The Joy of Writing

As I've said, I love to write. Yeah, I'll run out of good ideas someday, but til then I find it enjoyable. I start with writing "what happened" then go back thru and edit and polish what I've written.

Editing means paying close attention to grammar, sentence and paragraph structure. On my early draft of my book (too early), I paid a friend/copy editor to do just that, which helped tremendously. A must do if self-publishing.

I like to embed many crisp, short sentences into paragraphs or at the ends of paragraphs. "His hugs were ferocious." "It's 'Wake up, get up, do something." "Don't blame others."
"I'm breakin' outta here." I told him, "Now." And so on. 

Then I insert longer run thru sentences at key spots:
I burst out and started screaming and ranting, pacing, tearing off my clothes, and throwing them as mightily as I could, not caring where they fell to earth.

Gotta get to Haifa to Haifa can't stop must stop where can I stop do I stop.

But I eschew long unbroken paragraphs. I avoid writing long paragraphs, unlike the author's English prose I admire most, by Shoghi Effendi.

Editing is also adding descriptive, colorful, picture-building adjectives and verbs, which is easy with the computer. I open up my thesaurus, type in "walk" and watch the list come up; stroll, stomp, trudge, sashay etc. Then I go to "Find" in my document and type in the word "walk." It highlights each occurrence of "walk." I scroll to each one and either leave it alone or change it depending on the scene. Sometimes I let go and change other words, phrasings and sentence formats. I spend weeks doing that, going thru the list.

Another list I do the same thing to is pronouns, forms of "be," and prepositions. I'm writing a memoir. I found 1358 iterations of "was" for example, in 130 pages. You see the problem. With a little effort and rephrasing I cut out half, making the writing much tighter and more to the point. I have a list of twenty words like that, including "like" and "that." "Were" is another big one.

I do the same thing with "I," "we," and character's names.

Then I add or expand my emotions:
"I'm coming," I shouted, "nothing can stop me!" and I'm not afraid to use exclamation points which writers like Stephen King in his book "On Writing" tell you to use sparingly, if at all. Bah! 

Another example: Being perfectly reasonable and rational. In reality, jumbled thoughts tumbled thru my mind, including those of escape.
It's great when you can throw in juxtaposed ideas, actions or thoughts.

And that is a key to my writing, adding ideas, generally unknown facts, opinions, actions, description, and thoughts. Each deserves a paragraph themselves, But there's plenty of books, websites and blogs that say a lot about all those. And I subscribe to many, and read them, and save many white papers on my computer.

Character development is also very important, more so in fiction. In memoir there's only so much you can do for yourself and other characters. It is what it was at the time. And a lot of that has to be thru dialogue, realistic and personality appropriate. As a memoirist, unless you wrote it down when it happened, it's not going to be exact. And it doesn't have to be to move the story along, always moving the story along. And the reader automatically understands this, as long as you have "Memoir" somewhere on the cover.

Then you're nearly finished and the hardest part comes; formatting. Indented paragraphs? Or flush. Lots of spaces? Few spaces. Blank pages between chapters? Or not. (For me, not.) Font size? (It's different depending on the section.) Page numbering? (Be careful.)

Then another hardest part comes. Self-publish? Or get an agent? Or write to publishers directly? I'm self-publishing. I'm not keen on waiting six to eighteen months for a publisher to print and distribute my book. I can do it on Amazon overnight for nothing. Yes, literally nothing. No aggravation sending out query letters and emails and getting rejections. That means I have to market my book myself, but I'm enjoying doing things like that with this Blog, a website I'm considering building (for free), social media etc.

Its a Brave New World as Huxley wrote in 1932. It was then and more so now. There are no rules to writing and publishing anymore. Anyone can do it, and 300,000 writers do, in the U.S. alone -- every year.

Competition for readers attention is fierce, so write well. You have a unique story to tell, in your own voice.

Pick up a pen or laptop and join the crowd.

By Rodney Richards, NJ