Techniques of the Selling Writer (45 page)

And then—?

Then, you’re ready to start writing. Play it by ear, spontaneously, changing and adapting
as you go along, to fit the ideas that pop forth moment by moment. Plan each scene
as you reach it, and then only to the degree of pinpointing goal and conflict and
disaster. Between scenes, free-wheel, so long as your focal character somehow ends
up with a logical new goal toward which to strive. When you hit a snag—and you will—just
pace the floor awhile, or resort to the list system: “Since Joe needs to show up as
a selfish brute at this point, what are some of the typically selfish and brutish
things selfish brutes do?” “How can Stella keep Len from investing in Papa’s blue-sky
goldmine, without revealing that Papa is a swindler?”

Stay with such long enough, and eventually you’ll end up with a story . . . a
solid
story, because you worked within the framework of a starting line-up; yet a story
that’s free and spontaneous also, in that you didn’t tie yourself to any rigid outline.

Is this the ideal way to plan, then?

Not at all. The ideal way is the one that gets the job done; and no two stories and
no two writers are the same.

But at least, as stated earlier, this procedure offers you a springboard.

What comes after will and must be of your own making.

The organization of production

The beginner has a fond illusion: Once he learns to write a story, he thinks, everything
will go swimmingly.

Professionals know otherwise. Writing fiction is like playing in vaudeville, except
that you have to devise a new act for each performance. It’s the only craft that gets
harder as you go along instead of easier. Skill brings awareness of deficiencies.
You grow more critical and strive—involuntarily, often—to do a better job; achieve
a higher standard.

Thus, the difference between the beginner and the pro is less one of talent or knowledge
than of endurance. The pro, having been over the road many, many times before, accepts
the agony that goes with the journey in stoical silence, because he knows that if
he perseveres long enough, eventually the way will clear and he’ll get his story.

Consistent production starts with the presumption that you already have an effective
grasp of story structure and fiction technique.

Beyond these, you must also work out methods to deal with routine problems of:

Each of these constitutes a subject in itself. Let’s start with procedure.

It has been truly said that, too often, writers hate to write, but love to have written.

Why should this be so?

Because writing demands that you put forth effort, and inertia
is a hard foe to overcome. To muster initiative, to exert self-discipline—these are
difficult assignments.

“There are basically two kinds of people in the world,” says Jean Monnet, French founder
of the European Common Market, “those who want to be and those who want to do. In
the second category there is almost no competition.”

How do you go about qualifying for Category 2?

Herewith, eight hints:

Loss of a boss can be a dangerous thing.

Down through the years, you’ve grown accustomed to having someone tell you what to
do and when to do it.

Now, abruptly, all that’s changed. You’ve entered a field in which you not only do
the work, but serve as your own supervisor.

On a job, you can dream through a spring day without penalty.

Dream as a writer, and your income stops. Physical presence or good intentions mean
nothing. “Get the story written!” is the only thing that counts. You’ve got to drive
yourself to work—and that means push as hard to turn out fiction as if a boss were
breathing down your neck.

Freedom is heady stuff. With it comes the temptation to postpone what must, upon occasion,
be the drudgery of writing.—After all, you rationalize, you can always make up for
it tomorrow, or tomorrow, or tomorrow.

But, as you soon learn, tomorrow never comes.

The answer, of course, is to set up a schedule of regular hours,
and stick to it
.

The hard part here is that friends and family very well may prove your worst enemies.
The idea that writing must be dealt with as a job is alien to their thinking. They
can’t conceive that you must have uninterrupted hours. It never dawns on them that
time is the only thing you have to sell, or that two minutes’ conversation may, upon
occasion, shatter your train of thought for half a day.

Further, you may not fully realize these things yourself. When
it’s a gorgeous morning and the kids plead for a picnic, you want to go along. Or
old George comes by, and he’s upset about this problem . . .

In consequence, you never give habit a chance to help you with your efforts. Always,
there are errands to run or people to see or polite amenities to break up your time.

Then you wonder why you don’t get out more copy.

If you’re really serious about your work, you’ll stop all this nonsense before it
starts.

To that end, certain hours will be yours to write. You’ll hold them for it, inviolate,
complete with locked door and blunt refusal to be disturbed.

Does this mean you have to act as if you were a shoe clerk?

Of course not. If you really have good reason to break away and want to do so, go
to it. But do it with your eyes open, in full knowledge that you must pay for that
lost time later, in extra effort or lost income.

A writer’s unconscious is a sneaky thing. Give it half a chance, and it will devise
a way to evade the grinding work of writing.

Thus, if hours spent in front of the typewriter are your only criterion of effort,
you’ll soon train yourself to sit, but not produce.

What’s the remedy?

Make your standard the completion of a task—ordinarily, production of a certain amount
of copy.

Here, the hazard is that you may set your sights too high.

That can be disastrous. Too stiff a quota freezes you before you even start. Pledge
yourself to turn out three thousand words each and every day, and you very well may
produce none at all.

A better way is to take smaller steps. Five hundred words may be enough, at first.
Even seasoned professionals seldom complete more than a thousand words of finished
copy, day in and day out.

Often, too, it takes as long to plan a story as it does to write it. A week of such
preparation, for a short story, may prove none too much.

All this is an individual matter, though. Some writers are facile, others clumsy.
This one works fast, that one slow.

So, find your own pace. Start with minimal demands; then work up.

But
do
produce. For a writer is, by definition, one who writes.

There are books on the shelf next to your desk. Fascinating books, that you love to
read. Outside your window, you can see white sails skimming down the lake, or watch
the lights come on along the Sunset Strip, or marvel at snow sparkling on an Ozark
hillside.

Is this your picture of a writer’s workroom?

It’s also a prelude to disaster.

Why?

Because, believe me, you’ll read the books . . . gaze out the window.

What you really need is a windowless, bookless, distractionless gray room.

It will help if this room isn’t even in your home. An office is a legitimate income-tax
deduction. It frees you from family pressures and interruptions.

Keep its location a secret, and friends won’t be tempted to drop by either.

Equipment? Desk, chair, typewriter, blank paper, carbon, pencils. Maybe a lounge chair,
if you like to sit at ease while you scribble notes or edit copy. And lamps, since
good lighting is essential to a writer.

Probably you should have a dictionary and thesaurus too . . . if you’ll discipline
yourself not to read them as an escape from writing.—Yes, a writer can read even a
dictionary for entertainment. I’ve seen it done.

Most important of all, when you enter your workroom (or work area, if it’s just a
corner of the bedroom), it should be for purposes of production only. Again, habit
is the issue. If you sit down at your desk only to write, you establish a conditioning
that will help you.

Some writers work nights, instead of days.

Why?

Because night offers fewer distractions. The noise and bustle of day are gone. Darkness
closes in, like a protective mantle.

Result: more copy.

Schedule is a matter of personal preference, however. Some people work better in the
morning, or the afternoon. The only way to find out your own best time is to experiment.

Whatever your choice, distraction still remains an irritating problem. It consists
of anything that draws your attention from your work.

Thus, an uncomfortable chair constitutes a distraction. So does a too-low desk, or
a flickering light, or a too-warm or too-cold room, or a typewriter with keys that
stick, or squeaking floor boards in the hall outside your door.

Whenever you become aware of such annoyances, do something about them if at all possible.

Often, the solution is no more involved than purchase of a new ribbon for your old
mill, or moving your desk into a corner so that you face blank wall instead of open
window, or installation of a small electric fan to muffle encroaching echoes of sound.

On the other hand, there are things in this life you can’t control.

When such arise, remember your grandmother’s line about “What can’t be cured must
be endured,” and condition yourself to ignore the situation. A newspaper city room
resembles a madhouse, on occasion, but reporters still turn out their copy. Whole
books have been written on subway trains, in ships’ forecastles, or while bouncing
a baby on one hip. If you want to write badly enough, you’ll get the job done somehow.

Once upon a time there was a writer. Because he was a competent craftsman, he prided
himself on his ability to deliver precisely what an editor asked, no matter how short
the notice or great the pressure.

Magazines liked that attitude. Soon Our Boy was the man they
called when, in crisis, they needed a 20,000-word cover piece by Monday morning.

Since such rush jobs often carried double or even triple rates, Writer felt very pleased
with himself, not to mention prosperous.

That is, he felt thus until, one day, it dawned on him that maybe the pride was misplaced
and the profit not quite so great, if you stopped to consider that he ended each story
so knocked out that he couldn’t work at all for two or three weeks after.

The lesson here is that, although you can outdo yourself on a short-time basis, you
pay for it later.

In the same way, if you push yourself too hard, day in and day out, you become tired
and bored.

Especially bored.

Boredom is born of conflict: You’re doing one thing, but you wish—even if unconsciously—that
you were doing something else.

How does this apply to writers?

Writing is hard work . . . work that makes strenuous demands on your unconscious.

Said Unconscious goes along. But it wants reward for effort.

If no reward comes . . . if you press too hard, if you drive too long, if you insist
on labor without respite . . . Unconscious balks.

Try to force the issue then, and you may end up in real trouble.

And we wouldn’t want that to happen to you, would we?

Life is a writer’s raw material.

Successful writers immerse themselves in it.

To that end, you read. You travel. You shop. You loaf on street corners. You go to
ball games. You visit friends. You attend parties. You work in church or civic club
or Boy Scout troop.

In other words, you contact people. All kinds of people, without regard to age or
sex or social stratum; the wider the range, the better.

No aspect of your work is more important. Ignore it, and you must face the unhappy
plight met too often by the older person who decides he wants to write.

Frequently, this older person stopped reading fiction twenty years ago. Result: His
ideas on style are hopelessly outmoded.

Worse, his friends, his attitudes, his allusions and his idiom all
are drawn from his own age group. His world is one of age, not youth.

Yet to 71 per cent of our citizenry, World War I is something you read about in history
books. Sixty-four per cent don’t remember Prohibition. Even the Korean War is dead
past to 22 per cent.

This creates a problem for the older person: How does he make contact with young readers?

Most often, he doesn’t. The gap between him and them is too wide to bridge.

In fact, ordinarily you don’t
make
contact with anyone, as a writer. You
keep
it. Every day.

And you do it by staying alive.

Writing is an appallingly sedentary occupation.

In addition, it builds nervous tension.

Put those two facts together, and you have a basis for all kinds of trouble, from
obesity to the screaming mimis.

What do you do about it?

You exercise.

That doesn’t mean pushups, necessarily, or handball. But it does mean getting out
into the open . . . walking along the beach in early, pearl-gray morning . . . taking
an afternoon off to sun and swim . . . venting your hostilities on the weeds, if you’re
a gardener . . . bicycling, fishing, hunting, golfing, riding, boating.