On writing

From crime and thrillers to historical fiction and literary novels to investigative non-fiction, the contributors to this article have years of experience and learnings from their work as authors. In honour of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), we’ve asked them to share some nuggets of literary wisdom about the writing process.

Kaz Cooke

Some published writers start to think there is nothing they can learn, and they don't need editing. The most important thing I've learned is that editing saves you from mistakes, makes your work better and teaches you things. Even if you don't agree with an editor's point, it's always good to know their perspective. If you're young or new to writing, try to have a thick skin about suggestions and editing. You don't have to accept the changes. Worst-case scenario, you have another opinion. Best case, you're spared embarrassment or a libel case. And it's worth joining the Australian Society of Authors and your nearest state/territory writer's centre.
 

Fiona McIntosh

Discipline is everything.  It is the beginning and the end for me in terms of getting that all important first draft out of the wetware and into the hardware.  If you faff around, if you write all-nighters for two days and then don’t touch it for a week, if you don’t write for a few weeks and then go intensive for a whole month…my personal opinion is that you end up with a disjointed tale.  And I’m guessing most who work in this unscheduled way may not get their manuscripts finished…certainly not quickly.  I write to a strict discipline so the books get written fast to deadline.  It’s the only area of my writing in which I am disciplined – everything else from not planning stories, to how my desk looks, to how I approach my work, is chaotic. 

The best books have an internal rhythm that the reader subconsciously locks onto and it begins in those early drafts being banged out to disciplined writing sessions.  I lecture on this in my masterclass because I feel it is vital and one of the reasons I suspect I’m still crafting books that sell after 18 years.

Anna Funder

When I was writing All That I Am it felt like I was walking along a tightrope, but it was one that I made up as I went along, word-by-word. To compound the terror, it was not attached to any firm end; I was belaying it out in front of me over a chasm, unsure of when I would get to the other side. This is another way of thinking about the horrible, necessary, exciting uncertainty. The scene of Ruth’s accident, for instance, which is pivotal, was one I didn’t even know I was going to write the day I sat down to work; it just happened. This is the gift of the unconscious working hard on our behalf to make sense of things.

One solution I’ve found is to start in the middle, right where you want your characters to be, saying what you want to say. That way, you don’t spend a lot of pages on backstory which can kill your mojo, and your characters.

The other important things to remember were taught to me by my friend, the feminist legal scholar Hilary Charlesworth: always leave a ‘hook’ the night before on the page, which is to say the beginning of a paragraph or an idea so you have something to go on when you turn up in the morning. And secondly, that the perfect is the enemy of the good. I have twisted this last one in my mind over the years, and for me, the perfect is not a concept. But you will only hit the sweet spot of what you want to say if you ignore the fridge (while knowing it’s got good stuff in it) and start writing, inch-by-inch.
 

Peter Cochrane

Keep at it. Know that it’s hard work. Get up early. Seize the day! Balance the literary work with physical exercise, walking, swimming, gardening, whatever. And read widely. Read away from your project as much as within the genre or the time you’re working in. Finally, go back to books you love, and re-read them, and wonder at the mastery of the craft and perhaps absorb a little something of that magic. That’s about it.
 

Candice Fox

A writing teacher told me once that the effect of my over-description was that I was ‘patronising’ the reader. I’d described a storm for excessive amounts of time, and his point was that he knew what storm looked like – he’d seen one before and I didn’t need to prattle on for pages explaining it to him. I think that’s important, having a reasonable idea of what your reader will ‘get’ and what you need to meticulously describe.

Majok Tulba

I was told that you must always write from your heart first and get it all out, and to shape it later. I follow that mantra and my characters therefore evolve naturally.
 

Paul French

The cure for not being able to write is to read. If you’re stuck staring at a blank page don’t force yourself to write, force yourself to read. Hopefully you’ll be inspired and faced with the tricky choice of carrying on reading or returning to your writing.
 

Tiffany Tsao

Nothing you write is wasted effort. Nothing. Even if it’s awful. Every time you write, you’re getting better at it, so take heart! I think of it as akin to playing a musical instrument or ice skating (not that I’m very good at either of those things) – even if you play the wrong chord or lose your balance, your body learns from your missteps and makes adjustments accordingly. It seems to me that musicians and athletes give themselves more leeway to tinker and rehearse because there is a strong sense that doing so does eventually contribute to improvement. I’m not sure writers give themselves this same licence; when we write something we consider cringe worthy or mediocre, we feel ashamed instead of seeing it as contributing to a larger, cumulative process of skill-gaining.

I suppose this is a slightly less clichéd way of saying, ‘Practice makes perfect,’ though I don’t believe ‘perfect’ writing exists. Not everything you write has to be brilliant. The mere act of writing is beneficial to your writing.
 

Andrew Hutchinson

Get it down and get it out.

So many people have said they’ve thought of a great story, or that they’ve always wanted to write a novel, but never had the time. And then there are the others who have written something, but they don’t feel quite confident to send it out just yet.

I would say that the key trait that successful writers have that others don’t is that they get it done – they’re able to write it down in the first place, which at the least gives them a starting point. Even if it’s terrible, you can edit and fine tune, or you can use it as a learning exercise for the next attempt – but you need to do it, you need to actually write.

Then there’s the self-confidence to send it out, the capacity to trust that what you’ve done is good enough. If you’ve done the work, you’ve edited, you’ve shared it with readers and responded to the feedback relative to your vision, if you’ve done all you can with it and you don’t know what else to do – then you need to find places to send it.

No first draft is ever truly great, no writer started out being absolutely brilliant, no matter how effortless their work may seem. You have to do the work, and you have to trust in your capability to put it in perspective and understand its worth.

Ceridwen Dovey

Someone said to me that it’s all about ‘bum on chair’ – I suppose this is a variation on the old adage that writing is more about perspiration than inspiration – but it’s true that what keeps the process so addictive to a writer is the wonder of seeing words accrete into sentences, and pages accrete into chapters, and to know that eventually all that text will somehow become unified as a creative whole. I love the sense of being in it for the long haul, and the ‘bum on chair’ advice helps remind me that with long-form fiction, it’s all about stamina.