Writers Round Table

On Monday I attended my first meeting of a writers’ group. The meeting was smaller in size making it quite quaint. Being the newbie, I wasn’t sure what to bring (I only had my phone) and what to expect. Everyone was friendly, welcoming, and accommodating.

Each brought whatever essay or manuscript they were working on, and read them aloud to elicit feedback. How does it flow? Choices in grammar? Does something need to be explained more? These were the common suggestions from those around the table. One thing I noted was the focus on individual words or phrases in the overall body of their works, and how that affected the readers’ experience and the pathway through their choices in prose. The specificity of the narrative. While the feedback — any feedback — is always welcome, I thought it noteworthy considering that I have no formal training. I’ve never taken a creative writing class for example. I suppose I write in a stream of conscious thought. This focus on the quantity descriptions, in addition to the quality, is something that, I confess, I naively did not expect. I’m a rookie in this regard.

Many years ago, I would guess as far back as high school, I learned that the first thing one must do when confronted with a blank sheet of paper is to start writing — anything. Get any words down upon the page and plug one’s way through it. To get the gist of a concept down and go back and adjust it all later, and that self-discovery of what would become my own writing process has served me well every since. One cannot edit a blank page, and so it is important to fill it — even if it seems haphazard with frightening grammar. This blog post started that way in my desire to relate this experience of my first ever writers’ club meeting. This process has worked for me over the years in everything from term papers in high school, college, and graduate school. Original research studies, and the endless diatribe of professional emails at work. Get something down and go from there. (Although I confess each time I do start writing I hope it’ll be nearly perfect and require little editing. Then it is with humble humility when I do go back to edit and discover a pantheon of mistakes!) It is not that I didn’t elicit feedback once that initial draft was completed. Grammar snafus and misspellings will happen — as well as stray and sketchy punctuation. Writing is a supremely individualized metamorphism procedure where conceptualized thoughts are committed to paper to relate to another human. Whether it be a technical manual or a fictional thriller, both instances go through the transformation from the author’s brain to page. When I was writing my first manuscript, Into The Shadows, I used this same formula of getting it committed in written form. Now I find myself in the editing and feedback process of that manuscript, and it was the initial chapter that I read aloud to the group curious of what their response would be. (I was pleased that it was well received.) The key component, I believe, is that I have a completed work of roughly 103,000+ words. If I had stopped to agonize over each word I’d still be working on it, and that’s the key.

It’s not that I’m not interested in other individuals’ writing processes. I believe in collaboration and learning best practices to see what can be applied with your personal workflow. It’s why I joined the writing group after all. While investigating what other authors have done several months ago, I came across an article by James Bond creator, Ian Fleming, which resonated with me and reaffirmed my own personal style that I had already been using for years, and didn’t know it. In fact, it was reassuring to read that a famous author applied the same methodology — at least I was on the right track. I think the most important aspect of writing when sitting down starting page one is to finish. Whether it be an essay, email or a 103,000+ word manuscript. I will link to the full article from LitHub below, but here is a snippet of Fleming’s advice:

“So far as the physical act of writing is concerned, the method I have devised is this. I do it all on the typewriter, using six fingers. The act of typing is far less exhausting than the act of writing, and you end up with a more or less clean manuscript. The next essential is to keep strictly to a routine—and I mean strictly. I write for about three hours in the morning—from about 9:30 till 12:30—and I do another hour’s work between 6 and 7 in the evening. At the end of this I reward myself by numbering the pages and putting them away in a spring-back folder. The whole of this four hours of daily work is devoted to writing narrative.

I never correct anything and I never go back to what I have written, except to the foot of the last page to see where I have got to. If you once look back, you are lost. How could you have written this drivel? How could you have used “terrible” six times on one page? And so forth. If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain.

By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day and you aren’t disgusted with them until the book is finished, which will be, and is, in my case, in about six weeks.

I don’t even pause from writing to choose the right word or to verify spelling or a fact. All this can be done when your book is finished.”

—Ian Fleming, “How to write a thiller.” 1963.

Of course, Fleming hadn’t the option of convenience of using a word processor to hammer out stories of the world’s most famous spy. He was confined to physical paper, numbering the pages, and a typewriter, but it is the process which is important. I couldn’t work on my manuscript every day — I have a day job after all, and with it the confining aspects of handling the domestic aspects of adult life in paying the bills, but when I did, each of my sessions of three or four hours roughly would turn out 2,200 to 2,500 words. As it was, the whole manuscript of committing to the writing task took me roughly ten weeks to Fleming’s six, but one has to remember it isn’t a speed competition. It’s the quality that matters. Now I sit with a completed manuscript wondering what to do with it after I finish my editing process. I’m encouraged by others to pursue publication, but this is an entirely new world that I have no experience. Which is why I’ve joined the writers’ group to see what others have done. To collaborate, learn from others, and to strengthen not only the manuscript I’ve created, but my writing skill as a whole. I am hopeful as I learn what others do, I’ll gain that much more experience in the literary world.