On Writing

One of the key things a writer needs to get started in publishing is knowledge. Not necessarily academic knowledge, but knowledge based on a real desire to be curious and wanting to know about everything. A good writer has to be adept at listening and learning from any situation, however trivial. You can bet your life that Dickens enjoyed ‘gossip'. Learn that everything that happens to you is ‘material'. Good or bad, to be used. (Just be careful your ex- doesn't read it.)

One hears from people all the time that they ‘want to be a writer'. But at the same time they don't read. A good writer reads and if you have never experienced the thrill of a book that grips you from beginning to end, then chances are you won't be able to write one either. Inspiration is good, but so is structure. It is not a crime to plan. Sometimes it is good to get feedback from a qualified objective person (other than your Ma) on the merits of the idea before you spend a year writing it. So writing a proposal is a good idea. Think of it as a business plan. You wouldn't start a business without a plan, so why a novel or screenplay? Sometimes the proposal can be so good you can get an advance for it. Rare though that is these days.

Enthusiasm, knowledge, curiosity, a knack for hearing good snatches of dialogue, an ability to create fully fleshed characters in short brush strokes and an ability to spend hours, days researching and enjoy the process (but not too much you have to write the thing you know). Don't get sidetracked by research either, because chances are you'll find an even better story in there, which distracts you from your primary objective. File it. Come back to it later and write it then. No one knows it's there. It will keep.

How to sell it once written. Now that's the hard part. Make contacts. Make people aware of you and your writing. Exposure. The wall is higher now. Join writer's groups, give readings, it can only improve your writing. My own enthusiasm for writing was rekindled by giving readings of my short stories in Vancouver at the ‘Bolts of Fiction' readings on Commercial Drive. I could hear immediately what worked and what didn't and you can make contact with editors through such venues.

I am not convinced by the argument that good fiction will be discovered and published eventually. It is very hard now to get an agent, even harder to get a publisher to read something not submitted by an agent. So you do have to be very proactive and even if you only ever imagined you'd be a novelist, you need to be writing articles, pitching them to magazine editors, you need to build a portfolio of writing published elsewhere, so when you do make contact with a publishing editor, he knows you are a professional. You will learn to work faster and be more user friendly to criticism.

It's tough. No one needs a writer, yet everyone needs a writer. Walk into any store selling magazines – each issue has to be filled with words, written by writers. Every bookshop is filled with new titles every month. Every month editors are considering new material. All you can do is make sure of one thing. That day, when your book finally hits the right desk, it is a good as it can be. Sure it can be improved with the editors help, but mostly, they want something that impresses them and something they can tell the marketing people that ‘this will sell'.