Writing « Robin Writes

It occurs to me that many, many people are in the process of writing a book. Now, I’ve said repeatedly that not everyone should do that, and I’ll stand by those words.

See, there are storytellers, and there are writers. Often, very often, people have both of those skills. Sometimes they don’t. You may have the ability to verbally tell an interesting, funny, or engaging story, but that doesn’t mean you have the ability to put it down on paper in the same interesting, funny, or engaging manner.

Sometimes, too, a person might tell a story and hear, “Oh, you should write a book!” That’s nice, but writing a book is a lot of work—and, here’s the catch, the average-sized novel runs around 80K words or even more. That’s a really long story to tell, so unless you can stretch out that 10-minute version, you might be in trouble if you try to turn it into an actual manuscript.

The third point in today’s lesson, boys and girls, is that you also have to master the mechanics of writing:

Use the Oxford comma.

Do not leave two spaces between sentences.

Do not even argue with me about these two things.

Do not capitalize random words.

Learn the difference between “Mom” and “my mom.”

For heaven’s sake, learn about comma usage.

Will you screw up? Sure, we all do. But a consistent “my Mom” or “the Minister” or “the Author wrote a Book” is going to irritate your readers.

And you know what else? If you do these things on social media posts or blogs or wherever, I’m NOT going to want to read anything you’ve written. I doubt I’m the only one . . .

So here’s the list, if you want to be a writer:

Learn your craft.

Practice every day.

Make sure you have enough things to say—original, not repetitious.

If you don’t know how to do or spell something, ask. Or Google.

And finally, a few nuggets of writerly wisdom:

It’s okay to only write when inspiration strikes.

It’s okay to make out a grocery list and include that in your daily word count.

It’s okay not to have a daily word count.

It’s okay to type, or use Dragon, or write longhand.

It’s okay to write a short story. Or a poem. Or a series. Or a sequel.

None of the things on this final list make you a writer—or not. All of these things are highly individual, unique to you as a writer. It’s all the rest that makes you a writer—learning, mastering, telling an interesting story.

You’re moving right along, doing your thing, promoting yourself and your books, and all of a sudden—BAM!

You lose friends; people say mean things; sometimes, even, people threaten to “stop” buying your books and say hateful things about you.

What the hell just happened?

People. That’s what happened.

First, it’s really hard to comprehend because you probably aren’t like this. You probably don’t send hate messages and you probably don’t jump to conclusions and you probably don’t spread rumors. And it’s really hard not to take this personally.

I’m telling you, resist that temptation.

Fix the problem, if there is one, and issue an apology and move on. Assuming, of course, that what happened is not at all justified. If it is, you’re kinda screwed . . .

A couple years ago, there was a message board circulating that said some not-very-nice-things about me. These people assumed that since RHP was a new publishing house, we were either A) crooks and criminals or B) clueless. On this particular site, folks seem to jump to conclusions quite a lot; there are many long-time writers on there who seem to “know everything.” I use the word “writers” because most of these people haven’t been published; I reserve the term “author” for ones who have.

I addressed the concerns mentioned with simple answers; those didn’t satisfy a few people, but I stopped. I’d answered their questions. An RHP author saw the thread and jumped in and said, basically, hey, RHP is JUST FINE. I SIGNED WITH THEM.

End of story.

Last week, an RHP author had a social media account hacked. No other explanation. The alleged post, of which I only saw a screenshot, was completely out of character for this author and anyone with half a brain would have realized that.

Sadly, it seems many people do only possess half a brain; I started receiving email. Not the author—no one asked the author. They felt it necessary to email the publisher and threaten not to purchase any more RHP book if we didn’t immediately remove this author.

One of them also couldn’t distinguish between “your” and “you’re,” but I digress . . .

I didn’t ask if they had EVER bought an RHP book, although I did tell one of them that I doubted they’d intended to “place a large order.” Whatever that means.

It was kind of a cluster there for a couple days.

Long story short, the author issued both a private and a public apology via social media, as did RHP. Okay, RHP’s post was a little weighted on sarcasm, but come on! DON’T jump to conclusions, right?

Lesson: periodically Google yourself, see what’s out there; check your social media accounts for “bad” things. Fix problems immediately. And issue an apology.

Then forget it and move on.