Heinlein, and What About Having Fun?
In Today's Journal
* Direct from Robert Heinlein
* What About Having Fun?
* The Novel Wrapped
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Direct from Robert Heinlein
I was unaware of the following until writer Eli Jones left a comment on "The Big Question on Heinlein's Rules." I am richer for having read his comment. Here it is in its entirety:
"There's a letter Heinlein wrote to Sprague de Camp in 1952, after de Camp asked for clarification on Heinlein's 'rule 3.' Heinlein mentions how if he does any rewriting it's only 'cutting surplusage' and then writes: 'I would never advise a beginner to rewrite. He can learn more by starting a brand-new story and doing his best on it.'
"In his speech at Annapolis in 1973 Heinlein states that every writer should fix typos and 'strike out surplusage and fancy talk', which sounds a lot like removing critical voice to me. [He also] throws in this description: 'A beginner finds hard to believe that no rewriting rule... would you refry an egg? Tear down a freshly built wall? Destroy a new chair? Ridiculous!'"
Thank you, Eli!
What About Having Fun?
When I first posted the Heinlein's Rules posts a couple of years ago, a friend brought a truism home to me in an email. He was enjoying the posts. But, he wrote, he was also still trying to convince himself that writing is more fun than his favorite distractions.
That’s something I tend to forget sometimes about other writers. See, for me, writing fiction IS my favorite distraction.
I can’t imagine doing anything that’s more fun than discovering my characters’ stories as they live them. I actually feel fortunate that I’m the guy they’re letting into their world.
But when I’m talking with other writers, and especially when I’m writing this Journal, like most people I tend to assume those other writers think along the same lines I do.
Yet the fact remains, for a lot of folks, my friend’s thought hits the nail directly on the head: Writing fiction at a professional level isn’t for everyone, whether following Heinlein’s Rules and Writing Into the Dark or doing it in some other way.
If you’re a hobby writer, that’s fine. If you’re into writing only haiku and senryu, or if you only want to write a memoir, or if you only write a short story now and then, that’s fine. Seriously.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it at least a few hundred times: If you can find anything you enjoy doing more than writing fiction, chances are you should be doing that instead. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Just one caveat: If you really want to write fiction, be sure that nagging “other things are more fun” isn’t just your critical mind shutting you down.
That caveat aside, in this Journal, I’ll keep treating all of you as if you are already either make your living as a writer or want to.
The Novel Wrapped
Blackwell Ops 46: Sam Granger | Hell Comes Home wrapped a couple of days ago. You can see the cover and read the description here.
The completion of BO-46 was a personal achievement in a couple of ways. One, I got over my personal "hump" and finished my 13th novel on the year, the most ever. And that's with six months left in the year. (grin)
Two, I've extended my streak of releasing a novel every two weeks to 21 novels in 42 weeks.
But I'm extremely excited about BO-46 itself, so I thought I'd talk a little bit about why I'm excited. This is the 'having fun' part.
With 46 books finished, both the series and I, as a writer, had to evolve. You can't NOT grow and improve in skill as a writer if you keep putting new words on the page. As it should be, BO-46 is the pinnacle of that evolution. At least so far. (grin)
My own learning has been fast and furious in this subseries alone. I've learned almost as much while writing the Sam Granger novels as I learned from all the earlier ones combined. Only the Soleada Garcia subseries came close to teaching me as much, but in this one I learned (and am still learning) different things.
Again, I really can't emphasize strongly enough that if you want to continue learning to write fiction and see your writing and storytelling skills improve, you have to
give yourself over to the characters and their stories and
consistently put new words on the page.
So what do I mean by "growth" with this particular novel?
This novel still isn't all-action all the time, but it's close.
By that I mean I still had to ground the reader in the setting and in the characters, but I did that as unobtrusively as possible. Or maybe in a less intrusive way.
As a result, although I cut nothing from the description of characters and setting in the action scenes, those scenes still seem to flash past.
So the point is, even thought the story isn't nonstop action, it FEELS like it's nonstop action.
To illustrate what I mean, I'm thinking about serializing this one on Your Morning Serial (see the first item in Of Interest) in August, right after the second book of The Journey Home SF series.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
A Different Take on WITD (by Andrew Schrater)
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 900
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date…… XXXXX
Fiction for July..………………………. 57355
Fiction for 2025………………………. 520807
Nonfiction for July………………....... 2200
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 153830
2025 consumable words…………….. 667023
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 13
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 30
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 117
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 300
Short story collections……………………. 29
Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
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Congratulations on your writing evolution with this novel! Exciting! As far as fun, I write because it's the most fun way I can think of to make a living. I am not making enough to do it full time yet but that is definitely a goal.