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There are a lot of rules that go into writing, and a lot of advice books out there. Mind your grammar, to start with, and remember the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks. Use complete sentences, always finish everything you start, hit this plot beat by this manuscript percentage … if you’re not sure about something, Google it and I’m sure someone, somewhere, has a rule. How do you keep them all straight?

I … don’t. At least, not while I’m writing.

If there’s any single piece of advice I’ve adhered to, even before I read it, it’s Stephen King’s “Read a lot and write a lot.” I just found this CD I’d burned in January 2007 with fanfiction and original fiction dating back to 2000, and there were over 70 individual documents on it. A lot of them were various starts instead of complete plot arcs, but there were still a good number of “complete books.” (Hey, I was 15 in 2000. I wasn’t writing 80k, but I was completing plot arcs in things longer than short stories.)

Mostly because of the “read a lot” part, my grammar and punctuation is good, even back then. When you’re exposed to it on a regular basis – especially when it’s a regular, fun basis – you see how it’s done, so it’s easy to imitate. I don’t remember anyone explaining how to write dialogue because, by the time someone probably did, I would’ve just tuned it out. (My parents let me read anything and everything I wanted from a very young age, with one exception: they said Pet Sematary was too scary for a second-grader, even though it had a kitty on the cover.)

Now, is my grammar perfect? Nope. Have I taught multiple college-level grammar courses at this point? Yep? And still …? Nope. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be. People hardly ever speak with perfect grammar. Plus, if you really need it to be polished and shined for a specific, that’s what revision is for.

And this isn’t just about my fiction. When I’m writing my nonfiction, I might try to shift the voice in my head to Full Academic, but … I don’t bog myself down by worrying about it too much on the first pass. The main goal of writing is, for me, to get the darn words on the page, however they’ll come. Jump around, sketch some notes there, plop something in the middle and figure out how to connect it later … whatever. Just get the ideas down.

The “rules” are for revisions.

The first draft of something for me is play. We’ll turn to Shannon Hale here:

I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

Shannon Hale

And, for the record, my approach to that first draft is “shovel allllllll the sand!” Things can always be deleted later – plot beats, random characters, that one cool point I really want to make but probably doesn’t fit … shovel it all in. Get it all down. The hardest step is putting something on the page, so don’t worry about all the things that’ll just make me freeze and leave it blank. Shovel that sand.

Now, like all writing advice, this doesn’t work for everyone. I have friends who, somehow, meticulously plot out books – or even series – before they start shoveling sand. My revision process is a lot more intense than theirs because I’m still organizing my sand and they’ve already got it placed in neat little blocks with turrets and gables and other architectural flourishes from the start. Some of them started out working that way, and others started more like me and got bogged down in the revisions, so they backed up and changed their approach.

I think the number one rule about writing advice is that not all writing advice will work for you.

My biggest struggle is drafting, not revising or editing, so I’ve formed my approach to make that hardest part the easiest it can be for me. When I sit down to write, I throw the rules out the window. Just get the words on the page – form the sense of it so it can be massaged and perfectly shaped later on. Some days are easier and I can pay more attention to the rules, but others … they get thrown out the window.

The first draft is playing. I’m just shoveling sand. Then, once I’m done shoveling, I’ll switch tools and start shaping, matching tenses, paying attention to singular and plural, messing with punctuation, and knowing that, no matter how much I try, by the time my mom reads my proofs, there’ll still be plenty for her to catch. (I get emails like “On page 6, I know you meant x instead of y” and “On page 10, that’s a gerund, so you really need to …”)

So the short answer to whether I consciously think about rules and advice while writing is no, and the longer answer is “Because I come back to that later.” Plus I’m not the only one who considers it. Editors, proofreaders, peer reviewers … lots of people have the chance to catch the rules I’ve missed. It never has to be just you, trying to remember all the rules.

What about you? Do you think of specific grammar or writing rules when you’re tackling your first draft? Are there specific things you know you need to focus on?

I did this last week on Twitter, and wanted to compile them and share them here. I got 17 likes, so here are 17 random facts about me as writer.

1. I wrote my first novel-length original fic at age 15 because I couldn’t get my plot to work as a fan fiction.

2. My favorite of my published books so far is Ripper’s Victims, because that’s the work closest to my heart. (My mom’s favorite is the one about H.H. Holmes.)

3. I keep track of how much I write each day, but not always in the same place. Sometimes it’s on the NaNoWriMo website, sometimes a sheet of graph paper, and sometimes in my daily planner. (I’ve written over 300k so far this year.)

4. My writing schedule varies wildly. Some days I write 0 words. Others I’m up and at the computer immediately and forget to take breaks for real-life things. It all balances out.

5. In 2020 I decided to complete NaNoWriMo (50k words) in two days, simply because I did it in three days in 2019. I hit 50k by 8pm November 2. And had to baby my wrist for months afterward because … people aren’t meant to type 50k in two days.

6. Because of 5, I taught myself how to dictate my writing, both academic and fiction. I didn’t think it was possible for me but really it’s just the learning curve I didn’t want to tackle.

7. I started lighting a candle when I write as a signal to my brain that it’s time for words, and somehow it’s grown up into this entire thing.

8. The proposal for an academic book is the hardest part for me. I love having swirling ideas and hate forcing myself to commit to a very specific outline. I’ll put off writing the outline as long as possible, even when I know what I want to propose next.

9. I got the contract for Ripper’s Victims because my editor saw my published dissertation and emailed to ask if I had anything she might be able to help me with. (Put yourself out there!)

10. When it’s time to edit, I prefer a hard copy to a screen. Considering the usual length of my manuscripts, this generally means going somewhere to have it printed, since our elderly printer isn’t up to the task.

11. Printing things off means I can use my custom stamps. I get tired of writing the same thing over and over on my first drafts so … I had these made. And of course they’re red.

12. When I’m writing fiction, I tend to “cast” actors as my characters. It especially helps when a character is very much not like me – say, when I have someone whose speech patterns are very calm in moments of stress. If I can picture the actor saying it, it helps.

13. I frequently right click to find synonyms for words I’ve used in my own writing that I’m pretty sure mean what they think they mean, just to be positive. Sometimes I realize I’ve used a word that doesn’t mean what I think it means …

14. I used to write all my “novels” by hand, in pencil, and super teeny – two lines of writing per ruled line on college-ruled paper. I did NaNoWriMo by hand in 2013, but otherwise I type the first draft these days.

15. I used to say all my dialogue out loud as I typed it. My brother laughed because he could hear me arguing with myself. I can write out in public now because I don’t have to do that anymore … but some days I still find myself muttering things as I type them, dialogue or not.

16. I don’t like doing book titles, chapter titles, or heading titles. They’re usually last-minute things I put in before I have to deliver something. It’s rare for me to have a title early on in a project.

17. When the words are flowing and the writing is good, I write fast. Really fast. Which makes the slow days feel agonizingly slow.

Share a random fact about yourself below!

I had a virtual conference this past weekend and I was talking to some friends I haven’t seen in over a year. This is usually how it goes for me: someone asks what I’ve been up, to, and … I realize I need to start counting things off on my fingers. Which inevitably leads to another question of “How in the world do you do it?”

Right now, in this very moment, I’ve got three book projects going. They’re all in different stages, but they’re all currently in progress. Some of the progress of getting a book published is actually “waiting,” which is helpful, because I can fill the “waiting” time with other work.

It’s also something I rather seriously compartmentalize. Two of the projects are currently in the “waiting” stage. I’m waiting for one of them to get me proofs, and for feedback on the other, so currently I don’t really consider either of those as “active.” I don’t know exactly when they will be “active” again, but, until they hit my mailbox with the next step and a new deadline, they’re basically snoozed.

A downside to the “waiting on other people” can be that multiple things hit your inbox at once. There was that one memorable year when I wrote three chapters for different collections, plus a book, and things just kept hitting my inbox with tight deadlines and a lot of tasks. That’s when I had to step my compartmentalization up to the next level, assigning each project a block of time per day instead of a block of days.

This is also the time when anxiety can kick into higher gear and imposter syndrome can rear its head, because people are actually reading what I wrote, or they’ll soon be able to. They can pick it apart and tear my argument down piece by piece. (For some reason anxiety never worries that the publisher won’t be able to keep up with demand and people will complain about that.)

And usually when you get feedback, there are at least some positive comments in the mix … but you’re not concentrating on those. You’re looking at what you have to change, and how you’re going to do it, and whether you’re going to be able to keep to your main goals and ideas secure while responding to outside influences. (This is why it’s nice to only have one project in the feedback part of the process at a time, if possible, so at least you can retreat to something else for a break.)

And honestly, it’s only when I have to catch someone else at my life that I step back and see the forest for the trees. I know that’s usually meant as something people should do, because otherwise they miss things, but … for me, at least, focusing on one project at a time (and strictly outlining what those times should be) helps me block out the wider anxieties and put as much of my energy as possible into the project at hand.

How do you deal with working on multiple projects at once?

Say you’re sitting down to write a new project and it’s just … not working. You’ve got a deadline coming up, but that doesn’t seem to be helping. You’re going through all of your usual tricks to get words on the page, and the blinking cursor still taunts you.

The thing is, you’re not a train. You’re not stuck to a single track. There’s more than one way to get from point A to point B.

Trains can only go where the tracks have been laid, and the tracks themselves have to follow a bunch of rules: no turns tighter than such-and-such. No inclines steeper than so-and-so. They need this much track to get up to speed, and this much to stop, and if they come off the tracks, they’re in big trouble. Anything from a cow to an avalanche can ruin everything, up to and including your perfect murder plot on the Orient Express.

But you’re not a train.

That’s one of the reasons there are so many “how to write” books out there. Maybe a bunch of writers agree on certain sets of train tracks, and there’s a lot of traffic there, and maybe they even usually work for you, but the world is so much more than train tracks. There are paved roads, and dirt roads, and trails through the woods, and not only are you capable of off-roading when necessary, you can even fly. You’re a drone with controls in the hands of a master.

Not a train.

I fall into this, too: thinking that, since x, y, and z have worked well for me in the past, they’re the only paths I have. The only ones I know. The only way to get from point A (the blank screen) to point B (the completed manuscript.)

As though I haven’t read (and rejected) other ways of writing, and I haven’t heard about other apps and technology, and there’s no pen or paper in the house.

When you get stuck with writing, the best thing is to stop trying to force it and take some time away. Deadlines don’t always allow for that, so the second best thing is to stop trying to force it this way and try another approach. Instead of cutting straight on through, the way you always have, look for a different path to see if it’ll skirt the issue and get you where you need to be.

It’s like the old rhyme about going on a bear hunt, except you can go under it. Or around it. Or over it. You’re not forced to always stay on the same tracks and always go through it.

You’re not a train.

The tracks are there, and well-known, and comfortable, but if they’re not meeting your needs right now … leave them. Seek out the path that’ll get you where you need to be, because sometimes plowing through the trees gets you there faster than continuing to inch painfully along the tracks.

(With apologies to my brother, who might actually be a train. He works at the Strasburg Railroad, and that’s him in the front. He’s even written a book about trains and how to make your own.)

There are a lot of times I point out how useful it is to put on your metaphorical blinders when you’re working on a project – or especially when you’re working on multiple projects. Having a clear focus helps keep you from getting sidetracked, especially if today you’re supposed to be working on Manuscript 2, so stop thinking about 1. But, sometimes … the blinders work against you.

Lately I’ve been working toward the tail end of a couple projects. Proofreading, final manuscript preparations, that kind of thing. Generally surface-level stuff and final checks before sending something off. I’ve just finished the current step on a couple of these, and I was telling a friend that I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of my week, since I know I’m getting comments back from someone next week.

He told me he’s spending his week reading.

… oh. Right.

I’ve been so focused on these particular steps for these particular projects that I’ve been ignoring the stack of books to the left of my desk in my “read these next” pile. Not to mention a whole bunch of other books lined up behind them.

I have to admit, though, that this isn’t new. Once I get to the end of my to-do list, even two items at a time, there’s generally a moment of stunned silence and a feeling of “Uh … so what now?” I’ve been so focused on getting this one thing done – thank you, blinders – that, once I’ve checked it all off, I have to blink a few times before I can back up and take a look at the forest again.

So: this week, I’ll be reading. Also known as “putting words back in my brain.” Making notes in the margins and highlighting all sorts of things and writing down any new ideas and connections that occur. (But not messing with anything I’ve already handed off – nope: once you put something out there for someone else to look over, don’t even look at it again. Because you can’t go changing it now, anyway.)

Writing blinders, off. Reading blinders, on.

I’m not sure who originally said it or where I first saw it – Joanne Harris tweeted it in 2017 – but it’s been on my mind this week. And it seems to sound at least a little better than “You’re going to be writing for the rest of your life.” That’s more like a prison sentence.

I’ve been thinking about it based more on how much of a process writing is and how long the timeline stretches. For a single piece, you’re conceptualizing, drafting, rewriting, submitting, revising and resubmitting, getting rejected, getting to the next step for more revising and resubmitting, and – eventually, if you’re lucky – proofing something and seeing it in print. It takes a long time to get something from inside your head to in front of other people’s eyeballs.

When I was in grad school, they cautioned us about it in another way: if you’re tenure track, go for many articles instead of one book. If the book falls through (and they do, for all kinds of reasons, during different steps of the process), then you have nothing. If a single article stalls out, at least you have others.

It’s one of the reasons to always have multiple projects in process, all at different stages. Some of those stages are a bunch of waiting. Others are quick, possibly frenzied, work. You can’t always control when you’ll hit each step – when you get the proofs back and when they’re due, for example – so you need to be flexible. When you’re juggling, know which balls are rubber and which are glass, so you know which ones can be dropped without shattering.

But it’s also because, when you get a rejection, you didn’t put all your eggs (or breakable glass balls) in one basket. There’s something else to fall back on for the days when you can’t bring yourself to wade through reviewers’ comments, and a way to boost yourself up again to get to the point where you can.

(Disclaimer: yes, okay, having multiple projects going on at once also increases your chances of getting multiple rejections at once. Say, two in one day, even. But you can handle rejection, and the way you think about rejection, and you won’t ever get to acceptance, even with minor revisions, if you don’t keep submitting.)

But here’s the other thing: after you get good news, you keep writing. Even then.

Part of it is the previously-mentioned precarious nature of publishing. Until your writing is actually in print, there are still a bunch of hurdles and stumbling blocks. You don’t get to permanently hang up your writer’s hat once you get that acceptance email. There’s always more work to do prior to publication, for one. And you probably want to get published again, too.

So on bad days – rejection days – you write. And on good days 0\- acceptance days – you write, too. Maybe not on the project that got the rejection or the acceptance, but … you write. Having multiple projects means you can make sure it’s useful writing, especially when you don’t want to deal with reviewers’ comments or confront why, exactly, your piece got rejected. And on good days, you can take that energy and channel it into another project because you’re not done yet.

Writers write, period.

On good days, write. On bad days, write.

Whether you drink vodka or champagne instead of coffee as you do is up to you.

The other day someone took to twitter to ask writers what their first drafts look like. Are they tight and polished? How much work do you have to do once you get things drafted? Is it all clean and basically perfect?

I’ve got more space to answer here, so I’ll start with this: no one sees my first drafts. Just me. I’m not even going to take a photograph of one of the pages to give you an example of what it looks like after I’ve read it through and marked it up. So that’s comforting, at least: nobody ever has to see your first draft.

I did respond with this photograph of my personalized editing stamps, and I want to talk a bit more about them. Starting with a question to you: how many times would you have to anticipate writing something before you bought a self-inking stamp to use instead?

Yeah.

Not only are my first drafts far from perfect, but I know what issues I should be looking for. I’m predictable.

Why not just correct those issues while I’m drafting, then? You try it. Writing’s hard. It’s enough of a struggle to get the words on the page without also adding the idea of perfection on top of it. Have you ever found yourself staring at a blank cursor because you don’t want to make a mistake? That’s no way to get things written.

So, while I won’t show you an ink-covered draft page, I will at least go through my stamps with you.

cite! – the meaning behind this one should be clear enough, but having this stamp also means accepting a particular practice: that I don’t have to always stop and look something up when I’m writing. If it’s going to interrupt the flow, I’ll just dump something in that’s close to what it should be and then go back and look it up later, during editing.

delete – not everything I write will make the final cut. It’s sad, but sometimes darlings have to be killed. Or at least moved into a different document.

transition – ah, yes. I am fond of using headings to jump from one topic to another without adding in a transition. Part of it is how I need to write the next section before I fully understand what I’m transitioning to. Another part is being able to jump from section to section when I’m writing without forcing myself to follow the outline point by point.

SO? – the big one. I’m rather fond of knowing exactly why I’m talking about something and how it connects back to my main point, but not actually coming out and saying it. And again, that’s fine, because (again again) nobody reads my first drafts. It’s something that can easily be picked up and worked in on a second pass.

unpack – yeah, it’s a buzzword, but these stamps are tiny and you can only fit so many letters on them. Basically this fits in with SO?: there’s something going on here, but I haven’t actually slowed down enough to say it. I’m trying to get through all of these ideas without fully laying them out and explaining and making connections. The ideas are all there, which is the most important part, and I can add in the support while I revise.

wut – everyone’s favorite. Look, there are times when I just have no idea what I was saying. Maybe I’ll figure it out. Maybe it’ll get changed to delete.

awk – sometimes I’m an awkward duck and it shows in my writing. Revising makes me look less awkward. Did I mention I never show anyone my first draft?

LONG – I like long sentences. I think they make me look more academic. But, when I go back and read them, I really see that they make me look difficult to follow. It’s another easy fix.

I have stamps of these things because I know that I do them. I anticipate that I’ll keep on doing them.

I give myself permission to keep on doing them.

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. (Thanks, Terry Pratchett.) No one else has to see it. No one has to judge it – not even you. Get the words on the page first so you can shift to concentrating on having them make sense before you show them to someone else.

I, personally, recommend the personalized stamps. They add a little bit more fun to the process. And maybe a little bit more self-acceptance, too.