Something happened when it came time to send The Things We Crave into the world. I froze. I couldn’t pull the trigger. “The book needs a rewrite,” I told my friends, smiling like a goon. “It needs revision…”

The revision lasted several months. During this period I reworked scenes, then entire chapters. I paced about my apartment and acted out dialogue, as confident as a long haired cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I didn’t know it at the time, but a Dream Eater had me by the throat; and I was the Dream Eater.

Your best friend and worst enemy is the guy or gal in the mirror. This is true for writers, especially when it’s time to share their work with the world. It’s one thing to write a story and show it to you friend and quite another to put a book into the hands of strangers. But writing is about sharing your work. It’s what Ariel Gore means when she says, “Nourish the world with your words. Yo.” What good is a manuscript on a hard drive? On that note, what good is that writer?

Publishing your work is proclaiming to the world, “This is the best I can do. It’s the best book I can write and it’s worthy of your time and money because I say so.” That’s frightening because it goes without saying that somebody is going to disagree. Hell, maybe a lot of somebodys will disagree. And if too many somebodys disagree it’s going to hurt. It’s that fear that the internal Dream Eater feeds upon. The paralysis will keep your words hidden away while someone else’s earn an Amazon ranking.

The fact is The Things We Crave is the best book I can write at this time. Will it be the best book I can write next year? No way, next year I’ll be better. Did it benefit from months of revision? Not really. Will some people like it? Yup. Will some hate it? Definitely. Does it matter? You know the answer. 

What I know for sure is that one particular Dream Eater is dead. I’ve got my sock clad feet propped on his sorry, dead ass right now. ”Rest in peace, mother fucker.” Good riddance to him. And now that he’s down the world’s gonna hear a lot more from me.

An author’s voice should be as unique as a country singer’s twang. Maybe that’s a bad analogy, but developing ones voice is crucial to being a pro writer. Voice is what makes you special. It’s what Larry Brooks of StoryFix calls the sixth core competency. Every famous writer has a distinct voice.

Suzannah Windsor Freeman of Write it Sideways has a compelling how-to article on this topic. It’s well worth the read. I especially like the advice on bending the rules. She refers to the English teacher adage, “Never start a sentence with ‘Or,’ ‘and,’ or ‘but’.” (In my English classes doing this was treated like a felony – I’m not kidding.) Suzannah explains that, “Writers bend these rules every day. The thing is, they bend them on purpose, not because they don’t know any better. They bend them as a stylistic choice which adds to their unique writing voice.”

And that’s exactly the way it should be.

Write it Sideways

I’ve been working on a lot of first drafts; and I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with them. I’m happy to drunk on creativity, when the words are flowing and writing fiction is as easy as talking. Then the voices start to speak. They say, “This is crap” and “This is way beyond your ability right now” and ask, “Have you lost your little mind?”

When we’re learning how to write fiction we must respectfully tip-our-hat (in my case it’s a top hat) at those voices and ignore them. The inner-critic, the doubter, the little Dream Eater that lives in all of us loves to gnaw at our confidence. Quite often, he speaks logically. The draft you’re working on may, in fact, be poorly written and above your current ability. So what?

It’s just a draft. If it doesn’t work out it can be stored away and finished later. If it does come together, we’ve grown as a writer. Like a guitar player learning a new lick, we’ve grown. Acknowledge the voices, then ignore them and keep writing.

Exercise: Write about an experience that was emotionally painful, something you remember to this day. It can be from childhood or yesterday. it can be something that took seconds or years. In either case, be as honest and detailed as you can be about it. Just write it down.

Learning how to write fiction take one consistent action – writing fiction. We cannot become writers by reading books about writing. We cannot listen to lecture. Granted, both of these are useful and reading good fiction weaves its way into our own work. But ultimately nothing will take the place of writing and Failing Miserably! That’s right – failure is part of the game.

Upon encountering this adversity, it’s important to remember the following:

1. No time spent writing is ever wasted. The project may be a dud, but the hours spent at the craft were still well spent.
2. Nobody dies when a piece of fiction doesn’t work. The writer might feel like it, but I assure you he or she will be okay.
3. Determining why the project failed is more important than bringing it back to life. Perhaps the writer thought “it would just come to me” and began writing… Or, maybe the plot was tight but the character lacked depth and passion? Whatever the reason, find it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Most of all, don’t sweat it. Move on to the next story, novel, screenplay, whatever. Dust yourself off, dry the tears and put the manuscript in a box. Then dive into the next one a wiser writer!

Who is your audience? Who are you writing for? Most of the time, we need to know the answer to this question before we begin writing. I say most of the time because every writer has a few projects that he or she writes for his or her eyes only; and within those pages anything goes. If we’re writing for a specific demographic, however, we’re should adhere to the needs of that demographic.

If we’re writing for second graders, we’re not going to use words more appropriate to a medical text. That kind of filter is obvious. What’s more complicated is creating writing that speaks to the audience because of commonality. If your character is a Mafia assassin and she falls in love with the policeman tasked with capturing her, you’re going to have to handle this writing very carefully. You’ll need to know the inner workings of organized crime, police procedures and the places where those worlds connect.

To accomplish this, create an ideal reader. Who is it that loves Mafia-Cop Romance stories? What is his or her background? Why does he seek this out? What does she gain from it? This person may or may not be similar to you. In any case, they should be able to enjoy suspension of reality and be open to your kind of story. The ideal reader represents the audience and is a sort of invisible character that never emerges in the plot, but peers through every scene. Toug job, eh? Nobody said writing was easy.

While it’s important to remember the audience, it’s also important to know that your writing will never please everybody. You may be the greatest scribe to every pick up a pen. You may earn millions of dollars with each sentence. It doesn’t matter. Someone out there will still call you a hack. Someone will hate every word you write. It’s no big deal. Please your ideal reader and the others will follow.