The Right Way to Write

OK, first of all, the title of this post is a bit deceptive.

I could say that there is no right way to write. But that's a bit of an over-simplification.

Many writers have a strict order planned out in advance of what books they're going to write, and in which order, and for each book, they have a detailed outline before they start of everything that's going to happen in each book. That order may even be contractual.

I'm not one of them. That's why Fireborn, which I actually started seriously working on — turned it from a writing doodle for my own eyes only, into a book — well after I began Bearing Gifts, was actually finished and published first. And it's why Because It Tells Me To, which was started and 70-80% complete before I even began Bearing Gifts, is still unfinished now (but getting closer and closer). It's why I woke up one day with what turned out to be almost the next 100,000 words of Fireborn in my head. And it's why at this moment, I'm making more and faster progress on Becoming Real than on Because It Tells Me To, but haven't even really made a start yet on Godthief. I'm still forming the ideas that will become Godthief.

It works for me. But that doesn't mean it's the right way to write. Because the truth of it is that there is no SINGLE right way to write, no matter what a creative writing class might have taught you.

"The right way to write" is what works for YOU. And the corollary to that is that there is no wrong way to write ... as long as the writing happens, and produces the books that you want to write, and of the quality in which you want to write. It's like the eightfold path of Buddhism, which says in part that there is no such thing as an incorrect — or perhaps invalid — path to enlightenment. There are longer paths, there are shorter paths, there are easier paths, there are harder paths. But any path by which you reach enlightenment in the end must by definition be a valid path. Or it would not have taken you to enlightenment.

Writing is the same way. Write in the way that works for you. Don't let anyone tell you that you're doing it wrong. Accept criticism of your writing, and listen to it. But don't listen to anyone who tells you that your actual methodology of writing is wrong, if it's working for you, just because it's different from what works for them.

It's not so much that there is no right way to write. It's that there is no wrong way to write ... as long as it works for you. You are the writer.