How to be a writer in 100 days or less by John Coyne How many times have you finished reading a novel

and said, I could have written that book. You know what? Youre right. All of us, I believe, carry at least one novel around in our heads or our hearts. Novelist Toni Morrison put it this way: If theres a book you really want to read but it hasnt been written yet, then you must write it. Writing a book is no easy task. Nevertheless, every day another book is published. In 1996, according to Books in Print, 1.3 million book titles were in print. The number of books published in 1996 alone was 140,000 in the United States. So, why not you? What you need I believe that if you can write a simple English sentence (after all, thats what Ernest Hemingway wrote), are alert to the world around you, and want to write a salable novel really want to, not just kind of want to then you can do it. I dont think anybody ever became a writer by going to a workshop, reading a book, or even reading this article. Writing comes from something internal in a writer. However, this article will save you time, point you in the right direction, and help you write a novel in 100 days or less. Possible? It works. Ive done it myself several times. I know what it means to squeeze in an hour or two a day (or night) of writing. It is not easy to write a novel, not when you have a full time job, family, and responsibilities, but it can be done. Most writers, in fact, have had to carry on two lives while they wrote their novel. But once you sell your first book, than maybe youll be in the position to quit your day job and devote the rest of your life to writing full time. Great writers have done it Yes, you have a job. Yes, you have a family. Neither have stopped great writers in the past. The poet Wallace Stevens was a vice president of an insurance company and an expert on the bond market. The young T.S. Eliot was a banker. William Carlos Williams was a pediatrician. Robert Frost was a poultry farmer. Hart Crane packed candy in his fathers warehouse, and later wrote advertising copy. Stephen Crane was a war correspondent. Marianne Moore worked at the New York Public Library. James Dickey worked for an advertising agency. Archibald MacLeish was Director of the Office of Facts and Figures during World War II. Drawing from pure emotion What makes a writer? Perhaps it is a single incident one that happens early in life and shapes the writers sense of wonder and self-awareness. Take the case of Jos Saramago, the first Portuguese-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The son of a peasant father and an illiterate mother, brought up in a home with no books, he took almost 40 years to go from metalworker to civil servant to editor in a publishing house to newspaper editor. He was 60 before he earned recognition at home and abroad with Baltasar and Blimunda. As a child, he spent vacations with his grandparents in a village called Azinhaga. When his grandfather suffered a stroke and was to be taken to Lisbon for treatment, Saramago recalls, "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees, fig trees, olive trees. And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesnt mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago says, "you have no feeling." Begin with that pure emotion. Turn it into prose. Let us begin Sinclair Lewis was invited to talk to some students about the writers craft. He stood at the head of the class and asked, How many of you here are really serious about being writers? A sea of hands shot up. Lewis then asked, Well, why aren't you all home writing? And with that he walked out of the room. So now it is time for you to be writing. What follows is your daily log each day may have words of encouragement, advice, or wisdom or a task for you to do to get your book written. It is what you need to do each day for the next hundred days to write your novel. Day 1 The great New Yorker editor and writer, E.B. White, said when accepting the National Medal for Literature, A writers courage can easily fail him . . . I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all. On this your first day of writing your novel, make a promise to yourself that you are going to do it. This is critical. Without that commitment, you may as well save your pencils and paper. It isnt going to happen. Remember, write as often as you can. Thats what writers do they write.

Day 2 Carve out specific time to write. This is important because over the course of writing a novel, youll get discouraged, bored, angry, or otherwise fed up, and when you start feeling that way, youll need clearly defined patterns to keep yourself working. On occasion you may have to shift your writing times to deal with other demands in your life, but fight to keep them as regular as you can. What do I mean by specific times? Two hours each morning and each evening, and one eight-hour day every weekend, for example. Decide how much time you will spend writing each week, and then do it. Many would-be novelists defeat themselves because they set a schedule but then dont stick to it. Be realistic in the time you plan, and then live by it. Day 3 In the first week, decide upon the story you are going to write. You might not work out every detail, but today you are going to begin the process. You are not going to procrastinate procrastination is your enemy. Matisse advised his students, If you want to be a painter, cut out your tongue. The time has come to stop merely talking about writing your novel. Get started planning it now.

Day 4 What kind of novel appeals to you? What really gets your juices flowing? Is it a good murder mystery, science fiction, a thriller, romance, general fiction? Alice Munro is considered by many to be the best short-story writer in the English language. Her books sell about 30,000 copies a year. She is a writer other writers admire for her technical skills and the purity of her style. She is also known for the complex structure of her stories. A typical Alice Munro story might begin at a point that most writers would consider the end, then jump to a time ten years later, then back again. But what is most interesting about Alice Munro who lives in a small town in southern Canada is that her stories are about ordinary people: their secrets, their memories of acts of violence, their sexual longings. Think of what to write from what is around you, from what you know and care about. Day 5 It doesnt matter what kind of book you decide to write. There are no rules other than that the story has to be very, very interesting. It can be exciting, scary, fun, funny or sad but it must not bore the reader. Day 6 Analyze and learn. Take your favorite novel of the type that you want to write and read it again, as if it were a how-to manual for becoming a millionaire. Then read it again, breaking the book down into sections. Outline the action on large sheets of paper that you pin to your office wall. Day 7 Although there are no rules about story ideas, I would offer you one caution: think small. One of the worst mistakes most beginning novelists make is thinking big, trying to come up with an end-of-the-world story, in the belief that big is better. Thats not true. Keep your story idea small and focused. Look into your creative soul and search for a little story but one that has real meaning to you. We are all part of the human family. If you create a story that has deep meaning to you, chances are it will have deep meaning for the rest of us. Day 8 Imitation can lead to originality. Do short exercises imitating different styles. Try on a dozen voices until you find one that fits. Ape the sure hand of a master. But remember this: write from your own

experience. Your experience is unique. As John Braine, author of Room at the Top, wrote, If youre to be heard out of all those thousands of voices, if your name is going to mean something out of all those thousands of names, it will only be because youve presented your own experience truthfully. Day 9 Dont be afraid to write down scenes or sections that dont lead anywhere. Dont discard them if they arent leading anywhere. Follow the advice of Joan Didion. She pins them on a board with the idea of picking them up later. Quite early in her novel, A Book of Common Prayer, she says, she wrote about Charlotte Douglas going to the airport. It was a couple of pages of prose that she liked, but she couldnt find a place for it. I kept picking this part up and putting it in different places, she writes, but it kept stopping the narrative; it was wrong everywhere, but I was determined to use it. She finally found a spot for it in the middle of the book. Sometimes you can get away with things in the middle of the book. Day 10 Before we leave the problem of finding your story, let me debunk another clich about novel writing: Write only about something you know. Youre heard that before. Its nonsense. Tom Clancy had never been a submarine commander before he wrote The Hunt For Red October. And its a safe bet that Richard Bach had never been a seagull before he wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Instead of writing about something you know, you can write about something you love. It doesnt matter what it is, just love it. For example, Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha, had lived in Japan and was working for an English-language magazine in Tokyo when in 1982 he got the idea for Memoirs. In 1986, after earning a creative writing degree from Boston University, he began researching geishas and discovered a subculture with its own strange rules. It took him ten years and several drafts before he sold the book to Alfred A. Knopf for $250,000. Day 11 Begin by writing about what you know, if not the novel itself, then something about the place or people in your novel. Its a lot easier to get started on your book if you are writing about people, places, and things with which you have already grown familiar. Day 12 Pick your characters first, as they are harder to pick than a story. When writing, the plot may or may not change, but the characters will develop and have a life of their own. As your characters develop, theyll take on distinct personalities, and as with good friends, youll know in certain situations what they will or will not do. Mystery writer Oakley Hall says that a writer must listen to the demands of his characters, who, as they begin to come to life, may insist upon a different fate than the givens seem to require. Day 13 Get a bunch of 5 by 7 cards and put each characters name at the top. Next, think about the role each plays in your story, and what kind of person each is: age, education, place of birth, hot-headed, funny, fat, ugly. What are their quirks? Do they wash their hands 500 times a day? Do they hear voices? Are they kind to kids but love to torture cats? Put it down, put down so much that you finally come to know these characters intimately. Alfred Hitchcock would write down his scenes on index cards, one scene to a card. That way, as he said, by the time he was ready to shoot the film, he was already done. Some characters will be major ones, around whom the story will pivot; others will play bit parts, but these will be critical too, as every player must have a reason for being in the story. If they dont have a reason for being in your novel, theyll slow down the story, and slowness bores readers.

Day 14
Most novels are written to a formula, especially big best sellers. For example, John Baldwin, co-author of The Eleventh Plague: A Novel of Medical Terror, developed a simple formula that he used to structure his novel. His ten-step formula is:

The hero is an expert. The villain is an expert. You must watch all of the villainy over the shoulder of the villain. The hero has a team of experts in various fields behind him. Two or more on the team must fall in love. Two or more on the team must die. The villain must turn his attention from his initial goal to the team. The villain and the hero must live to do battle again in the sequel. All deaths must proceed from the individual to the group: i.e., never say that the bomb exploded and 15,000 people were killed. Start with Jamie and Suzy were walking in the park with their grandmother when the earth opened up. 10. If you get bogged down, just kill somebody. More about formula. When Ernest Hemminway started as a young reporter for the Kansas City Star, he was given a style sheet with four basic rules: Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, never negative Asked about these rules years later, he said, Those were the best rules I ever learned in the business of writing. Ive never forgotten them. No one with any talent, who feels and writes truly about the things he is trying to say, can fail to write well if he abides by them.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Day 15 Develop your characters and your plot together. You cant do one well without the other. Your characters are not wooden people who just dropped magically out of the sky. They are critical elements of the drama you are creating. They must do something logical or illogical (which is what plot is all about) that adds to your story, and moves it to its ultimate climax. Never, never separate characters from plot. Day 16 The reader has to believe that your characters exist or could exist and they need to be distinctively drawn. And nothing better defines characters than their actions, their purpose in life. Their purpose may be good or evil. It doesnt matter. All that matters is that the reader sees their actions and purpose, believes them, and is continuously interested in them. Do not write a story peopled with a cast of thousands. Write a tale about one, two or three memorable characters, all of them filled with purpose. Day 17 You need a strong protagonist. Most writers have a problem with creating a character who is larger than life, fully developed, and a consistent protagonist. Remember, your protagonist is your storys major character. This is the person with whom your reader will identify. You want your readers to care about your protagonist. He or she is your new best friend. Day 18 Figure out who you need in the story and what they do together or to one another, and the story does to them. Are they all pulling together in one direction? Are they pulling in six different directions? Ask yourself the critical question: Which would be most interesting to the reader? Thats the real litmus test of character development and plotting. Will the reader be interested? Will the reader care? To be successful in character and plot development, you need to make hard choices. You need to be ruthless with your characters and your story. Whos in, whos out? Whats in, whats out? Frankly, here is where a lot of first-time novelists stop dead. They cant bring themselves to choose. They become fascinated or paralyzed by the possibilities. Dont you dare do that. Be brutal. Try different choices, of course, but move the story forward event by event, bringing each character along with you. As each event unfolds, each character must react to it. Just as they would in real life. If a child is hit and killed by a car, the drivers life is changed forever, the parents lives, the lives of the brothers and sisters, friends, even the crossing guard and bystanders. You have to decide what the

changes are. You must decide. This is your chance to play God and if youre going to write you must play that role. God is in the details, and God decides the course of the novel. Day 19 Keep asking the question, why? As you reach the end of the second week of defining characters, you will have a stack of 5x7 character cards that spell out intimate details about the personal life of each and every character in your story, down to their waist measurement and favorite color. The novelist Vladimir Nabokov composed all of his novels on index cards. Day 20 Your voice is your voice. Your style is your style. Dont attempt to sound like some famous writer. Many beginning writers feel that they have to add something to their voice on the printed page. Who you are on the page is who you are in life, just as sophisticated, just as worldly, or not. It doesnt matter. Keep writing and keep cutting away at the awkwardness that might creep into your writing. Be a natural. As the French novelist, Francois Ren de Chateaubriand wrote, The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate. Day 21 Prepare a rough outline of the storys action from Chapter One through to the end. Novelist Katherine Anne Porter put it this way, If I didnt know the ending of a story, I wouldnt begin. Write down the last paragraph of your novel and put it in the drawer. At the end of a hundred days, lets see how close you came to following your imagination. Day 22 Do nothing absolutely nothing on your novel in terms of actual writing until your plotting (along with your characters and their roles in the drama) is complete and down on paper. Do not fall victim to that old author line: I just start out with a basic idea and a couple of characters. I never know where Im going. I let the characters tell the story for me. That may work for brilliant and experienced novelists, but most of us need a clear road map if we arent going to get ourselves and our readers hopelessly lost. Day 23 Hang the cards and outline you have developed around your office or room so that they can be easily read. Day 24 A well-written page-turner that is more character- than plot-driven and has a clear beginning, middle and end is what editors (and readers) want. Day 25 You now have made: 1. a commitment 2. a working schedule 3. a story idea 4. a cast of characters 5. a detailed plot of the entire story 6. a short description of what your novel is about.

Day 26

Set a goal for your self to write at least four pages a day. That is 300325 words, double-spaced. Some days youll write one page; others youll write 15 pages. Try to average at least four pages a day. Day 27 Your novel is a work of fiction, but that doesnt mean your facts dont need to be straight. Nothing turns a reader off quite as fast as a wrong fact. And nothing gives a story the ring of authenticity like the right fact or detail. Use the Internet for research. Its fast, easy, and inexpensive. Every library in the world is open to you. Look, too, at magazines and newspapers published at the same time and place as the setting of your novel. Gore Vidal used old editions of Harpers Magazine for details when writing his historical novels. Day 28 Conversation is not dialogue. Dialogue has a purpose. It pushes the story forward. It keeps the reader tuned in to the story, and makes a person feel at the heart of the action. Therefore, dont describe distant events second hand. Put the reader in the middle of your storys action and your dialogue will sing naturally. Keep your talk efficient and forceful. And always make certain the reader knows who is speaking. Day 29 Look into the mirror and write about the person you see. Try and describe the person you see in the mirror to a man or woman you have never met. Keep the description under 300 words. Make this person a character in your novel, either the protagonist, the narrator, or one of the minor characters of the plot. Day 30 Novelist Kurt Vonnegut once remarked that, Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of a writer. It is like making wallpaper by hand for the Sistine Chapel. Day 31 Commit yourself to a point of view early in your planning. This way the reader can get a footing in the story. Once you have decided which character will be the viewpoint character, stick with your decision. Do not shift point of view. If you decide on multiple points of view, show the story through one character at a time, in order to avoid confusing the reader. Day 32 Carry a note pad with you. If youre waiting for a meeting to begin, start writing. If youre on an airplane, start writing. Whenever theres a second to write, do it. Once you have written it down, you own it. Day 33 Suspense is a basic ingredient of fiction. Because of it, readers ask: What is going to happen next? They will keep reading to find out. Day 34 When using characters to present clues, dont forget body language. Nonverbal signals can communicate much more effectively than words. Ask any two lovers Day 35 Try writing first in longhand, then on a computer. This will give you two passes at the prose before you start editing. Day 36

Aim for one startling image on each page. For example, try and match this image of a sunrise at sea by Philip Caputo in The Voyage: A golden shimmer appeared where the horizon was supposed to be, then a red sun pushed up, like the head of some fiery infant bulging out of the gray seas womb water giving birth to its opposite element. Day 37 Dont overwrite just because technology lets you do it. The mechanics of the computer and the internet make everything easier, from research to writing to revising. Keep thinking small. We all think that movies and baseball games are too long. What about books? Publishers and editors will tell you: context determines length. Just remember that The Great Gatsby is only 200 pages long. Day 38 Without descriptions the reader doesnt have a sense of place and time and mood all critical for your story. But with too much, your story will bog down and get boring. Get in. Give the telling detail. Then get out. Dont drown in your descriptions (or your research). Create a world where your characters can live and breathe, but not vegetate. Day 39 Ideas, new and unique thats what surprises, satisfies and pleases readers. Stay away from the tried and true. Write with imagination. Day 40 Rick Bass, one of our finest stylists, says that fiction writers like masons require both power and precision to construct a good story. Youve got to lay the stones one on top of the other so they fit together, but youve got to have the strength to lug them around. Day 41 Shirley Jackson, as the mother of four children and wife of a college professor, rarely had time to write during the day. Yet when she sat down at her desk at night, a story like The Lottery flowed out in a perfect first draft. Why? Because she had been thinking about it all day. Count on your subconscious taking charge and working over ideas that come to you during the day. Day 42 Good characters grow and evolve out of basically two things: their actions and their beliefs. We develop a sense and understanding of people by what they do and think in the dramatic events of the story. Day 43 The Roman poet Horace observed around 14 B.C. that writers should attempt to say at once what ought at once to be said. In other words, grab your reader by the throat from your very first sentence. Day 44 Dont get discouraged. Keep writing. Remember the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Ironweed by William Kennedy was rejected by 13 publishers before Saul Bellow intervened on its behalf. In rejecting Laurence J. Peters The Peter Principle, an editor wrote that he could foresee no commercial possibilities in such a book.

Day 45

Anton Chekhovs remarkably simple advice was this: If a gun hangs on the wall in the first act of the play, it must be discharged before the end. You have to look at the total work with that piece of advice in mind and cut out anything that doesnt help the story complete itself. Day 46 It is emotionally costly to write well. Dancers, for example, know that they're going to have bloody feet. Pianists know that they'll have to practice until the pain in their fingers makes them cry. Writing a novel is not like writing a letter. Writing a novel is mentally exhausting, far harder than a nine-to-five job. When you write a novel, you live the lives of your characters. Day 47 In 1979, at the age of 80, Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux began to write the story of her life. She wrote innocent tales of her past, tales of her grandmother and of a distant Aunt Clara who chewed tobacco and could spit in a cats eye. Every morning she went into the kitchen of her white two-bedroom house in Manhattan, Kansas, where she had raised eight children. She sat down at the table and, aided by scrapbooks, letters and photographs, she wrote. Day after day, week after week, she wrote in longhand the story of her life, noting down the watershed events: births, deaths, one marriage, three wars, one flood, as well as the things that just struck her fancy, like the first time she saw Lawrence Welk. Having told the events of her life, she began then to write about the world that she never spoke of. Her feelings and thoughts. Jessie Lee wrote all of this for a teacher, Charley Kempthorne, at his Harvest of Age, a program for senior citizens. Her writings were published by the local college and entitled The Life of Jessie Lee Brown From Birth Up to 80 Years. About 30 copies were printed for her family and friends. That was 20 years ago. Family, friends, and strangers are still reading her 208-page book now entitled Any Given Day: The Life and Times of Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux: A Memoir of Twentieth Century America [Warner Books, 1997]. Since writing her first memoir, Jessie Lee has written two more books. The latest, Grannys Ramblings of This and That Two, was published in 1993. That year she wrote to the teacher who encouraged her to tell her story, Thank you so much for not giving up on me, she wrote. I am not a writer, but my poor efforts have made a great difference in my life. If Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux isnt a writer, who is? Everyones life is a book. Jessie Lee told her story. And Warner bought her story for one million dollars. Day 48 Persistence is what is required. Novelist Harlan Ellison once said that if anybody can stop you from being a writer, then dont be one. Day 49 The gifted writer Jo-Ann Mapson, who has published a half dozen novels, believes that writers should have a physical hobby. Something that takes you away from books and criticism, because it teaches you, it informs you, and it changes your writing. Day 50 The novelist and poet James Dickey, talking to students near the end of his life, said, I dont mean to sell the poet so long or at such great length, but I do this principally because the world doesnt esteem the poet very much. They dont understand where we are coming from. They dont understand the use for us. They dont understand if there is any use. We are the masters of the superior secret, not they. Not they. Remember that when you write.