I’m writing this from our hotel room in Newport, Oregon on a little weekend getaway with Heidi and Rosie. Although it was fairly calm, if a bit drizzly, when we arrived (as the shot above from our balcony attests), it’s a particularly rainy, blustery morning today. With gale force winds and near constant rain in the forecast, it’s not a good day if you want to get down to the beach, but it’s a great day for storm watching. We love it either way. We’ve stayed all up and down the Oregon coast, of course, but we find ourselves returning to Newport the most. Every coastal city has its own charms, but Newport is big enough to offer all the amenities you would want, plus it has areas (Nye Beach, Bayfront, South Beach, etc.) that are all quite distinct. Although we’re undecided if we’d ever live here full time once the kids are both out of the house (the central Oregon coast gets twice the annual rainfall as the valley, for one thing, and the valley is plenty rainy as it is), it’s hard for me to imagine living somewhere more than a couple hours away from the ocean. I have a big city, the ocean, and the mountains all within an hour drive. What more could I want?
I’m a little late posting this, but I have good reason. I decided to see if I could really bear down on the next Garrison Gage book and get it done by the end of the year. I’m nearly there. While I don’t think it will be published before January, mostly because it needs to go to my editor, I do think I’ll have the manuscript finished except for copy editing. So for my Garrison Gage fans, it won’t be too much longer.
I just recently passed two years as a full time writer and my productivity is up quite a bit from last year, especially the second half of the year when I got away from the daily word count quotas that served me so well as a part-time writer, or at least a fixed daily word counts. The daily quota was critical when I had to fit the writing in with the day job, but now there are times when the writing is going well, and I just keep going, and other days where it comes slower, but it’s more about just putting in the time. I still write pretty much every day, but now I’m varying the word count goal depending on where I am in the project. It’s been working well. I’ve added a few other tweaks to my methods, mostly pertaining to project selection and a publishing schedule, which also seem to be helping. We’ll see. Staying off the Internet until 5 p.m. (which includes social media and email) also really helps, not just for my productivity but for my sanity.
None of this is writing advice, mind you. Just a glimpse into my own processes, for whatever it’s worth.
When I do give advice these days, which is rarely, it’s pretty straightforward and echoes the same principles I’m trying to adhere to pretty closely myself: 1) Be prolific. 2) Read voraciously. 3) Have fun. Whether you get an MFA, attend writing conferences or workshops, read how-to write books, go the traditional “seek an agent, then a big New York publisher” or the “indie” route, is really immaterial, I think. I have my own opinions on all of those things, of course, but that’s all they are, opinions, and my opinions are only as relevant as your goals are similar to my own. There is no one right way to become a writer any more than there is one right way to be a writer. Anyone who tells you differently is, to paraphrase The Princess Bride, probably selling something. My own multi-pass method is usually (but not always) somewhere between Nora Roberts’ method and Stephen King’s, at least the way they’ve described them, but that’s not really relevant either.
What is relevant is this: Every writer has to find his or her own path, and the only way I know to find that path is through lots writing and lots of reading. I’d actually say most writers would probably be better off skipping all the classes, how-to-write books, and workshops, or at least after a year or two of that sort of thing, and just focus on lots of writing and lots of reading. Again, this is just my opinion, and I’m a lot less assured in my advice to others and dogmatic in my delivery of that advice than I was in my thirties. Even less so than in my twenties. People who are dogmatic about their advice are usually also pretty rigid in their thinking, I think, and rigid people are people who do not adapt or even learn easily. I can only say that after 30 years of trying to write professionally, twenty of it pretty seriously with at least some success, and two years full time, this is the advice I’m currently trying to follow myself. Take it for what it’s worth . . . which is probably not much. Because, again, every writer has to find his or her own path.
It’s the path I’m doubling down on in 2022, anyway, which is the other reason I mention it. Lots writing and lots reading going forward. Back before too long, but if it’s not until January . . . Happy Holidays!