How NOT To Write a Book

I’m in the midst of editing a book and it’s not going well. I also haven’t finished it, which is problematic. The first four chapters just rock right along, and then in the middle section none of the chapters (or are they short stories?)  really link up. Then there’s the unwritten third section. All this has made me quite qualified to write a book called How Not To Write A Book: A Guide To Failed Manuscripts and Other Literary Mishaps. I’ve noticed already that this is not a title I should ever choose because writing it even once is re-activating my tendinitis. (Which leads to a flare-up of TMJ, which is an acronym I always have difficulty unpacking, but it means my jaw really hurts.)

Anyhoo, here are ten possible chapters for HNTWB.

1)      Start in the middle and assume you’ll just figure out the beginning.

2)      Plan to write short stories and then decide to make them into chapters.

3)      Use every single idea you’ve ever had so that you have over eleven significant characters.

4)      Overload your main character with every possible life crises - abuse, miscarriage, early death of mother figure, sleazy husbands and of course, deep dark family secrets.

5)      Send your character to a foreign country to see how she makes out.

6)      Create plots that revolve around specific historical events that make later parts of the book completely implausible. For example, you want your heroine to be old enough to experience World War Two, but you also want her to have children in the eighties.

7)      Write half the chapters in the present tense and the other half in the past tense.

8)      Write half the chapters in the first person and mysteriously change to third person half way through the book. Neither is convincing so change the whole book to the very difficult second person. Spend a lot of time changing pronouns.

9)      Kill off characters early on in the book because they are inconvenient or hold up the plot. 

10)  Include long sections from your personal life or experience that you know have very little bearing on the story but are just too good to leave out. Spend A LOT of time perfecting these, even though you know they’ll get axed later.

How Not To Write A Book will also have a special section on procrastinating for writers: changing font size and paragraphing to look like you’ve done some writing, starting a blog (ahem), and re-reading other failed manuscripts to see if they can be revamped etc.

Wish me luck over the next year as I try to pull this book from its current mess into something amazing.