Write, write and write. Also, read, read, read. You must enjoy reading and writing to even consider writing as a career. No one is forcing us to be writers.
Keep a journal and organize your life as soon as possible. Set up a filing system on your computer so that you can easily access everything you write and all your photos.
2. What is your writing routine? How do you discipline yourself?
I get out of bed, put the coffee on, open my laptop, then my Scrivener file, and start typing before my brain wakes up and says, "wouldn't you rather check your email, the weather, or the news?"
I make the coffee and return to the story. I'm already hooked and want to know what happens next.
It's like brushing teeth, I'm on autopilot and don't think about it, just do it. Before brushing teeth. It helps to write first thing in the morning and sometimes I even wake up at three with an idea, something new to add to the work in progress.
Having a habit helps heaps.
I get to play a minimum of one hour and after that, I do whatever I have to for the rest of the day: make breakfast, clean house, check email (I'm retired).
Often, I find I'm still writing four hours later and the coffee is sitting next to me on the table, cold.
Start with five minutes if that's all you can do but do it every day and slowly increase the time. Write what moves you. Find your writing corner and go there. Surround yourself with comfort items, coffee, whiskey, a teddy, a bouquet of flowers a favourite shawl. Soon you will gravitate there and it will become your sanctuary.
3. How do you keep track of your ideas?
I have a file folder on my laptop labelled, Ideas and that's where they all go. When I am out, my phone is with me and I dictate. I also have many notebooks and scraps of paper lying around. A paper towel or a napkin works as well. I give full respect to all the ideas even if they wake me at three in the morning. Not writing them down is like building a dam on a stream; it slows down the flow.
3. What's the best way to write a query?
I often begin my query with the first line or two of the actual article, or a question which the article answers. This method tells me whether the first sentence grabs the editor (or agent) enough to read more. The second paragraph gives more details about the story and the third paragraph says something about me and my experience as a writer.
4. What does your writing studio look like?
I live on my sailboat and so my writing space is on the port side settee in the main cabin. I lean on a pillow against a half bulkhead with the laptop on my lap supported by a large book. To my right is a table with a coffee cup and a bar of chocolate. A glass water bottle holds a bouquet of yellow wildflowers, I picked on a beach walk yesterday. On the other side of the bulkhead behind me, is the galley and that's where I throw the apple cores and stack the empty dishes until it's time to get up and put another pot on the stove to make tea. The freshly baked bread sits cooling on top of the stove and the scent of it makes me hungry. I just had ten litres of olive oil delivered from a local grower and as soon as the bread is cool, will be dipping it in the oil. Rain falls on the deck overhead and it's already dark at two in the afternoon. The wind begins to howl. It's a good time to get back to my story.
5. How often do you write?
I write, read, research, edit, or critique every day. There is always one way or another to move my WIP (work in progress) forward. Sometimes it's by tinkering with my Scapple plotline, other times by sorting the chapters and creating a synopsis in my Scrivener project file. In between, I read authors I admire (Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje at the moment) to figure out how they create beautiful paragraphs. I also host a Writers' Group, (online at the moment), and update my two blogs, so that keeps me going every week. I have a deadline every Sunday at midnight by which time I must submit 3,000 words to my Scribophile group ready for a week of critiquing. And if I get stuck, there is always the Scribophile Forum to check.
6. What are the biggest mistakes that you made as a new writer?
- I wish I had committed to writing with a view to publishing much, much sooner, instead of vomiting onto the pages of my journal.
- I wish I developed a regular habit of writing even for five minutes a day, regardless of how I felt.
- I wish I looked for jobs in publishing instead of whatever was in the want ads at the moment.
- I wish I studied creative writing in university instead of computer science which was supposed to lead me to a better job. It did and I hated it.
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