How to Write
Here's an energizing pep talk on how to write, including the ingredients you need to get started and keep going.
Want some one-on-one feedback on your story idea? Book a consulting appointment with one of our editors today.
Video Transcript: How to Write
Hi. My name is Mary Kole with Good Story Company. And I'm here today to talk about an idea phase, discussion of how to write. And this may seem like a really strange topic to be covering, but everybody starts somewhere. And so, I often get more granular questions about the writing process but how to write is also a really good question and one that I'm not sure I've seen addressed in such broad terms.
So I've been working with writers for over 10 years now. And I would say that we can't expect perfection right away from our writing, but a lot of people do. Instead, my favorite Terry Pratchett quote is the first draft is the writer telling themselves the story, which I completely believe in. And so, I like to encourage people to tell the story to themselves, no matter how that happens, no matter what that looks like, if it's NaNoWriMo, getting a manuscript out there because you don't actually know what you're working with until you get it down.
And so, one of the things that I really want to float is that no matter how it happens, the first draft does not have to be held to such high standards. Just get it on the page. Just sit your butt down, do that butt in chair time, and get writing. It doesn't have to necessarily have a shape yet. You don't necessarily have to have everything figured out.
How to write is a combination of diligence, of forming a habit, committing to that time to getting your writing out into, sort of, out of your head and onto the page, imagination, and a little bit of bravery, a little bit of courage. I think that so many people... I think "The New York Times" once did a survey and about 80% to 90% of people say they have a book inside of them, but many fewer people have actually created a manuscript. And even fewer people than that have done something with the manuscript, meaning revised it, taken it to the next steps of completion. And so, it is such an undertaking to even scale that first wall of going from idea to having a manuscript that a lot of people get intimidated.
The thing with writing, just sitting there, just writing, the trick is to not be in your head, as difficult as that may seem. Do not let you get in the way of creating your writing. Do not let your ideas of what's good, what's bad, do not let your ideas of what you want to do get in the way of just putting it on the page. I think that's really the first step. You can comb through everything, see what you actually have, and think about revising it, and fine-tuning it, think about submission. All of that comes later.
I want to take some of that burden of how to write off. You don't have to write like Hemingway as a first step. The first step is simply to put the words down on the page. It doesn't matter the order of the words. I mean, hopefully, you're conveying some kind of basic meaning. But the beauty of the sentence level, all of these finer points of writing, later. For now, how to write, you sit there and you ideally commit 10 minutes, 15 minutes, every other day, once a week, your weekend time from, you know, kind of like early morning time or late at night time, anything that you can spare to making this a practice and getting into the habit of writing. This is how the wheels start turning. And it's obviously easier said than done.
We writers are in our heads all the time. We are stopping ourselves. We're getting in the way of ourselves and our progress, but these are the small actions that give you a novel, give you a picture book manuscript, give you a nonfiction article in X amount of time.
But nothing begins until you begin. So that is my advice on how to write in the most basic sense of the word.
My name is Mary Kole, and here's to a good story.
You have a story in your head—if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here. So how do you turn it from an idea into a polished, professional, un-put-down-able work that people will love to read? That’s what good editors do, and that’s what we’re here for.
