I had never heard of Heinlein’s Rules until I started reading Dean Wesley Smith’s blog. The five rules are pretty straight forward and I paraphrase them here:
- Write.
- Finish what you start.
- Don’t rewrite except to editorial order.
- Market your writing.
- Keep marketing your writing until you get it sold.
I’m stuck at Number 2. To me, that was my biggest accomplishment of NaNoWriMo, which was not the 50k words I pounded out, but the story I finished the month after.
The sweetest words.
Finishing the writing is the only thing I really care about right now because that’s my biggest struggle. Presently, I have been stopping and starting on the prequel novella we started last month. So the pressure I experience from writing and re-writing is all about having a finished product eventually.
But listening to every book marketing podcast and observing how much marketing work successful indie authors are doing every day, I am very mindful that the marketing and the selling of the writing is also super important.
So I bought Dean’s book Heinlein’s Rules: Five Simple Business Rules for Writing (WMG Writer’s Guides Book 12)
But from a practical perspective, what Dean really reminds me is that my work isn’t over once I type the magical words “The End”.
In fact, the hard work is just beginning. Luckily for us, indie authors have it so good, with so many resources–many of which are free.
I thought I’d share some here:
1. Derek Murphy’s work at CreativIndie has been very helpful. I’m grateful for his generosity and his enthusiasm. Check out his wonderful blog article/omnibus on How to Self Publish a Book.
2. Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s business blog for writers is amazing. I cannot say enough wonderful things about her blog posts. Check her out. The sheer volume of practical and business knowledge she shares is just astonishing.
3. Joanna Penn’s Creative Penn. This is the one that I first started reading after I found her podcast. She’s decided to double down on content this year for 2017 so enjoy the bounty of writing and publishing content she is going to unleash! I support her Patreon and love her enthusiasm and positivity.
Love those blogs myself, loads of useful information!
Could you elaborate about Rule #3 “Don’t rewrite except to editorial order” please?
I interpret this to be about the fact that writers will often torture themselves re-writing and tweaking endlessly. The viewpoint of DWS is that if you have an editor, then you do the re-writes, but otherwise don’t use re-writing stop you from making progress and writing more and new things. Also, I think about what Chris Fox says about when you are in flow state and getting a high volume of words out. Odds are, your writing is fairly decent at that stage and doesn’t need a ton of re-writing. It need an editorial set of eyeballs probably.
That makes sense, thanks for answering!
This is very helpful, but I totally disagree with the advice not to rewrite. But, maybe “rewrite” is different than revisions. I always leave my work overnight to think about it. Invariably I will find a better way to say something. If I didn’t “rewrite” I could miss something that is not clear once I take a step back.
I think Rule #3 is simply a reminder to keep making forward progress, because of course writers will revise to improve clarity, etc. However, the ultimate goal is simply to make sure the writer keeps going to the end of the novel (“finish what you start”) as opposed to spending two years working and re-working the opening scene. Perfect is the enemy of progress and done is the engine or more.