There Is No Woo-Woo in Writing

By John Gilstrap

John Miller's excellent post last Saturday got me to thinking about the process of writing; specifically, how little of it I truly understand. Like John, I've seen some reasonable success over the years, but I'll be damned if I understand anything about the process.

Case in point: My next book, Damage Control (June, 2012) was written under impossible circumstances, under a ridiculous deadline that had me writing madly for two solid months. I actually submitted it to my publisher without going through half of the quality control steps that I normally do. I was so worried about it that I sent the manuscript to beta readers for the first time in my career. The resounding chorus from those readers was that this is the best book I'd ever written.

Having just finished with the copy edits, I confess that I'm a hell of a lot happier with it than I thought I would be when I was writing it. I broke every rule I had ever set for myself. I wandered from my outline (actually, it was the outline that got me into trouble in the first place), I didn't listen to the music that I normally do (that was a luxury that I couldn't afford), and I didn't obsessively proof read as I went along. Yet somehow, I was able to churn out over three hundred pages of material in just a little over two months.

I don't get it. I don't get any of this stuff.

We talk a lot here in the Killzone about the woo-woo of writing, that romantic crap about muses and attitude and characters talking to us and taking over the story. In my experience, all of that is bullshit. Writing is about tying your butt in a chair and letting fly with the story that's screaming to come out. Motivation doesn't matter, and neither does background music. If you're a professional, you produce solid work to the deadlines that are assigned. The rest doesn't matter.

I teach a few writing courses every year to reasonable acclaim, but I start every one of those courses with a PowerPoint slide that reads, "No one can teach you to write." I put that up so as not to be a fraud. One learns the principles of writing the same way one learns the principles of reading or golf: You practice. As you read material that you love, you become a better reader, and if you're wired to be a writer, you instinctively try to decode what the writer did to get into your head.

Can a pro help? Absolutely. Where there's basic skill and a desire to learn, a teacher can help you hone. A teacher can coax you from the 80th percentile that you earned on your own, and maybe bring you to the 90th percentile. But from there, you're on your own again. The last ten percent is about storytelling skill and voice and pacing and all that stuff that I believe you either get by birth or through osmosis or you don't ever get it at all.

A frequent contributor here at TKZ attended one of my classes, and I could tell from the material that she submitted for review that she had talent, but that she was getting in her own way with details that no one cared about. I believe I helped her a lot by showing that the terrorists in the mall were way more interesting than the outfit the protagonist was wearing. I think I saw a lightbulb come on in her, and that was one of the magic moments of writing workshops. In that case, though, I still didn't teach her to write. Instead, I showed her a way to improve her talent and craft.

I think that every successful writer has a handful of those moments in their past, those lightbulb conversations where someone encapsulates in a few words what you've been wrestling with on your own but have been unable to nail down. A dear friend named Brie Combs did that for me. She was the one who told me how my writing voice was so close, but that I loved the passive tense too much. Bingo. I got it. Nathan's Run followed about six months later.

There's a famous screenwriting teacher who blathers in his classes about how the secret to a successful screenplay is to have the first turning point occur before page X, and for the turning point for the second act to happen by page Y. With all respect, I think this is madness. But students eat it up with spoons the size of shovels.

Do you really think that Ernest Hemingway or John Grisham or Tom Clancy or Stephen King or Danielle Steel or god knows how many other wildly successful writers gave a rat's patootie about someone else's formula? I suspect that they started out to tell good stories well, and in the process created formulas for others to follow.

So here I am, on the brink of another book. It's under contract and it's therefore going to happen. I think I know where it's going, but I'll never know for sure until I'm on the other side of it.

At the end of the day, here are my words of advice for those of you in Killzoneland whose woo-woos keep evading you: Quit waiting for the muses or your characters to lead you. They're all imaginary, and they reside exclusively in your head. They're lazy and they're recalcitrant, and they won't do a damn thing to help you if you don't grab them by the nose and tell them what to do.

As for motivation, think like a professional: Show up for work and make it happen.