GENREALITY

Over the last week I’ve gotten a couple of questions that I always have a hard time answering.  In fact, these are two of the most common questions I get, which makes not knowing how to answer them pretty laughable.  You’d think I’d have developed a canned response, or at least something short and useful I can say that delivers the information the questioner is looking for.  But every time someone asks them, I hem and haw, because the questions always startle me a bit, no matter how often I hear them.  My answers seem to require explanation.  Since I know you’re super curious, here are the questions:

How long do you spend writing each day?

I have a hard time answering this because it varies wildly, and I don’t always know what people mean by “write.”  I’m afraid they have this picture of me sitting down, putting my hands on the keyboard, and typing for x-number of hours straight, then getting up, leaving the desk, and having dinner and watching TV like a person with a standard office job.  When of course it isn’t like that at all.  I may only spend an hour or two a day actually writing — and that’s spread out over five hours, with bouts of research, thinking, making tea, walking the dog, and so on in between.  But that doesn’t count the moment when I’m at the stove making dinner and the brilliant denouement for the current novel suddenly hits me and I have to go write it down right then, or the time I spend reading a book and thinking about how a certain authors plots thrillers, or the research I do and the notes I take, some of which will make it in the book and some of which won’t, but I won’t know which part is which until I’m done writing.  Or the time I spend daydreaming scenes.

The pat, easy answer for “How long do you write?” is “All the time.”  But I know that isn’t what’s being asked, usually.  And I have to admit I hesitate saying, “Just an hour or two,” because I fear that makes the job seem easier than it really is.  So my answer, which ought to be a simple number, ends up being a long, rambling explanation, as above.

I want to write a book.  How do I start?

Hooboy.  This one.  So many people have a book in them.  Books are ubiquitous, they’re such a good way to share stories and deliver information, why shouldn’t just about everyone have a book in them?  But what if you want to write a book — and you’re not a writer?  I suspect that many people who ask this question are not really writers, because if they were they wouldn’t need to ask.

I don’t know how to answer this question because I never had to figure out how to start.  I just wrote.  I did it for school, I did it for fun, and when I realized I wanted to write for a living, I just did more of it.  I read a ton of books, so I knew how it worked.  It wasn’t a mystical thing, it was just getting words on the page and seeing how they turned out.  I wrote because I enjoyed it, because I had these amazing stories playing out in my mind and writing was the simplest way to get them out and do something with them.

When someone asks, “How do I start?”, I often wonder what the thing is that’s keeping them from putting words on the page.  I usually tell them to start by keeping a journal, so they can practice putting down those words without the mental block of having to write a novel or a book, which must seem like a vast challenge to the uninitiated.  If they’re meant to write, once they start they won’t be able to stop.  Secretly, though, I think, If they were meant to write, they’d be doing it already.

Seems uncharitable, but there it is.

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