Author Advice

Recently, I’ve been working on how to be more productive with my writing. This is something I’ve been fascinated about ever since I became involved with authors who publish a vast amount of information a year, and I wished to learn the secret to such an outlook on writing. To my surprise, most of the titans of the industry follow a simple pattern diligently, and it works quite well for them.

The first piece of advice I was given was simple: have a benchmark for everyday writing. Jack London took to writing a thousand words every day for most of his life. Ernest Hemmingway would only write five hundred words a day but was quite meticulous with the choice of words in his writing. He would take as much as four hours to write roughly one and a half pages! Then again, his editors were amazed about just how little they would have to comb through and fix for him. Stephen King writes two-thousand words a day, every day. As the law of compounding interest would have it, King’s pattern would produce a one hundred and twenty-thousand-word manuscript in as little as two months. What I learned from these great authors was a simple idea that would aid me in completing my previous three books in the amount of time that I have: set a time, make it a habit, reach your benchmark every day.

The second lesson I learned was to have a set time and place to write. By doing so, eliminating all the distractions around you and dedicating a specific time frame every day to writing, one would be shocked to see the pages fly by and just how fast one can complete their writing.  By establishing a sacred area to conduct your writing scheme, you will surely give out more than the sporadic manner most indie authors distribute.

The final lesson I learned is from F. Scott Fitzgerald, one that I believe is the true deciding factor to whether or not a book will be completed or not: write to finish a book, not to gain perfection. For most, the most difficult thing to do when it comes to being an author is the process of writing the book, the short-story, the essay, the poem from beginning to the end. Once you have the rough draft in your hands, you will have the opportunity to edit and proofread later. Some even have experts perform the polishing work for them to aid in their production rate. That is what I do.

In the end, if one combines these simple methods, I have no doubts that they will have a work of their own creation read by someone in the world.