In these days of reality TV competitions, we hear the word attitude repeated endlessly. Attitude, loosely translated as “forcing everyone to recognize how special you are,” is apparently prized by TV judges, but personally I’m not a fan. At least not as far as writing is concerned.

Why? Because nobody ever got to be a great writer by posing as one.

I started my writing career as a ghostwriter. Although it’s a little ego-bruising to write someone else’s book, ghostwriting is actually a pretty good way to learn how to write salable commercial fiction.

For one thing, you usually have to write outside your intellectual comfort zone. The books I cut my teeth on were in a men’s action/adventure series. Action was a genre I’d never read, let alone written, but under the direction of the series’ authors (I figured that, having written 43 of these books before I came along, these two guys must have known what they were doing), I found my way. I once wrote a battle scene in which my protagonist was pitted against several adversaries. This series (it’s still in existence) isn’t particularly realistic, as the hero is almost superhuman, so I had him zipping around gleefully dispatching his opponents as if they were Barbie dolls in camo.

In rejecting the scene, one of my bosses gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever received. He told me that death is never casual. Even in a comedic series, you have to take some things seriously. In other words, however fanciful the story may be, you have to tell the truth about everything that really matters. And when someone dies, it matters.

Telling the truth is a basic tenet of good writing in any genre. Even though I’m writing a paranormal YA series these days (Legacy, Poison, Seduction), in which all manner of strange and magical things occur—my main character is a telekinetic who lives in a town in which nearly everyone possesses some sort of extraordinary ability—I always remember the advice of that early mentor. Death is not casual. Nor is love, friendship, trust, betrayal, guilt, shame, forgiveness, redemption, sacrifice, pain, or honor.

In everything that matters, respect must be paid to the truth, and nothing but the truth will do. I call this concept “lying naked on the table” because that’s really what writing is—laying bare your own thinly disguised fears and weaknesses, and then offering them up for the world to see. In Radiohead’s “Creep,” the narrator is an outsider who echoes what he believes is the sneering opinion of the world when he calls himself a “creep” and a “weirdo.” I’m just guessing here, but I think that maybe someone in the band knew first hand what it felt like to be treated disrespectfully by the In Crowd. They’re telling the truth, and we know it.

Another thing I learned through ghostwriting is how to please. Yes, I know we’re serious writers and don’t need anyone’s approval, but the truth is, having to write something acceptable to an author who has hired you is good practice for working with an editor whose criticisms will undoubtedly be harsher than the author’s and whose suggestions will be infinitely more demanding.

I just finished a massive rewrite of a book that I believed was terrific, since it had been bought by a major publisher. But when I got the editor’s notes, I was devastated. She wanted to change everything, from the characters’ relationships to the identity of the villain!

For a week or two, I reread those (copious) notes, feeling ill-used and defensive. Attitude with a scarlet A. Then I had an epiphany. Well, two. One was that, okay, I didn’t want to give back the money. But the big lightbulb moment was when I realized that my editor hadn’t taken the time to write all those notes just to hurt my feelings. Like me, her goal had been to produce the best book possible. That had been the whole point of her criticism: to help me.

So once again I made myself put my ego aside and accept the help that was offered from someone I knew I had every reason to trust.

The result was a better book than I had even imagined—structurally tighter, emotionally deeper, and thematically more resonant than my previous best effort. My editor, for all her picky notes, was on my side after all.

Perhaps at this point you’re making a list of people you can strongarm into reading your manuscript in a quest for “honest feedback”. Don’t. The feedback you get from friends will never be honest. They’ll only stroke your ego—something we can all do very well on our own, thank you. Besides, you don’t have to solicit honest feedback. It’ll come to you in the form of rejection letters, dismissals, faint praise, silence, and, if you’re lucky, a hard slap to the Attitude.

So let me ask one question: Which end of a knife is more useful, the handle or the blade?

Lie naked on the table, and let them cut. Criticism is surgery, and humility is the anesthetic that allows you to tolerate it. In the end, the process will make you a stronger, more flexible, and truly creative writer. It will replace attitude with genuine confidence, and empty arrogance with artistry.

Then come the “notes”. These are, actually, commands. Six single-spaced pages in agate type suggesting–that is, suggesting very strongly–that I modify the characters, alter their relationships, change the story, eliminate key scenes, shift the point of view, select a different theme, and write a new ending. Voila, that’s all! Oh, and have it back in 8 weeks, okay?

Hey, I’m not complaining. After all, I’m being pubished. After 30 books, that’s still a miracle, given the degree of competition (Is there anyone in America these days who isn’t writing a novel?). But I am trying to make a point, and that point is that we can’t escape criticism, even from people who love our work.

Nor should we want to. Criticism illuminates the areas where our stories are weak. If it’s intelligent criticism, it points us in a direction we can take to make our work better. Even if the criticism is rude, crude, and meant to hurt us personally, there will be at least a grain of truth in it.

That’s really the only difference between self-published authors and paid novelists: One can get away with a “good enough” first draft and, for his money, then gets to strut around with his pride intact. The other (of which I am one, so I’ll use the feminine gender here) subjects herself to seemingly endless rewrites, trusting the people who chose to publish her, putting her pride in check for the purpose of producing the best book possible.

And that, I believe, is why we get published in the first place.

As to the personal wounds inflicted: eh. We all know the world is full of a-holes. Let that go. Take only what is said about your work seriously, because that’s the only thing you really need to pay attention to.

http://americareads.blogspot.com/2013/02/pg-69-molly-cochrans-poison.html

Meanwhile, I’m working on SIX different books at the moment: One’s with my editor, who’s getting notes (i.e. things I’ve got to rewrite) to me on Monday; another with my agent, who’s trying to sell it; the third, a longstanding novel-in-progress that I keep trying to write between projects; a partial ms w/outline about a time-traveling boy in Hitler’s Germany that’s very hard to pin down, since time travel is impossibly tricky; a completed novel that must have something wrong with it, since none of my friends has been able to finish reading it; and POISON, which has just come out and needs publicity attention. Whew! I’m sort of hoping we get a big storm that knocks out the power so I can just write by candlelight.

For some, FLOW comes naturally. These individuals write without filters or internal editors. They’ve never heard the “Mom” voice telling them they’ll never amount to anything. They’ve never imagined the thump of a “Reject” stamp on their foreheads. But these writers are rare and, in my experience, often so right-brained that they literally can’t see their own flaws and consequently never revise.

Revision is essential to producing salable novels, but revision ought to come after the first (or second, or twelfth) draft is completed. The writer who rewrites every paragraph before beginning the next is doomed. Why? Because the perfectionist who must achieve perfection right out of the box rarely finishes.

That is the point of FLOW: FInishing the novel. In earlier posts, I’ve covered a number of ways to achieve FLOW: By writing fast, writing every day, and working from an outline. But this last piece of advice, writing badly, is probably the most helpful. It’s also one of the most difficult tasks for intelligent people to take on.

Good writers don’t want to write badly, ever. And so we ponder each word, restructure every scene. The result is that our great novel remains unfinished and yellowing in a drawer. How much better to be one of those brainless spewers of words (who are all over the internet, boring us with their redundancies, fracturing spelling and grammar without a care) who nevertheless actually finish what they start!

Here’s an example– a random sentence from CLOUD ATLAS, David Mitchell’s work of genius: “I cooked up my first escape plan–one so simple it hardly warrants the name–alone. It needed will and a modicum of courage, but not brains.” This is the same paragraph, written “badly,” that is, in a way that will not impede my flow: “I figured out how to get out of there. It was a stupid plan, but something.”

The nuance, the cadence, and the narrator’s voice are all missing from my pedestrian offering. But it got onto the page in five seconds. Later, when I’ve changed into my left brain and am wearing my editor’s hat, I can refine it. For now, though, I move on.

HERE ARE SOME KEYS TO WRITING BADLY, IN CASE YOU DON’T YET KNOW HOW:

Write badly when you’re stuck. When the way you or a character says something is important, don’t bother trying to get it right at first. Just write it the way a ten-year-old would, and fix it later. Put a star next to the section if you need to, but move on.

Write badly when the plot overwhelms you. How do you handle the big blackout scene where Professor Plum gets shot? By writing badly: “Everyone was in the room, having a good time. Nobody noticed Professor Plum. Then the lights went out. When they came back on, Professor Plum was lying in a pool of blood.” (Use of “everybody” and “nobody”, repetition of Professor Plum’s name, cliches… all of which constitute bad writing)So okay, it’s crude and uninspired and puerile…Bad!… but it’s on the page. It gets you through.

Write badly when you’re uninspired. If you’ve gone more than one day without writing, it’s probably going to be hard to pick up your threads of thought. That lack of continuity will feel like a lack of motivation. If this is the case, whatever you write will probably be dull anyway, so writing badly will at least get something on the page until your juices start flowing again.

A final word: Don’t let others see your work until it’s finished. Your friends (who–let’s get real–won’t ever tell you if the book is heinous) don’t count, and you shouldn’t need stroking so desperately, anyway. And if you’re silly enough to send a rough draft to an editor or agent, even a longstanding one (even if they ask for it!), then you’ll live to regret it. (I did!)

No one except you should know how badly you can write. But it’s your secret weapon that will get you to the end of your first draft faster than anything else. So use it wisely.

But use it.

An outline is a map. Actually, it’s more than a map. It’s a GPS for the journey a novel takes. It helps the writer get from point A to point Z without making a lot of wrong turns. It is essentially a device of plot, which for some is difficult in itself, being a left-brained activity. If you have no plot, you may not need to use an outline, mainly because no publisher is going to buy your book. If you do have plot, an outline will show you the general shape of that plot. Does the action build, or is it one-note? Are there peaks and valleys, moments of humor and/or romance, or just nonstop action? (This, incidentally, may work in movies, but unrelieved action tends to be boring on the printed page) Does one event lead directly to another? In other words, does your plot make sense?

Writers who claim not to use outlines either write the same book again and again (which means their outlines are in their heads, carved in stone at the expense of their creativity), enjoy fiddling and rewriting endlessly, or write books that don’t hold up to much scrutiny. The example that springs most readily to mind is Anne Rice. The brilliance of her writing is compelling, but at the end of every book of hers that I read, I am left with the feeling that the novel could have been so much better had it been planned more carefully and edited judiciously (she famously refuses to be edited).

A novel is not entirely an example of free expression. Neither is a musical composition or a painting. There has to be an underpinning of WHAT IS POSSIBLE, even if you’re writing about unicorns. If your protagonist falls into quicksand and you have an Army SWAT team pull him out by helicopter, you have to come up with ways to make that possible. Is your hero part of the team? Is he someone so important that a bizarre rescue would be attempted? Just as you can’t–really, you must not–introduce a character and then never mention him again (the Rosencrantz & Gildenstern syndrome), you also should never introduce a plot element that remains unresolved. An outline will show you missteps before they occur.

Most people (usually inexperienced writers) who think they have a story really only have the BEGINNING of a story. An outline will show you where the holes in your story are. (They’re almost always in the middle). In a typical mystery, the set-up leads to a number of clues that build upon one another until the protagonist can deduce whodunit and how the setup was created. If all you have is the setup and the ending, you will have a hard row to hoe coming up with the intricate turns of plot essential to the mystery format. An outline will save you time and headaches.

If you’re going to write only one book in your life, you can fool around with it all you want. Take a year to write a chapter. Change the setting from the Old West to a dystopian future. Experiment with the age and sex of your protagonist. Write part of it as a slice of life, and another as a thriller. Go crazy. But if you plan to write for a living, you do have to think about finishing your work in a timely manner. As it is, most of us work for around one cent an hour; if your wage is lower than that, you might want to think about speeding up your output. An outline helps you do that. The time it takes to think out and write the outline is well worth it in terms of ultimate time saved.

An outline can be a lifeline if you get stuck. Nobody plans on getting Writer’s Block, but it happens to the most industrious of us: We get sick, we have some family emergency, our hearts get broken… occasionally we all get kiboshed by the fickle finger of fate, and when that happens, the last thing most of us want to concentrate on is plotting a novel. And it doesn’t have to be some big event that takes you out of writing mode. Sometimes the inspirational muse just flies away. With an outline, you at least know what to write next. Granted, you may not be able to write it brilliantly, but you can at least get it down (and fix it later). A lifeline. Truly.

Finally, here’s a tip to shorten your “start-up” time at your next writing session (which, incidentally, should rarely be longer than one day): Write a thumbnail sketch of the next scene you’re going to write before you end for the day. This is a sort of mini-outline within your major outline. It enables you to start writing the minute you sit down to write, without any “think” time.

This series is about FLOW and the secrets to achieving effortless writing, aka “inspiration”. I posit that inspiration occurs a lot more frequently when one’s writing habits are conducive to it, and the techniques in this series will help develop those techniques.

Next time: Write Fast, Write Badly (I mean it!)

FLOW, often mislabled “inspiration”, is when your writing is effortless, easy, and fun, even though what you’re doing requires tremendous focus and concentration. It’s writing without forcing yourself to write. Without stopping after every sentence.Without even thinking very much. FLOW is a gift. When it happens, you’re unstoppable. When it doesn’t happen, writing becomes a chore, or worse. Remember the guy in THE SHINING, whose entire novel consisted of the single sentence All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy? That dude could really have used an influx of FLOW.

The good news is that even though FLOW seems to be a miracle that materializes at the whim of the gods, it can be learned. With a little left-brained organization and routine, you can free your right brain to flow with creativity–at will–so that you won’t feel as if you’re inventing the wheel every time you sit down to write. Your productivity will increase radically, and the quality of your work will also improve. Not to mention that writing will become a lot more fun.

So let’s get started. the first step in achieving voluntary FLOW is to write every day. This is key, the most important thing you can do. It is, alas, also difficult, especially if you’re not accustomed to doing it. But believe me, a daily writing habit is worth cultivating. Think of it the way a musician thinks about practicing scales. They’re not exciting in themselves, but they’re what make it possible to produce great music.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Set aside a certain time every day for writing. Nothing is more guaranteed to fail than telling yourself that you’ll “do it later”. Do it when you say you will, and regard that time as sacred. My time is the first thing in the morning. Frankly, I do have all day to write but, as a morning person, I love the feeling of working before the rest of the world wakes up. You may prefer to work late at night, as Danielle Steele did when her (nine) children were small. Whenever it is, make it a time when you’re not likely to be interrupted. And if you are interrupted, you need to be able to ignore the interruption. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t go out for the mail or do the crossword in the newspaper or read your email or check out Facebook. Tell your kids to go away. If you have an office, put a sign on the door that reads MUST YOU? This is your time.

2.Set a time limit on your work. You don’t have to work all day. Your session doesn’t — and shouldn’t– be longer than you can fill with constant writing. That’s right, I said constant writing. Now, don’t freak out; stay with me here.  If you’re not used to writing every day, the first few sessions might feel like turning a massive wheel in desperate need of oil. Your brain will creak and cough and complain. That’s okay. It will get easier before long, I promise. I think 30 minutes is a good session for a beginner. You can do almost anything for 30 minutes. But make those 30 minutes count. Don’t stare at the computer screen trying to come up with the perfect opening sentence. That’s a huge waste of time. Later I’ll go into the value of writing badly, but for now, I’d like you to just take my word for it: Write something for those 30 minutes

3. Trust yourself. You may have difficulty focusing on your work for even this short time. This can be corrected by following an outline (which I’ll cover in the next entry), but for the time being, just write what’s on your mind. Put down the thoughts that come to you, even if they’re not what you’ve planned. This, I’ve found, is a weird but charming surprise that occurs in every novel I write. One day, something simply appears on the page that I haven’t intended at all. It’s usually a small thing– a late-entering character, or a humorous bit of business. When this happens to you, accept it. Let it happen. It’s a gift from your subconscious. Most of us are so self-critical that when the part of our minds that Stephen King calls “the guys in the furnace room” offer up some shining narrative nugget, we reject it automatically. Don’t. Go with it. Remember, if it doesn’t work, you can change it. Everything can be changed. And is, in the world of publishing. (Here’s an interesting aside: I believe that the biggest difference between a professional writer and an amateur is that the professional is willing to do a lot more rewriting.)

One word of caution about listening to the guys in the furnace room, though: Make sure they’re the ones you’re listening to. If what comes to you is a sudden desire to scrap everything you’ve written so far and start over, or to turn your historical romance into a sci-fi saga, what you’re probably hearing is not the guys in the furnace room. It’s the voice of fear making a desperate attempt to keep you from writing, the demon whose name is Procrastination.

Procrastination is not funny. It is not trivial or interesting or harmless. It is fear, and fear will kill you. It will destroy your writing and your dreams, and it happens all the time. Writer’s block is fear, pure and simple. FLOW is the opposite of block, and therefore the opposite of fear. People don’t usually think of writing as a courageous endeavor, but it is. If you have block, you know you’re afraid. And there’s no way around fear–any fear–except through it.

Experts say that it takes 28 days to break an old habit or form a new one, so here’s what I propose: For 30 minutes a day, every day for 28 days, let go of your fear. Allow the secret parts of your mind to find their way into the sunlight through your story. That is Step One to achieving FLOW. It is the key to freedom.

Next up: Writing and using an outline. (More important than you may think!)

No, seriously. I bought the book (for 50 cents at the library discard sale) because when I think of “flow” — henceforth written FLOW in this blog– I think of writing. Or beer kegs. Or maxi-pads. But mostly writing. You know that feeling of knowing exactly what you’re doing without really thinking at all? When all the words you’re looking for click into place a split-second before you write them down? When your story comes to life without a hitch, and all you need to do is get the words on paper as fast as you can?

Me neither. I mean yes, it does happen, but not nearly as often as I want it to. When it does happen, though . . . Ah, paradise. I guess that’s what Mr. 15-syllables means by “optimum experience” (although, flow it, the Paleozoic interpretation of flowing is still pretty appealing). Unfortunately, the author isn’t interested in FLOW as it occurs in writing so much as it does in rock climbing and surfing. Presumably he clurned out his book while hanging ten on the waves at Big Sur.

Even so, being a writer with zero interest in surfing, I began to think about  FLOW in terms of my profession and passion, and perhaps yours, in which case you probably have your own name for this phenomenon. Mine is “flying”. I call it that because when it happens, the moment of perfect inspiration when I’m writing feverishly without really thinking at all, when my left brain is shut off and words tumble out of my right hemisphere in a welter of creativity, it feels like absolute freedom. At those times I am the air. I am the sea. I am Writer, hear me roar . . . Well, you get the point. And when the moment passes and I finally take a breath, I find that four hours have gone by.

Yes! Yes! you say. You know what I’m talking about! The orgasm of the mind! The perfect wave, Mihaly! The thing is, however, that this moment, this blissful state in which FLOW overtakes us, is elusive. It comes and it goes. And I, for one, want to have more of it. I want to corral it, confine it, control it, perpetuate it. I want to roll around in it and rub my hands together like a silent movie villain, shouting, “Mine! All mine!”

Is that wrong? I ask guiltily. Isn’t that something like caging a wild creature and fitting it with a choke collar?

Surprisingly, no. At least I don’t think so, because I’ve found that the more I write, the more frequently FLOW occurs. There are damn few benefits of age — believe me, I know –but this is one of them. And because of this equation that I’ve discovered (frequency arrow FLOW equals SCORE!), I really do believe it’s possible to achieve FLOW at will — if not permanently, then at least consistently, and often.

At the risk of sounding like a Paleozoic pedant, I’ve analyzed the times that I’ve experienced FLOW in my work (as I’ve mentioned, this is happening with greater frequency these days, possibly because my brain is hurtling toward senility), and I’ve come up with six conditions that foster it. In a nutshell, here they are: 1)Write every day. 2) Write at the same time every day. 3) Use an outline. 4) At the end of a writing session, create a thumbnail description of the next scene you’re going to write. 5) Write fast. 6) Write badly.

Since no one likes a 200-page blog entry, I’ll spare you the details for the moment, but I will explore the above concepts in some depth in future installments. I know I’ve been spotty about posting, but I’ll try to be diligent about a weekly entry. Who knows? I might catch some FLOW and ride that wave to optimal experience. It can happen.