Planning on writing a book about true events - any help appreciated.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda

[...]The exercise under discussion will do nothing to further the first basic skill. But it is extremely valuable as a means of developing the other three. Particularly the last one. Fledgeling writers, in my experience, tend to be delicate and tentative. Before tackling grammar, before diving into an analysis of story structure or market trends, it can be incredibly valuable to simply experience the act of creation: to discover the techniques that keep the words flowing onto the page, to convince oneself that yes, this can really be done, and it is worth doing.

Will the product of such an exercise be immediately salable? Probably not. But it is far, far more than merely a therapeutic exercise.

Very much this!

When it comes right down to it, for a lot of people the hardest part of writing is the thing that seems the simplest: actually sitting down and writing. If you get all clogged up worrying about grammar and spelling you may never start, you may never find that experience that takes over when it starts to work. You may never find out if you like it, whether it is therapeutic for you. And you may never find out whether you can tell an effective story - and that's what counts. Much of what remains is technical detail that can be dealt with later.

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I respectfully disagree.

Writing is therapeutic - every act of writing is, in my opinion - and with it one discovers new linkages to that which makes us human.

One can break writing down into any number of elements one cares to make - your scenario seems workable enough - but another scenario might be just as effective.

Fledgling writers may certainly be delicate and hesitant, but it's not a rule or a given. Look at Ann Rice (although certainly not a fledgling writer!) and her cult of personality - she's as narcissistic as they come.

It's not an either-or situation. For those that try their hand at writing, and like it, it can be therapeutic and so they keep doing it. But the point is that we learn best by actually doing. Like most other things we do in life, the more time we spend doing it the better we get at it. So it's more than therapy, it's educational in a great many ways, and essential if we ever hope to get proficient at it.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Jack Torrance

As much as some people will call a misspelled word, a missing comma or an occasional fragmented sentence the end of the world, they are not.

I have yet to read a book without errors, and I am hardly OCD on the subject. I'm not talking about random indie writers but national bestsellers.

Personally, when I'm reading a book, involved in the story and characters then an error is very, very easy to overlook. Write the story, get it down on paper and clean it up afterwards. Get someone else to look at when your done, as it's almost impossible to catch your own errors.

Something I recall reading a few years ago was that if a car came of the assembly line being 99.99% perfect there would still be 10 things wrong with it. So just write your story, if its good, it will be good typos and all.

I think you mistake my point. I have zero issues with anyone just sitting down and getting "it all out there." I have fewer issues with the occasional typo, grammar mistake, etc. Your point:

Personally, when I'm reading a book, involved in the story and characters then an error is very, very easy to overlook.

...is actually my point. If one is involved in the story, fictive or otherwise, those things blow past our inner editor and outer eyeballs, and we don't care. But that that means is that the author had the good sense to either be a fine storyteller, or at least get out of the way, through the craftsmanship of telling the story well enough so as to make us not see those things. And to do that, impedimenta must be dealt with. That includes the vast bulk of typos, horrible homonym howlers, painful sentence structure, so on and so forth.

I, for one, can't bring myself to buy a book with a dreadful description (nowadays, constantly, annoyingly and frustratingly misnamed a "blurb") or "wince-y" mistakes in the first page of the LITB. I can't do it. It's like this: with so many books to choose from, why deliberately choose one that will inflict pain? If an author cares so little for my opinion that they'll put up dreck in the first 1300 words, then I can't be bothered--EITHER. I expect the author to at LEAST put as much effort into cleaning up the damned thing as I will put into reading it. It's a matter of respect for your PAYING audience.

If the writer doesn't want to do that work, fine, put it up on Scribd or Wattpad or SW for free. Then I shan't care. But as in all other things, when it comes to "you pays your money, you takes your chances," I'm only willing to take chances, on PAID-FOR writing, that at least looks like someone gave a crap.

The following contains my RANT about Indy publishers who think that their education should be funded by my pennies; feel cheerfully free to ignore:

Spoiler:

Here's the thing: I have zero patience for the "but I'm just learning..." whine/argument. Sure. I get that. But can any of you imagine what would happen if I gave an utterly unusable, crappy, mis-built eBook to my clients, and said, "oh, gosh, Janie Doe was just learning to make eBooks, give us a chance, she'll be better on your NEXT paying job?" Right. Like THAT would ever happen. Not if I wanted to stay in business for more than two weeks.

You need to learn? GREAT. That's what critique groups and writing groups and writing courses are for. That's not what MY nickel is for. That's the vast difference between buying books today, post-gatekeepers, and "before," when gatekeepers still ruled access. A blatant and blithe and instant-gratification disregard for the much-vaunted 10,000 hours. And I'm not appreciative of the blithe disregard for my pocketbook, either.

Writers writing for pay have to get over the whole "but I'm an ARTISTE" thing. That's fine if you have an agent and a publisher. But once you cross that line, and you're all three, then it's simply a BUSINESS. And like the rest of we poor working slobs, you gotta deliver on what you've said you're selling.
</rant>

Hitch

[Jack Torrance]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I think you mistake my point. I have zero issues with anyone just sitting down and getting "it all out there."

And what he said up there^


Hitch

It seems I came off poorly and that's probably to be expected when reading and responding to forums on a cell phone.

I think you've made some great points here. My only exclusion would be critique groups. I've personally seen people get slammed by said groups by "Authors" whose claim to fame is a 15 page children s book with fewer total words than this paragraph.

In my own field I've had to fix the work of amateurs and that's ok' because as I've told them it's ok not be able to do everything, that's why the make professionals.

[cromag]

I've been in a "writers' group" for about a year, and it has been very valuable to me. It's an interesting group, since I'm the only one there primarily interested in writing fiction. Sometimes their "criticism" is a bit off base (but I told them at the start that I have an unrealistically resilient ego and I want to hear every comment and viewpoint), and sometimes they have a different vision of the story than I do -- but even in the most off-base critique I've been able to find something useful.

Overall, I recommend it.

[gmw]

@Hitch and @Jack - one of the places where people often cross wires on this subject is the distinction between what a writer needs to do to get better and writing, and what is acceptable in actually published work. A writer has to write in order to learn how to be a better writer - it seems obvious, but many seem to miss it. That doesn't mean that everything a writer writes should be published (this isn't even true of the "greats"), and it certainly doesn't mean that anything they write should be published without first being suitably polished.

The fact that so many skip or skimp on the polishing step is why people may think that advising a person to just get in and start writing can be a mistake. But you can't learn the technical details effectively if you're not actually writing. This isn't a chicken and egg thing. The writing must be happening before you can properly appreciate the technicalities.

Originally Posted by cromag

I[...] and sometimes they have a different vision of the story than I do [...]

This can be an interesting one to deal with. It is common for different readers to come away with different things from the same story. It's going to happen. So, sometimes, it is just a matter of acceptance - and can be very interesting to observe. BUT sometimes times it can indicate that you haven't done your job as an author, you haven't told the story you wanted to tell. In some situations the only way to tell the difference is to get more feedback from others.

I'd also add that the risk of getting feedback from fellow writers is that they are fellow writers. We want to tell the story as we see it, it's what we do, and it can sometimes be difficult constrain our feedback to the story the other person is actually telling.

[Hitch]

gmw:

I would agree, absolutely, that the writer's first job is, after all, to WRITE, and I would further agree that they can't get better at it if they don't do it.

This is, basically, the point I was trying to make earlier--there's a difference between being a writer and being a published author. One is doing one thing; the other another. That's all.

Hitch

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Hitch

[...]This is, basically, the point I was trying to make earlier--there's a difference between being a writer and being a published author. One is doing one thing; the other another. That's all.

Yep. But there might be something else too ...

We tend to look at the plethora of "published" work and become appalled at how such drivel made it to "publication" (the quotes have a reason that I hope will become clear, please don't think I'm waving my fingers in air and being overly emphatic ). But there are many things going on here in this big wide Internet world.

There is the thing that has always been with us, that most books look like drivel to someone, no matter how well written, edited and presented. Let's ignore that one.

There was a time when sharing a story you'd written meant printing (and before that typing or writing) it out and handing it around friends and family. That doesn't happen anymore. You might think people would just email one another, but lots of people have trouble with email attachments: "I can't open it, I don't have the right version of Word", or "I can't load it on my Kindle" ... or whatever. It's now sometimes easier to "publish" your work, just to be able to share it with a few friends - and perhaps the vain wish/thought that some strangers might find it and like it too.

And that's why I put quotes around "publish". I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect that Amazon and Smashwords are sometimes being used as just another social network site, a way that people share their work with their friends. So sometimes they are not trying to publish as such, they are just sharing. And as Clay Shirky said in his book Here Comes Everybody, (paraphrasing here, but it's close enough) "they aren't talking to you."

Of course there are those overly confident ones that Dr Drib spoke of, that think the masterpiece they just finished writing out last night is ready for the big time, but it's now so easy to use these publishing sites that I suspect my interpretation may have some merit (and at least paints a kinder picture of what we see appearing). I have no idea how this all pans out statistically.

[HarryT]

It really, REALLY bugs me that so many people are apparently ignorant of elementary grammar, such as knowing the difference between "its" and "it's". I was taught this in school when I was about 6 years old; why don't people know this simple rule any longer?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda

I disagree. Writing, at its core, can be broken down into a number of distinct elements. One of them is basic grammar. Another is a grasp of plot and story structure. A third centers around the idea of passion, and learning to put not just words, but emotion onto the page. And perhaps the most critical is a sort of tethered hubris: enough confidence to believe people will pay money for what you have to say, without becoming so overconfident that you reject all outside input.

The exercise under discussion will do nothing to further the first basic skill. But it is extremely valuable as a means of developing the other three. Particularly the last one. Fledgeling writers, in my experience, tend to be delicate and tentative. Before tackling grammar, before diving into an analysis of story structure or market trends, it can be incredibly valuable to simply experience the act of creation: to discover the techniques that keep the words flowing onto the page, to convince oneself that yes, this can really be done, and it is worth doing.

Will the product of such an exercise be immediately salable? Probably not. But it is far, far more than merely a therapeutic exercise.

Yep. Write the damn thing. The key, the core is to get the story down THEN fix it. If you spend all your time learning grammar, syntax, reading, studying before writing it's never gonna happen.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It really, REALLY bugs me that so many people are apparently ignorant of elementary grammar, such as knowing the difference between "its" and "it's". I was taught this in school when I was about 6 years old; why don't people know this simple rule any longer?

I'm with Harry on this one; of all the things, homonym errors irk me more than almost anything, and I'm not really sure as to the "why," but, bygod, they really do.

Hitch