard to find. Publishers want image, because image sells. Publishers get hundreds of manuscripts per day, thousands per week, hundreds of thousands per year. Less than half of those manuscripts will ever be read, simply because there are not enough editors for the amount of manuscripts. To cure this problem, most publishers request one sample chapter and a cover letter instead of a manuscript. They scan your sample chapter to see if you've got the writing style they publish, and than they do a major analysis of your one page cover letter, to see how well you are able to present yourself. The publisher will be looking for an author who can handle TV and radio interviews; one who will do good presenting themselves at book signings. They are looking at your cover letter and asking themselves: "Is this person mature enough to handle a world tour? Does she has the image we want our authors to have?" Never once does it cross the publisher's mind: is this a well written book. Why? Because any book can be sold, if given the right about of hype, but not every author is able to deal with the pressures of a world tour, TV interviews, radio interviews, book signings, and if they become popular enough, the author needs to have the ability to handle crazed fans and the paparazzi.

What makes a book sell well? Is it good writing? No! Actually, I've got 14 years of being a sales rep under my belt, so I know the answer to this one, and it's that the books which sell the most are the ones that received the best sales hype. Writing has nothing to do with it. Given the right kind of sales pitch, people will buy anything. Some of the best books I've ever read, are rare hard to find books that no one has ever heard of; Retief and the Warlords, for instance, how many people even know that book, let alone it's author Keith Laumer? He didn't hire a sales rep to hype up his book, so few people know it exists. Look at Eragon. How often do you go out and buy self-published indie books? Rarely. Why? Because most self published authors don't have $20,000 to buy a one page ad in the New York Times and tell people they just self published a book. That's what the author of Eragon did. Eragon has gone down in history as the most well bought piece of crap-writing the world has ever seen. Eragon is the book that has inspired millions of people to take up writing based on the sole fact that they know they can write something better. The fact that Eragon is completely grammatically incorrect, in places out right plagiarism, and for the most part, is senseless drivel, has not stopped that self-published book from becoming a multi-million dollar success. Why? It's all about the sale's pitch. People buy hype. Nobody cares if the product is as good as you tell them it is. One only has to go Christmas shopping to find that out. Hype up a piece of junk and millions of people will line up to buy it: Tickle Me Elmo is proof of that.

So what has any of this to do with you? Fear of not being published stops many would-be writers from ever writing. They feel that if they are rejected, than that means they were not a good writer. What they don't know is that behind the scenes of publishing, writing has very little to do with getting published. So the first step to becoming a better writer is to just erase the whole idea of publishing your story, right out of your head. You can worry about getting published when the time comes. Right now, you want to worry about becoming a better writer, and the first step to that, is to actually start writing!

I have heard people define success as making a million dollar in less than a year. I once new a man who said that he would never consider himself successful until he could afford to buy a Ferrai. I knew a woman from my church who said that every one with out a swimming pool in their living room, was below her level of success. I once started an online poll to ask people how they defined success, and the most popular answers were: being famous, being wealthy, having a high ranking position in their career, being happy, and having a family.

Success is whatever you want it to be. Never forget that, and don't let any one tell you otherwise. The dictionary tells me that success is the achievement of something planned or attempted. This means that when ever you plan something, attempt it, and than achieve it, you have succeeded and thus you are a success.

Well, it appears that every one has their own definition of what success is. What you need to determine is, what does success mean to you personally? When will you consider yourself a successful writer? Will it be after you receive your first pay check or not until you've had an interview on Oprah? Will it be when you publish your first 500 word article or after you've sold at least two best sellers? Will you not feel successful until your writing moved a reader into writing a letter to you? Do you need a certain amount of income per year to feel successful? Will fame, money, power, or happiness be the determining factor for your success? Do you think of success in levels or steps which you climb up a little at a time? Only you can decide on the answers to this.

Will this make you a better writer? Yes, on certain levels, it well. When you know where your levels of success are, you will than have goals to achieve. When you have goals to achieve, you will look at your writing differently than when you do not have goals. Writing to meet a certain goal, usually inspires you to write your best, therefore making you a better writer.

What is a niche?

niche

niche [nich, neesh]
n (plural nich·es)
1. suitable place for somebody: a position or activity that particularly suits somebody's talents and personality or that somebody can make his or her own
She carved out her own niche in the industry.

2. commerce specialized market: an area of the market specializing in one type of product or service
designed to undercut the competition in the same niche
"Thanks to the Internet, small niche companies can reach mass markets in a heartbeat." (Forbes Global Business and Finance November 1998)

[Early 17th century. - Old French nichier "build a nest, nestle" - Latin nidus "nest"]
Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

For a writer, a niche can mean a style of writing (fiction, non-fiction, short story, poetry, picture book, etc.), a genre (fantasy, horror, romance, etc.), the type of publishing you choose (magazine, paperback book, self-publishing, etc.), or a mix of each.

When you are just starting out, you may not know what your niche is. Later on in your career you may have grown tired of your niche and what to move to another. Either scenario, involves you finding out what niche is best for you. No one but you can find the answer to this. This is where you will be testing the waters. Try out several writing styles, different genres, short stories, novels non-fiction articles, essay writing, etc. Just try out a little bit of everything and see what you like and what you hate and what simply just bores you. You will know when you have found *your niche* when you come across the one which you find you get the most pleasure from writing. Your niche should be one you will enjoy doing day after day. Once you find it, stick with it. Practice it. Study it. Focus on it. Make I your specialty. Make it your goal to strive to be the best of the best in your chosen niche.

Genre: the category in which your story will be placed. It is an oft held misconception among new writers that they don't need to worry about genre, because that is the publisher's job. I have heard several young writers go so far as to say that publishers don't even know what genre a book is, because it is the book seller's job to determine the genre! How these people could even think they had a chance at getting published is beyond me, but these are the same people who later write lengthy blog posts about how no one will publish their book and they can not figure out why. They are so far beyond clueless it is amazing to think they were even able to write a manuscript at all.

These would be authors are clueless about how book sellers shelve books, how publishers determine what to publish, and worse, they are clueless as to what genre is. Sadly this is the number one reason for manuscripts getting rejected. The author sent their manuscript out to all their favorite publishers. They did not take into consideration, however, that they wrote a romance novel and not one of the ten publishers they sent their manuscript too, even sells romance! Most publishers/imprints sell only one or two genres, and if you had been as well read in your genre as you said you were, than you would have picked up on that. The number one reason aspiring writers get rejections for their work is for not knowing what genre their book is and therefore sending it to an inappropriate publisher. Simply put: do not send a bodice-ripper, swashbuckling tale to someone representing coffee table books. It would seem obvious, but it is apparently not, otherwise editors would not be throwing away thousands of manuscripts every single day.

How do you avoid rejection of this sort? Easy. Know your genre. Know what genre your book is, because it is the author, and no one else who determines the genre of the story. Your cover letter should always start out with: *Here is a ____ page (name of genre) novel for your consideration.* (Here is a 173 page 17th century romance novel for your consideration; Here is a 98 page children's science fiction chapter book for your consideration; Here is a 300 page epic Civil War/western for your consideration) Why must you do this? Because the publisher is not going to read ANY manuscript, not knowing ahead of time what the genre is. If the cover letter does not tell the editor what the genre of the story is, it is an automatic reject, which will never get read. When a publisher sees that you know not only the genre of your book, but also that they specialize in the same genre, you are already leaps and bounds ahead of all the other manuscripts on the editor's desk.

Knowing your genre, telling the editor what genre your book is, and sending your manuscript ONLY to publishers who deal with your genre, tells the editor: THIS is a writer to work with, because this writer knows the business, this writer is better than the others I saw today, I'll bet this writer even writes better than the others; I'll read this manuscript first.




That is the first reason for knowing your genre, and it will help you to get published, by convincing the editor you are a better writer, even if you are not; but right now we want to worry about helping you write better, so here's the second reason for knowing your genre:

The best science fiction writers have read all the bestselling science fiction stories, both novels and short stories. They know who writes what. They know what sells. They know what doesn't sell. They know what the current trend in sci-fi is. They know what has been over done and is about to go out of style. They know what hasn't been done in a while and is ready for a revival. They know that sci-fi publisher *A* only sells space opera, while sci-fi publisher *B* will never touch a manuscript with robots in it, and sci-fi publisher *C* only deals with stories based on a popular copyrighted TV show. These authors know what the readers want, because they are the readers!

So, maybe you dream of writing horror and being the next Stephen King. Do you know that many of the writers who claim they want to be the next Stephen King, have never even read Stephen King! They usually say: "But I saw the movie!" You know what? Never judge a book by it's movie. A well acted movie is a far cry from a well written book. What works in a movie won't work in a book, which is why so many movies are nothing like the books that inspired them. Changes had to be made before the written word could go on screen. Read the book and find out; you'll be surprised how alarmingly different Stephen King's books are from the movies based on his books. In some cases characters were removed, and replaced with characters that where never even in the book. So before you start telling the world you want to write like Stephen King, make sure you REALLY know what that means.

So, if you are going to write something, be certain that you really know what it is, before you start writing it. If you want to write romance: read romance. If you want to write children's mysteries, read children's mysteries. Knowing your gene before you start writing it, is the best way to writing your genre well.

Now in the section above I told you to get to know your genre, by getting to know who your competitors are, and know what they are writing. Many writers do this, and it helps to make them better writers. There are some writers however, who do this with the mind set that these competing authors are their enemy. Do not become one of those authors! No author is your enemy! No body likes a spoil sport and if you start going on the war path with your competitors, that's how you'll come off looking to readers, editors, and publishers. Being competitors does not make you enemies. You are not out to beat each other, because you know what? The people reading your competitor's books are going to be the same people reading your books, and that is a good thing.

There is a common phrase used among readers: If you like Author A, than you should read Author B.

Author A is your competitor. You want to become Author B. Your goal is to complement the competition, not out shine them. You want to be the Author B, whom people recommend, after their friends have read every book by Author A.

People like people who like people, so become the author who likes other authors. Always be willing to help other authors. Don't be afraid to ask for help from other authors. By working together, you'll both become better writers.

I don't know why, but this seems to turn off a lot of fiction writers. They say: But I'm writing fiction! Yes. But you want it to be believable fiction right?

In the 1950's robots where more fantasy that science. Today however, writer's need to be a lot more careful about what they write in the robot empire novel. Why? I'll tell you why: In 2005 France took a coma victim and built the world's first cyborg. In Japan, life like flesh covered robots now wait counters. And it doesn't stop with robots: There is a time machine in Sweden. In Australia, *Scotty* is beaming mice across the room. Back in France again, we now have green bunnies and red kittens growing glow in the dark fur, a result of DNA splicing using jelly fish. In Japan, if you have $30,000 you can get your dog or cat cloned, while a million dollars well buy you a life sized T-rex robot to answer your door for you. Why is any of this important to you? Well, if you are writing sci-fi, than you better know not only that these things are being done, you sure as better know how they are being done, because guess what: people who read sci-fi are often the same people who read science journals.

If you write westerns, than you better be reading the diaries of miners, ranchers, and saloon girls, because you can bet your readers have already read them, and will know if you make you miner sifting for gold in a territory that had not yet found gold.

Readers are well read, that's why they are called readers. They look for historical and scientific accuracies in fiction, and when they find a mistake, they'll be the first to let you know, so you are doing yourself a favor when you read lots of non-fiction on topics you will be writing fiction for. Knowing the non-fiction behind the fiction will make you a better writer.

The first place to look for things to write about is in your own back yard, so to speak. Where do you live? Your town would make a great setting for your book. What was your school life like? Why not write a story about a character thinking back to their childhood and have them attend the same school you did? Is there a restaurant you like eating at? Why not send your character there and set the entire story around that one meal? Writing what you know, doesn't mean writing a diary about your life, but rather taking things you know, and adding them to your stories as to make your stories feel more life like and real to your readers.

Did you major in history, specialize in ancient Egypt, and now work at a museum known for it's Egyptian mummy collection? Than you may be well suited to writing stories set in ancient Egypt. These could range from historical adventures, romantic dramas, murder mysteries, science fiction time travelers, retellings of folklore, or a fictional biography of Ra himself. But why stop at fiction? You could also write articles about archeology, the process of preserving mummies, a children's picture book about the life of an Egyptian artisan, or a translation of a hieroglyphic scroll.

Are you an average Joe working a 9 to 5 office job out of a cubicle, but you dream of working your way up to the CEO offices? Than why not write a story about an average Joe and how he fights his way to the top? You could make it a political drama, where he discovers corruption on the part of his boss. You could make it an office romance, put in jeopardy if he chooses to accept the promotion. You could go all Matrix, and make it a science fiction where he learns that is simple office job is really a cover for alien operations.

Did you just get your heart broken by a cheating lover? Right now may be the best time for you to write a romance novel with a torrid lover's triangle in it. Did you survive cancer when the doctors had said two years ago that you wouldn't make to the end of the week? Why not write an inspirational book to lift the sprits of others in your situation. Did you survive three weeks lost in the Everglades? Maybe it's time for you to write an autobiography to tell how you did it. Do you make blankets for the homeless? Maybe you should write a craft book telling others how to make the same blankets, and add advice on how you find people to give them too.

Look at your life, your family, your pets, your boss, your job, your town, your hobbies, and try to see each thing you see as a starting point for your next story. Writing about things that are important to you, comes easy, because you have seen these things first hand; you know what they look like, sound like, feel like, smell like, and taste like. You can describe them because you have experienced them. Writing about things you know about first hand, makes you a better writer, and gives you the edge over other writers who write about the same things as you do.

The second place to look for things to write about is in the far depths of your mind, and write about your fantasies. Writing about your fantasies does not mean writing fantasy novels about wizards (unless of course you fantasize about wizards, that is). What it means is, letting your fantasies and daydreams inspire your stories. Do you dream of being the first person to walk on Jupiter? Try writing a science fiction story about the first person to walk on Jupiter, than. Wish you could travel back in time to meet Caesar and find out if he was really the great leader every one says he was? Write a story about some one who does just that, and who knows, they may find that Caesar was a cowering idiot who had a secret twin whom stood in the public eye for him. Writing what you know is not limited to writing reality and non-fiction. You know your imagination better than anyone, and writing down what you can imagine, is writing what you know.

You will notice that I did not say: write every day. I said write often. You've heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!! This is actually bad advice. The only time you should write every day is during The National Novel Writing Month Contest, when writing every day is a required part of their contest. Otherwise, writing every day does more harm than good. If you are wondering how writing every day could possibly be bad advice, lets stop for a moment and think about what writing every day really means.

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means write seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. (and this is NOT a bad thing, either.) Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it's a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing to pay the bills and buy the food and put gas in the car.




Let's look at the other side of this story.

Ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. No one says seven. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That is a law. An anti-slave labor law. It's a national law. All 50 states have it. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you a minimum of time and a half (overtime) for the 6th and 7th days of the week. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can't get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. You begin to suffer burn out and your work well suffer, because you didn't get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it is back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and do not go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager's PS3. Writing pays the $5 a gallon gas you have to put in your car. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. Writing will pay to send your kids to college. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can't afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that. Which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

To be the best writer you can be, write often, write frequently. The more you write, the better you will become, but remember: take a break, get some rest, take a vacation. And whatever you do, give yourself the weekends off. Do not write every day. You'll be a better writer for it.

Life is dull. Life is boring. At least when it comes to a well written story, that is. Your character wakes up, looks around, yawns, gets up, gets dressed, brushes teeth, reads paper, makes his tea, and than spends the rest of the morning looking out the front window contemplating on life.

You could make that stretch out for 5 chapters, and it could be a well written piece of prose, but you got to ask yourself: who would read it? Nobody, not unless you give your character something to do and fast, before you lose your readers.

That is not to say that you can not start your story like this. There is one extremely popular book that does start out like this. It spends the entire of chapter one, taking a very detailed, yet very boring look into just how dull and boring the main character's ordinary and meaningless life really is. It does so to set the stage and tell us, that this guy is the dullest most boring person on the face of the planet, and that he has never done anything with his life and probably never well, because he lacks all ambition to do anything which is not dull and boring. For him, life is good. Life is peaceful. Life is happy. Life is dull, but that is the way he likes it, because this is a quiet guy, sitting there drinking his tea and looking out the window, and the last thing he expected to see when he looked outside was a big yellow bull dozer about to knock down his house to make way for a by pass. While laying in the mud waiting for the yellow bull dozer to drive over him, the very last thing he expected to see was an even bigger yellow bull dozer the size of a small planet, in the sky over head, about the drive through the planet Earth. This dull boring guy who never did anything with his life, is Arthur Dent, and he's about to save the galaxy in The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy.

So what happened here? How did the dullest most boring guy in the universe suddenly become one of science fiction's greatest heroes? The author of the story took a dull boring guy, and gave him something to do. Giving a character something to do, is the best way to hook your readers. That is how books like Harry Potter and Eragon, became so well liked. Harry and Eragon are both carbon copy characters, nearly identical to each other, both are photo copies of Luke Skywalker. Luke, Harry, and Eragon all started out as dull boring kids, but each was given a task, and the reader was hooked, because with each battle fought, with each mystery solved, with each new adventure on the horizon, the reader got to join the adventure.

No one would like Harry had he remained in the closet under the stairs. No one would like Eragon if he had not found the egg, and continued being a farm boy. No one would like Luke if he had decided that fighting in the war was not for him. No one would have liked Arthur Dent if he had continued to sit there drinking his cup of tea. Giving your characters something to do, will keep your readers turning pages, thus making you a better writer, wither or not you can write well.

What does this have to do with writing? Absolutely nothing. And yet, it will help make you a better writer. How? Easy. The more you write, the more things you have to publish. The more things which you publish, the more you will want to write, so you can publish some more. The more you want to publish, the more places you will look for to be published. The more places which want to publish your writing, the more payment options you will need in order to be paid by the publishers who publish your writing.

In today's modern age, a writer can not expect to get very far without a PayPal account. Why? Because as more publishers switch from paper submissions to email submissions, so too are more and more publishers switching fro paper pay checks to e-checks. The easiest way to accept an e-check is through PayPal. Also, many paper magazines, and most e-zines and pay-for-publication web hosts (like Squidoo, here), ONLY pay their writers via PayPal. This means that if you do not have a PayPal account, you are severely limiting your options as to where you can get your writing published.

Here's where we come to the part about this making you a better writer: The more publishing options you have, the better your chances of getting published. The more places you can publish your writing, the more inspired you become to write even more. The more you write, the better you get at it. This boils down to: Get a PayPal account, have more places to get published, thus more things for you to write, thus become a better writer! See? I told ya!

How does this make you a better writer? Well, it does and it doesn't. I helps create demand for your work. People read the interview, now they want to read what you wrote, thus they seek you out. This inspired you to write more, because it gives you more readers and having more readers means you are now in higher demand, thus meaning people want you to write more. It uses the principle the more you write the better you get at it, by inspiring you to write more often.

This also helps you to become a better writer in another way though. By writing an interview, you are forced to look inward on yourself and your writing methods. You must answer questions about how you come up with your ideas and such, and this helps you to figure out why you write the way you do, and thus helps you to now see even more stories to write about, because now you know what to look for and where to look.




To find out more about writing your author's interview go here: