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| Just another Sunday morning |
Last
evening, I spoke with one of my publishers about the new book I was writing.
Without hesitation, he penciled in a possible publication date for late 2020 or
early 2021. He did this without even reading a single word of the book. He did
this without having to honor a contract, since we don’t have a contract yet. I’ll
leave that up to my agent to discuss with him. When I further revealed, I have
enough material…enough new books…to carry me well into 2023, he told me I’m a
writing machine.
“Don’t you
ever get writer’s block?” he asked.
“Never,” I
said. “My dad never got construction workers block and he died with his boots
on. I plan to do the same.”
Proliferation
I’m not sure
if the gift for proliferation is something you’re born with, or something that’s
learned. What’s for sure, if I’ve always had a habit of writing a lot of words,
even when I was still learning the trade (I drove my writing professors totally
insane). This is not to say, my books and stories are long winded. Quite the opposite,
in fact. I shoot for short, sharp declarative sentences. I keep the description
to a minimum. Few adjectives, almost no adverbs. Nothing frilly. It just means
I can write a lot of stories in a short amount of time, when other writers
struggle even to come up with ideas.
Writing in the Dark
I’m not sure
who coined the phrase, writing in the dark. Perhaps it was Dean Wesley Smith,
another extremely prolific genre writer. All he needs is to start with a title,
and he can sit down and begin a new story or novel without even knowing what
the plot’s about. Now that’s professionalism.
Glory Days of Pulp Magazines
Back in the
glory days of the pulps in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, a writer like me could make
great money writing mysteries and adventures for a penny a word. Back then, you
wrote on real typewriters and you had no choice but to write clean copy. All it
took was discipline and time in the writing chair. It also took talent. But
more importantly, it took something else. Love of the craft.
If you don’t
love what you’re writing, it’s going to show up on the page, glaringly. The
reader will get bored, put the book down, and likely, never read another one of
your stories again.
Treat the Writing like a Job
Much like
the pulp era of yesteryear, we are presently in the midst of a golden age of
genre fiction. People will gladly pay for good content (writers are no longer
considered writers but instead, content specialists). Good being the key word.
So I wish to leave you with a trick of the trade that has always worked for me.
Tomorrow
morning, get your butt out of bed early. Even if it’s cold, gloomy, and rainy.
Get out of bed, make the coffee, and sit yourself down at your writing desk.
Only, here’s the thing: pretend you’re not writing in your pajamas inside your
bedroom. Convince yourself the Disney Studio or Paramount Productions has hired
you to write 2,000 new words a days, every day, five days per week (they want
you to do 1,000 words on Saturday). You don’t produce 2,000 new, very good words
per day, you don’t get paid. Even worse, there’s some young, snot nosed kid
standing just outside the door waiting to take your place.
I have to
end this piece here, because I need to write another story before lunchtime. I
have no idea what I’m going to write about.
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