In this bonus mini-episode, Rachael talk about when to have multiple POVs, and also tackles the question, What if I can’t cram everything I want to into this book?
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Rachael Herron: Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing. [00:00:18] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #252 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. This is a bonus real quick mini episode. I am still in the bathroom in Auckland, New Zealand in our managed isolation still on day 10 of 14. This is coming. I’m recording this right after I recorded the last podcast. So I’m still in the same place. Still with the same lipstick on that could use a refresh if you’re watching on YouTube. So let’s get into a couple of questions from people who pledged to Patreon at the $5 a month level. I am your mini coach. You can ask me any damn thing you want. I will probably respond to anything you ask, unless it is absolutely outside, how do they say that outside the pail, but otherwise I’m going to answer it and I’m going to answer it on the air. So let’s go. [00:01:10] This one comes from Lamar Dixon, hello Lamar. Okay. So Lamar says, so my question is I have this story I want to do. But it’s been so long since I had to actually write for school or college. And I feel as if my skills have diminished and I’m not competent. And as for my story, I don’t know if I should write or make a comic out of it. I can’t draw, but I can do the writing part. But for the book aspect of it, I feel like I can’t cram everything into it, but I don’t know. Thank you for your help. Okay. So Lamar, I love this question because it is really broad and a lot of people are going to be feeling exactly like you are. And there is a simple, simple answer. You just have to start writing. If you are the kind of person who is listening, who needs a plan of action before they write, that’s absolutely fine, but give yourself a time limit and don’t let yourself have more than a week of maybe an hour and a Monday and an hour on a Friday. There you go. There’s your week. You’ve thought about it, you planned, now start writing, or you could use the whole week. You could use every day to do a little bit of plotting and planning, but don’t give yourself more than a week for me. I don’t give myself more than two days to do that because I will get into a loop in my head and most writers do. We start spiraling. We start wondering every single thing we think of is a great idea until we think about it a little bit harder and write about it a little bit more, you know, for journaling about it. And we realize, no, that’s a terrible idea. And here’s why I need to start all over. And I thought it was, this was great, but, it’s the worst thing that’s ever been thought of. And we can do that for days, weeks, months, years as we try to come up with the absolute best plan of action. [00:02:55] So give yourself a time limit. One week is good. And then after that, you just start writing and you are not ready, but here’s the thing: you never will be ready. We will never be ready to write the books we want to write or to write the essays or to write the memoir, whatever it is that you were writing or to write the graphic novel, we’re never going to be ready. We just have to write a terrible first draft. And I mean, Terrible first draft. I think it is at rachelheron.com/SFD, which stands for a Shitty First Draft. If you want to look at an example of a page of mine, that is a first draft. It is terrible. I’m missing whole words and ideas. I’m talking to myself on the page. That’s all that first draft is, is it’s us thinking about what we might wanna do, putting it on the page, realizing it’s awful, getting confused, and being kind to ourselves anyway, continuing to move forward into continuing to put more direct onto the page. That’s our job as a writer. So the worry that you have, that you have too much stuff to put into one book, you might be right. Another really common worry is that, I don’t have enough to put into a book and you might be right about that too, but you will never know until you write the book and when you write the book and it has too much stuff, guess what? Then you get to choose what to take out. And if you write the book and it’s not long enough, and it doesn’t have enough substance, then you get to figure out what to add, but you cannot decide those things before you write the book and it tells you what it wants to be. [00:04:34] Because no matter what, no matter how smart we think we are about our books, they have different plans and they would like to tell you about them. And the only way they are going to be able to do that is if you let them, if you put down some terrible sentences, let them be terrible and learn from them. And come back to them later and fix them and change them and move them and delete them and add to them. But the terrible writing has to be done first. So thank you for asking the question that I love to answer over and over and over and over again. I don’t think we can talk about it enough that we have to lower our expectations for our own writing and right down to the floor and then dig a basement. We have to be comfortable with the bad writing. The good writing will come later. I promise, but the bad writing has to come first. Even if you’ve written 30 books still has to happen in that order. So thank you for that. Next question is from, here it is from Michelle. She says I, is there a sort of pro versus con to having two points of view in a story? I’m trying to write two points of view, but sometimes I get annoyed at books with more than one point of view because I like a certain character best. [Read more…] about Ep 252: What If I Can’t Fit Everything Into My Book?
