I had a couple of beta readers for my first book “The Last Families” and I regret that I didn’t get more. Not necessarily because the book needed a lot of feedback, but because they’re extremely valuable. And when you’re about to launch a book- especially if it’s self-published- you need a team of supporters behind you. Beta readers will be familiar with your book and will be often willing to help you by leaving reviews and spreading your book’s launch on their social media.
But like me, I was afraid to have people reading my book- afraid of the feedback, afraid of having someone tell me “your work sucks” or something like that. This time though, I’m open to as much beta readers as possible, as I explain in this post for my newest manuscript. I’ve already received some feedback on the “When the World Disappears”, and it’s been extremely valuable. Thanks to it, I managed to correct and make significant improvements to the manuscript, the characters, and the story.
During this process, I participated of a beta reading swap as well: you read mine and I read yours. In one particular case with a specific writer, I noticed how writers can sometimes be apprehensive to feedback. In this blog post, I’ll share with you what I observed and I’ll discuss what we must not do as writers when receiving feedback.
Beta reading feedback must be listened and considered. Do you have to change everything you’re told by the beta reader? No. But you should listen their feedback carefully and analyze it.
In this particular situation, I had a beta reading swap that turned out one of the most uncomfortable situations ever. We had to finish/cancel the deal even when she hadn’t even started reading my manuscript (I had read almost a third of hers.)
AI generated image
The feedback was given through a shared Google Doc, which meant that the writer and I could see the comments in real-time. From the moment I left my first comment in one paragraph, I got a counter-comment commenting on my feedback. It wasn’t that bad at the start, but then it got to a point where I could see the writer was unwilling to consider any of my suggestions. Though I don’t remember the specifics since that happened a few months ago, I’ve come up with some examples that are representative of that exchange:
Comment from Carla:
This is not clear. I suggest adding more details of why this character is reacting this way.
Reply from the writer:
Why is not clear? What details?
Comment from Carla:
It’s not clear why character is reacting this way. She’s a grown up person and her intents are not clear.
Reply from writer:
I don’t understand. Be more specific.
Another example
Comment from Carla:
The description is too vague. I would suggest adding more information about this location so readers can immerse themselves.
Reply from writer:
What is vague? What do you mean adding information so readers can inmerse themselves?
Last example
Comment from Carla:
Why does this character say that? It doesn’t sound like her.
Reply from writer:
It’s what she would say in this situation. Why wouldn’t it sound like her?
I have to say that I learned giving feedback from others who gave me feedback before. My first beta readers would usually approach their feedback in two ways:
The more detailed ones would highlight paragraphs and give me comments and observations.
Other general beta readers would send me a document outlining their general thoughts and their observations of what was not working.
As a beta reader myself, I decided to use the first approach, giving comments in a shared document. Until this specific writer, I had no issues. When I received feedback with inline comments on a shared document, I would assess them carefully. I didn’t agree with some of them, but if a comment pointed out that the reason of character X wasnt’t clear or that I needed to provide more context for situation B, I would go back to my text, analyze the issue, and try to improve where it was possible. If a comment told me that a piece of dialogue felt off, I would take into consideration and make adjustments where I could. There were a few times where I felt the dialogue couldn’t be changed, but I chose not to tell that to the person providing the feedback.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t reply back to the beta reader and refute their observations, but if someone is giving you advice, LISTEN to it. The beta reader has left that comment to help you improve and not to debate it until someone wins.
This is how I see beta reading- what’s your take on it?
I’m proud to announce that my manuscript for my latest fiction novel is ready. Now, I’m beginning the publishing process. First, I’m pitching it to literary agents, and if I get no results in around four months, I will reconsider self-publishing.
Since, I’m not near the publishing date, I’m very open to beta readers in general. From my first publishing experience, I’ve learned that the more beta readers you get the better. So for anyone interested, the title is “When the World Disappears”. It’s a dystopian novel and here’s the blurb:
A virus has struck the earth again with a 90% mortality rate. As the population of the world succumbs to the virus and to mayhem, a vaccine that seems to be the only beacon of hope emerges thanks to the Red Velvet organization in the small Bolivian town of Costa Toro. However, the cure brings unforeseen side effects that will change the lives of the survivors of this small town.
Larissa has managed to hide from the virus and survive for almost 5 years with her younger brother Hugo. One day, she stumbles upon a mysterious message from someone claiming to have the solution to fix all things. In a world stripped of most of the internet as we know it and with few options to survive, Larissa can’t accept the new reality and wants a better future for Hugo. In her quest, she will meet other people her age and Adrian, who becomes more than just an ally.
But a misstep exposes her to the twisted new-order authorities of Costa Toro, in particular to Deborah and Governor Fuentes. Both with sinister ties to the Red Velvet organization, which seems to want to keep the status quo. The new order has also brought Adrian to the mercy of an evil punishment. Amidst saving her friend and escaping Deborah, will Larissa find the means to change her world? Who is this Red Velvet organization, and what is their relationship with the government of Costa Toro?
How does it sound? Would you read it?
If you’re interested in beta reading, let me know. I can do swap beta reading as well: you read my manuscript, I read yours.
I’ll be publishing some extracts and chapters as well in the next months.
AI has become a controversial topic among the community of writers.
We all know that chatGPT and similar tools that can pull up professionally written content. Chances are that most people working desktop jobs have used this tool at some extent. But what happens with writers?
If you tell chatGPT to write a piece of fiction portraying characters X and Y with a given topic, it will write one that could be quite passable. For many unscrupulous bogus writers, it will be enough to be published. Hence the uprise of AI-created books published on platforms like Amazon and similar. If you’ve read one of these books, chances are you deemed it rubbish.
My experience with reading AI fiction and AI non-fiction
Personally, I haven’t read AI fiction, as I’m very careful with the books that I acquire through online platforms. But I’ve come across with one or two non-fiction books, likely purchased at an average of 0.99 cents, promising to be the holy grail to learn subject X. If these non-fiction books had been written by a real person, chances are that twenty pages of content could have been told in one page, the most. They are overly repetitive, mostly make no point, and/or are filled with irrelevant content. No wonder the community of writers looks at the use of AI with disdain.
Using AI for editing
But I don’t. I’m starting to use AI to help my writing. But wait, don’t leave the post now if you’re a fellow writer. Let me clarify: I don’t use it to write. I use it to overcome grammar and sentence structure issues. In other words, I don’t ask chatGPT to write something for me. I do the job—I write first, and when the round of review comes and I come across a sentence structure I’m not happy about, I ask chatGPT “suggest improvement of this text ….”.
Do I replace my text with the AI suggestion? No, not at all. To be honest, I don’t use around 80% of the suggestions. ChatGPT is too repetitive and makes up information that is not relevant to my story at all. But in its suggestions, I find certain wordings and structures that are useful in around 20% of the times.
Telling when a text is AI written
If I were to ask chatGPT to do all the work and to write for me, only to review and adjust later to match my voice, it would be like rewriting it from scratch. I found out that whatever default style chatGPT uses, it has these characteristics:
And I tell the AI tool to improve it, chatGPT suggests:
Camila's brows knitted tightly, her frown deepening as she fixed her gaze on the dog. Her lips pressed into a thin line, and her eyes narrowed, reflecting a mix of confusion and unease. Something about the dog's behavior—or perhaps its presence—clearly unsettled her, and she couldn’t look away.
Text I copied from ChaGPT.
Clearly it’s not a bad piece of text, and sometimes writers who struggle with description might find the AI suggestions tempting. But can you imagine this type of prose in every single paragraph? It would be the most annoying reading ever.
Let’s analyze it deeply, sentence by sentence:
Camila's brows knitted tightly, her frown deepening as she fixed her gaze on the dog.
First sentence is good.
Her lips pressed into a thin line, and her eyes narrowed, reflecting a mix of confusion and unease.
The portion that says “reflecting a mix of confusion and unease” is a “telling” prose. There’s no need for these extra words. The description of the lips and the eyes are enough to reflect that she was feeling confusion and unease.
Something about the dog's behavior—or perhaps its presence—clearly unsettled her, and she couldn’t look away.
It’s an acceptable sentence. But how can AI tell this is actually happening in my story? Maybe Camila wants to look away. Maybe the dog broke a lamp and the staring is more related to scolding the dog rather than that “unsettling dog’s behavior”. This is where AI makes things up.
In summary, if I was looking to improve my sentence, I would probably take into account some words suggested in the first sentence—and that’s all. I would have discarded the rest. Trust me, there will be many instances where I will reject all of the AI’s suggestion.
I think it is. When we, writers, are in the second or third rounds of revision, sometimes we get stuck with some paragraphs that don’t sound right, even though they are grammatically correct. AI suggestions can help us get out of that situation and improve our work.
Do I use AI when working on the first draft of a manuscript? No—short answer.
For me, the first manuscript draft is your essence as a writer. Here’s where you tell your world about your characters, your story, and you’re writing style. At this stage, you explore your imagination and creativity. If AI does this for you, then you’re not a writer, in my opinion.
Conclusion
I hope this blog post is helpful to those writers who are VERY reluctant to using AI. Of course, this is a personal decision, but as a writer who struggles in the rounds of revision, I have to be honest and admit that I use chatGPT to help me unlock potential uses of the English language. I don’t feel shameful about that because I know that 100% of the characters, the story, and the writing voice are mine.
I can’t believe it’s been almost two years since my last post. My day job was intensive, but other than that, I just felt I didn’t have anything interesting to say from a writer’s perspective. My first novel was published, and I entered a sort of writing hiatus. Then, last year, I started to write again. It felt good, but I still didn’t have anything compelling to share on my writing blog. Now, my circumstances have changed.
AI image generated by Midjourney
I’m in the process of transitioning from a very demanding job to finally having more time for my personal projects, one of which is writing. Last year, I started another fiction novel—a dystopian story. Different from The Last Families, I didn’t want this new novel to have multiple points of view and to be so complex. I wanted a simpler story, but a good one. I’ve already picked a name for this novel, although I’m very far from publishing it. I’m currently in the first round of beta readers and receiving so much good feedback. I’m in no hurry to publish this time. This novel is called “When the World Disappears,” and it is a dystopian story set in Bolivia, in a world following the aftermath of a pandemic (yes, I couldn’t help but get inspiration from Covid 😄 ). It has quite interesting twists. I will soon give more details.
This writing cycle has been different. Although I’ve only published one book, I’ve learned a great deal from the process of writing and self-publishing The Last Families. These are some of the lessons:
Fantasy, and especially high fantasy, can be hard to achieve. If this is your genre, I recommend simplifying the characters and the plot because the world-building of high fantasy is very complex already. While some, like Tolkien, have achieved this art, he devoted most of his life to endless manuscripts that his son then had a hard time compiling. As someone without any descendants, I don’t have the luxury of relying on future generations for compilations. Next time I choose to write fantasy, I’ll aim for a simpler plot.
AI image generated by Midjourney
Multiple points of view are hard—very hard. The only way to achieve them is to analyze each character deeply and be crazy enough (in a good manner) to jump from one character’s head to the other. One of the best pieces of feedback that I got from The Last Families was that I’ve managed to achieve good character development in spite of the multiple points of view, but it was so difficult that I’m not looking to revisit this approach in at least a decade.
Get beta readers very soon, and as many as possible. As a first-time writer, I felt very protective of my first novel and very insecure about my writing. Therefore, I delayed sharing it until I had meticulously reviewed it at least a dozen times, thus the long time it took to publish it. When I got a few beta readers—only two to be precise—I was desperate to have my novel out in the world, so I changed very little based on their feedback and continued with the publication process. Now, with my latest manuscript, I’m already in my fifth beta reader at an earlier stage. I’m now very open to change and feedback. With more beta readers, I’m also assembling a team of people who will be able to support me during the book launch.
Your plot doesn’t need an abundance of twists or complexity. This new novel is a shorter, nicer story with some surprising twists, but not so complex that I can’t describe it. When I pitched The Last Families to publishing agents, it was so hard to articulate a pitch letter. I couldn’t summarize the multiple points of view and the plot in 2-3 paragraphs. It was simply too hard. When the concept is so confusing, it’s hard to sell the idea. I didn’t like it when people asked me what my novel was about because it was too difficult to explain. Now with “When the World Disappears,” I can easily describe it, and I feel it’s easier to sell it not only to agents but also to readers. It’s far simpler to promote a work when the purpose and vision are clear.
AI image generated by Midjourney
These are just a handful of the lessons I learned with The Last Families. I don’t regret the process in this book, though. I still love my first fantasy book, and I’m planning to get a second edition and a Spanish translation later this year. But I’m determined to approach things differently this time, and I’m overly excited.
I always told myself that I would explore the different approaches to publishing. The first one, traditional publishing, seemed to be the desired one since you imagine a literary agent guiding you in these waters of publishing. You imagine them taking care of all the logistics that is involved in publishing your book so you can focus in more writing. But as I already knew, nailing a literary agent, and then a publishing house, is not easy at all. I’ve even heard that I would waste my time searching for an agent. But since I was in no hurry to publish, I decided I would try pitching agents first. And I have done it in the past 8 months. I’ve pitched to many agents. Some of them were polite to reply and say “thanks but no thanks” and others didn’t even reply. I must admit that I was sort of expecting this outcome given how difficult I’ve heard is to call the attention of a literary agent. But I still wanted to give a try.
Now, I’m ready to move on to plan B. Self-publishing.
I wasn’t that scared of the logistics of self-publishing. I knew I could find my way around and hire help where I needed, but I was a bit scared of the time it would take to figure all this out and the time it would involve managing all the process. But at this point, I have the feeling that I have to get my fantasy novel “The Last Families” out there. I’ve spent a couple of years on it and it deserves to be out there. It is a personal challenge.
I’ve taken on self-publishing planning now, wanting to go slowly step by step. Time is my constraint. I have a good day job, and aside from that job, I’m organizing a tech online event, I attend two Public Speaking clubs, one reading club, and try to stay as physically active as possible. But publishing this book is important and I have to find it time. Moreover, it is time to stop wishing some literary agent will fall from the sky to help with all the hassle 🙂
Therefore, I’ve started gathering information. I’ve already decided I want both the ebook version and the printed version. Given that, there is a lot to do on the matter of formatting the book, getting a cover designed, etc. I’ve already began researching Print On demand services and I’ve already discarded a couple of them. Given that I’m in Bolivia, some of these services don’t deal with authors from outside the US, or as I was told by IngramSpark “digital signature is not supported in your country”. Well….
On the good side, I’m positive on the design and promotion part. I think I know good people that can help me with that.
As I post on this Blog more about the process, I will probably start changing its look, given that the domain name already has my author name, and this will probably become my Author website.
I’ll start talking a bit more about my fantasy story in next posts so that you can hear what is it about. I’m waiting first on some visual materials to go with this.
In the meantime, if anybody has good references or experiences with the Print on demand options, I would deeply appreciate to hear from you. Wish me good luck in this process. 🙂
There comes a point in time when you realize that the manuscript is ready to go out there. Or at least you want to believe that. My fantasy manuscript is ready and I’ve already started seeing publishing options (I’ll check first the traditional options and if not, self-publishing). The process is long, so what happens in the meantime?
I could have waited and concentrated my energy for the fantasy manuscript to reach its end-result: the published book. But for some reason, I decided that while I wait for replies on query letters, I could start working on a new project. Therefore, I’ve started a new manuscript on a new different story, based on an idea has been nagging me for some time and I didn’t want to wait anymore.
I realized that as I get more into this writing process, the better I feel. I spent a lot of time on my first original thriller manuscript (which was left incomplete several years ago – it is still lying there, dormant), but the story had too many plot holes, and the characters were too simple. Perhaps, I’ll come back to it some day, with a refreshed and more interesting approach- or a complete revamp. In the meantime, if you count that original manuscript, the recently finished fantasy one, then this would be the third time starting the whole process of writing a new story. And I feel it gets better with time. I’ve also realized I’m definitely not a plotter, not a pantser, but a mix of the two.
When I started my fantasy manuscript, I found an interesting technique that I’m considering this time too. I started writing as a pantser, wanting to know where the characters and story led me to. But then I realized that if you keep as a pantser, you face the risk of entering an endless journey with no direction. So I stopped, and came back to analyze the story and characters. This process worked very well during the fantasy manuscript. Characters were one of my best improvements and I feel very proud of how they developed in my fantasy manuscript. Still, the story plot became too complex at some point, and there were some editing rounds where I had to “patch” some massive story plot holes.
In the new manuscript, let’s call it the “dystopian” one, which is more or less the genre of this one, I feel more confident about “sketching” characters, letting them being, and experimenting changes. I think I got a better hold on that process. Now, I want to improve the process for developing my storyline. I’m planning on introducing a bit more “plotting” on this manuscript to not lose as much track of it as it happened on the fantasy one. However, I’m definitely not planning on becoming a rigid plotter, killing my creativity and adaptability to change.
I’ve already written the first 45 pages of the dystopian manuscript .They were mostly done in a pantser “state”. Then I stopped. Now I’m going through these 45 pages to give it more structure. I want to still be able to fly with the story, let my writing spirit be free, but with a bit more of structure. It is working rather well until now.
In addition, I’m starting to do deeper editing from the start. I want this first manuscript draft to be in a more decent readable state than my previous manuscripts where the first draft was barely readable. I hope this approach works better so that future editing rounds are not as hard and time consuming than previous ones. Also, I’ll start searching for beta readers in an earlier stage. Feedback is important. It is tough on writers, but we need it. Let’s see how my new writing approach works now.
And you, do you feel your writing process improves with each project?
2019 has definitely been a year to remember. Two dear aunts, sisters from my Mom, passed away. My beautiful dog, Dana, who was with me for more than 14 years, also passed away. There was a fire, caused by short circuit on the TV plug, that devoured my Mom’s room and almost killed her. My closest aunt had an accident with a huge wardrobe falling and splitting her head badly. My country went into political turmoil for almost 3 weeks, with almost a civil war in the making. Mobs of delinquents attacked people on the street, beating them to death, setting on fire everything they found, including houses. Three weeks I deeply wish nobody goes through anywhere in the world, days we lived in panic, enclosed in our homes or trying to battle attackers when there was still no police to defend us.
The year is almost coming to an end and although there have been good times in this year, good trips in the middle of everything and other experiences, I cherish this year as the personal growth has been insurmountable.
I’m heading at this moment to WordCamp Guayaquil where I will be speaking about “Wanting to be a blogger and finding time,” in other words about time organization. I would have never imagined a couple of years ago talking about time manage skills. Me, the person who used to procrastinate as nobody else and could never find time for anything. I wondered a couple of times if I’m the best person to talk about this, but I feel I’ve grown so much in the last years, specially in this year that I thought I would share my experience.
Writing and working full time has been a challenge. I must be honest I only commit an hour and perhaps an hour and a half, the most, to working on my current manuscript. I haven’t been the best at keeping this schedule every day. There are days when I don’t write, and even weeks. But I haven’t give up. It doesn’t matter how slowly I move forward. I’ve committed myself to keep doing it.
At this point, my goal of finishing the review of my manuscript by the end of the year doesn’t look promising. Probably, I’ll end it by the end of January or even February of 2020. But it doesn’t matter, I’m still doing it, little by little, step by step. Besides, I don’t have an agent or a publishing contract that says I have to finish by a specific date. It is true I wish I could have it by the end of this year but nothing will happen if I don’t.
In a bad year, I could have just plainly written little. My attitude could have been different. Perhaps that would have been the case when I was younger. But my determination has gotten bigger this year. Without it, I would probably have never finished reviewing the first round. I would have never gotten great beta readers and the inspiration the keep writing. Somehow a bad year has make my desire to keep on writing stronger. It has kept me afloat amidst all issues, knowing that there is a greater goal out there for me and that I’m still moving towards it.
Life is about going through problems and obstacles, otherwise it would be pretty boring and we would never grow. Writing on a bad year has actually been a positive experience and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Writing on a bad year has proved to be good.
My previous post was published more than 3 months ago. I remember telling myself: I won’t distract myself from any other kind of writing until I have my current first manuscript ready. I originally targeted to finish it by January and Look! we’re almost in the middle of the year. Sigh… It took longer than expected but it’s finally done.
I initially had one friend volunteering to read it. She was an encouragement as I had told her it would be ready for January and having her asking about its status helped me push through the line and finish it. I soon found out I had two other volunteers to read it. That was exciting but it also made nervous. Extremely nervous. Why? Well, my mind was invaded by these thoughts:
What happens if the whole plot doesn’t make sense or is boring to death?
What happens if the whole idea of writing a book is not for me?
I’m an amateur writer and always have self-doubts about my writing skills. I’m usually not that insecure about life in general but writing is important to me and therefore I tend to feel vulnerable to people revising my manuscript. But then I gather myself, I exhale loudly and I think that this comes with the process. I have to learn to listen to feedback and trust in my work. I’m starting; there is a lot to learn. I have to accept the challenge and keep my faith that hard work makes the master.
And you how do you feel when people start revising your manuscript?
When I started writing, I found the question about being a “plotter or a pantser”. Plotter would be the person that plans the story before they write and a pantser would be the person that only lets the inspiration guide and build the story as they write. Initially, I was sure I would fit the plotter role, I wanted to set up everything correctly before starting to write. It didn’t work that well. As soon as I started to write, characters acquired life and different scenarios/events invaded my mind. I remember thinking then that I was definitely a pantser and welcomed the idea of getting inspired as I wrote. I ended my first manuscript of my first project, ditching the plotting and welcoming the pantsing.
The end result was not the best. After some rounds of feedback and self-revision, I found out that the story had many holes in it. The story was weak and it wasn’t working as I wanted. I started to re-shape the story, changing chapters, deleting scenes, adding new plot twists, etc. But after several rounds, I still was unhappy with it. Now that I look back, there wasn’t a time when I totally felt confident with how the plot evolved.
Then comes editing. When I started to write, without any previous experience, I reviewed/edited my reading after a couple of paragraphs or even after a single paragraph – trying to get the perfect grammar and writing. That didn’t last. This method certainly cut my inspiration and it would take me ages to finish a single chapter. Then my first NaNoWriMo came and I thought that this was the opportunity I needed to be able to end my first manuscript. And I sort of did it. I didn’t finish it, but I learn how to sit and write without giving a look to previous paragraphs. Editing would come later.
The result wasn’t the best either. There was terrible writing everywhere – not acceptable for requesting feedback. I had to go through a couple of rounds of editing before it was presentable. Those two/three rounds took me a lot of time, probably more than a month. And I really hated them.
It was trial an error. I still did a couple of mistakes when I started to write my second project. I initially tried to start as a pantser – my objective to write until the manuscript ended and already dreading the rounds of revision in advance. But I already got a feeling that the result would be a plot filled with holes and a writing so embarrassing that would only lead me to endless rounds of revisions. I stopped after a couple of chapters. Why would I need to be either a plotter or a pantser? Why I had to decide between editing while writing or editing everything at the end?
I took a break after a couple of chapters. Then I started reviewing everything I had written. I wrote a little bit more – with a better mindset of the story in mind and continued writing. Then I reviewed my last written words, changed them into a more decent writing and continued. The result:
I write a couple of chapters. I go back to read them and do a general revision of the writing itself. I analyze the plot a little bit before continuing. I do a little bit of planning for the next chapters and continue. It’s a mix of all methods above. And I found that it works for me. There are no longer surprises, fears, or even apathy to future rounds of editing. There is no structured planned plot that cuts my inspiration but I also don’t write with no horizon in mind.
I edit my writing as I go. I don’t do it immediately, I let it sit for a couple of chapters so that it doesn’t cut the flow or the feeling of writing freely. I go back to review the writing of previous chapters to make sure that I have a decent writing over there, knowing that at the end it won’t be a terrible manuscript, that it will be readable and that might only need few editing before requesting feedback. I like my own method. And I’m not suggesting it to other people. I’m only saying that each writer has to find its own way to do things…
I usually wouldn’t have selected this book if it weren’t for a reading club at my work. We wanted to improve our writing as part of improving our communication skills – most of it is written. But why wouldn’t I pick this book if one of my main passions is writing? Because the book is directed towards nonfiction writing and when thinking of myself as a writer, I believe I’m mostly labeled as a fiction writer. But communication at work is written so it made sense to check how my writing was in the non-fictional world.
The author, William Zinsser, explains with examples (the only way to learn) how to find your own voice. He gives a huge importance in finding your true self, your true voice. He encourages you to find the passion and enjoyment in your daily writing tasks and to never forget your own principles and the ones of the story you want to talk about.
But how is the sound of our writing voices?
Your writing voice should be as you are, not how you talk, but how you perceive things in your head. Zinsser gives the following advice:
“Don’t flight such a current if it feels right. Trust your material if it’s taking you into terrain you didn’t intend to enter but where the vibrations are good…”
The right words don’t necessarily mean the complex sounding ones. “Just because they’re writing fluently doesn’t mean they’re writing well,” Zinsser mentions. How many times we read a book with lots of interesting new words, and we find ourselves wishing we had more vocabulary. But sometimes we don’t need this, we only need to find the right words, the ones specific enough to show what we mean. There is no need for complexity, rather for specificity.
When we write fictional books, we tend to overthink the writing process too much. As we write, we’re trying to sound good and to ensure our text looks not simple – not amateurish. We want others to notice we have a great vocabulary and in this effort, we sometimes lose our own voice. I have tried many times to edit my manuscripts in an effort to make the text sound smarter – not simple – but using words that weren’t true to my own rhythm and voice.
Sometimes we take too much effort in describing a scene or a character that we lose our sense of direction. “Clutter is the disease of the American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words…” Zinsser mentions. And although this quote refers to American writing, it still applies to all the writing world and even to all languages. How many times I have found the same issue in my mother tongue Spanish.
Part of this clarity is to question ourselves: Is our story, the narrative, the description of scenes, and especially dialogue making sense?
Enjoying the process
We spent too much time thinking about the finished work. We tend to visualize or think too much about when the manuscript will be ready, when the book is going to be in a readable stage, and when a possible publishing time could come. We imagine the end line too often and we don’t find ourselves enjoying the process. We are writers, the process of writing should be “our thing” not going after editors and publishers. Let us enjoy the process for the time that is needed.
As Zinsser mentions: “The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race,” and “You won’t write well until you understand that writing is an evolving process, not a finished product.”
How much are we willing to defend our work and to dare to be ourselves?
No matter how much editing we do ourselves, our manuscripts will suffer one day with other editors. We have to make sure that our writing and our voice are still there. “What you write is yours and nobody else’s”
I’ve struggled with this issue a lot. I want readers to recognize my voice. But sometimes, I’m so lost in having a decent product, in having precise sentences and paragraphs, good words, believable characters, believable setups, etc, that I lose my voice in it. Whatever comes out of our manuscript, it has to be ours, it has to show our own personality. As Zinsser puts it, “Writing well means believing in your writing and believing in yourself, taking risks, daring to be different, pushing yourself to excel”. This mindset is key, how many times we suppress our thoughts and expressions while we write; an inner voice saying “no, that sounds ridiculous, people won’t understand it.” But we have to understand that there is a difference between readers not able to follow a story structure and not be able to follow the author’s sense of wit and voice. We shouldn’t worry about the latter, we should just go with our guts.
We tend to forget so much of these tips. We’re scared what readers of our manuscript will say, how copywriters will find the text and how editors will see it. We’ve been told rules such as not repeating words, but sometimes they are needed for a reason, sometimes the repetition is there to provide emphasis and to give it a specific rhythm (like the double sometimes in this sentence). Many times when we change our words just to obey rules, we change the effect we are trying to give to our voice, to our characters, and to our story.
What other advice was also very helpful about this book?
Zinsser treats comedy as a good resource for writing, as a good way to show your personality. This doesn’t mean that you have to tell jokes, but it’s related to the wit with how you tell things. In most cases, this might be the best way to show the true you.
In summary, I really enjoyed the book. Even if I don’t intend to write a non-fiction book, it still had plenty of useful advice, useful not only for non-fictional writers but also for fictional writers, so I definitely recommend it. You can get the book here.
