dozen

A Dozen Things You'll Wish You'd Known Before You Started

1. Writing really is like having homework for the rest of your life. I don't know who first said that, but they were bloody well right. It's actually the "always on" effect of being self-employed.

2. Everyone goes through the same stages of anxiety and despair when writing a novel, a script, or any piece of fiction - from wild enthusiasm through nagging doubts via dark despair and back again. (A gem of comforting advice from one of my Clarion instructors, Maureen McHugh.) And everyone considers abandoning the project at the 25% mark or at 75% at some time. ( Wisdom from Sean Stewart - a wonderful writer and lovely guy who taught my Clarion year.)

3. The competition isn't quite as overwhelming as you might imagine. Of 100 wannabe writers, only ten will actually finish a novel: of that ten, only five will submit it to a publisher. And some of those left in the race will fall at the last fence because they've submitted their manuscript in 8 point Krazy Legs font on pink paper. (A frank insight from an editor I know.) If you can write what people want to read, watch, or play, you have a reasonable chance of making it. Publishers and studios want to find people who can tell a good story, not thwart them; because good storytellers make them money.

4. Writers write. A paragraph a day, or a chapter a day, but real writers write regularly and without fail. (Heinlein, paraphrased.) Writers don't talk about writing instead of doing it, and they don't spend their day blogging it or Facebooking about it instead, either, unless it's part of a marketing plan.

5. When you do it for a living, there will be days when you hate writing, loathe the project, and resent every word on the page, but you will carry on writing all day anyway, because it is your job. Waiting for the muse to show up is what hobbyists and blokes in smoking jackets do. If that's too hard for you, think of all the people in the world doing a real job - like getting shot in Afghanistan - and thank whatever deity you believe in for allowing you the staggering luxury of getting paid for making up fairytales.

6. There are only five basic plots in the world, so don't worry if your story has been done before - it never bothered Shakespeare, and the story lies in the execution, not in the plot points. If your story really hasn't been done before, ever, chances are that humans won't understand it. Fiction is about shared human experiences, or else it won't resonate.

7. If you want to write for the fun of it, not for publication, write what you like. This is recreation.

8. If you want to earn a living by writing, listen to the person who's paying you. This is business.

9. Don't surround yourself solely with writer friends. What begins as a welcome shared experience can rapidly become incestuous and you'll lose sight of the fact that there are readers and bookstore chains out there - and they are much, much more interesting and important than the collective writerly navel.

10. Rejection slips are aimed at your story, not at you personally nor at your immortal soul. File them and move on. Or stop sending your manuscripts to tiny, short-lived magazines, do some proper market research, work out what your skills are best suited to, and target a bigger market. You might be aiming too low, not too high.

11. The ancillary business of writing - office admin, travel, answering mail, proofreading, wondering if the copyeditor actually speaks English, doing deals, sorting out foul-ups, getting to grips with currency exchange rates - takes more time and energy than writing the books. Which is probably why you never see Jessica bloody Fletcher actually writing anything in Murder She Wrote.

12. And finally... beware the true story reproduced in every detail. Real life doesn't have to make sense: fiction does. Same goes for characters - real people with the serial numbers filed off just don't work.