This is not advice on how to write. This is not even a discussion on how I write (on parchment made from the blood of freshly-killed goats, using a fountain pen wrapped in samite that requires ink made from iron, gunpowder, and ground seaweed, but only when the moon is waxing or full). This is, instead, the theory of writing that I have developed in a life simply full of exposure to the written word, and the scribes thereof.

When I was a senior in high school, my English teacher earned the love and admiration of ninety percent of his class when he said that he wasn't going to make us write poetry when we did the poetry unit. In his experience, people who liked to write poetry wouldn't be stopped by that (or, indeed, by the lack of paper) while the rest of us would be miserable trying to write it.

I suspect now that there is also no reward to reading a few dozen adolescent poems, grappling the way they do with such towering subjects as angst and depression, but I am assuming that his stated reason was at least as accurate as that.

I feel the same way about writing, with a little bit of a twist. In my capacity as an editor as well as a writer-in-denial, the thing that I have come to learn is that very often people who can write choose to believe that they have no skill, while those who cannot write think that they have loads and will someday be real published writers.

This is, to put it mildly, so much horseshit. I realise that I have the lecture hat on already and that this is probably not a subject I should be waxing lyrical on, but on the other hand, if I am going to spend a significant chunk of time involved in my job (editor), my wanna-be job (writer) and my hobby (online journal-format rpgs) I spend a lot of time writing and reading the writing of others. This is something I am qualified to judge. (For once.)

See, the thing is, writing is work. There are a lot of people out there who think that it's not, that they can just throw words onto a page, give it a name, and call it good (and sometimes editors think this is also writing; we've all seen a book like that). And the money will just roll in.

And they are wildly wrong.

This leads me to the three components of my theory of writing. The first is: write a lot. The second is: take joy in it. The third is: if you write what you know, I will kill you.

The first one's easy. Write every day, or at least every week. Writing takes muscles, and developing muscles is done by writing. Write whatever comes to mind, whether it fits what you want or not - you're trying to train yourself to do the job. Ideally, of course, you'll get to the point where you can bang out a thousand words or so on your magnum opus and still have lots of time to stop by Starbucks for a latte in the morning. But particularly at first just write.

The only tip I could add to that is that if you hate facing a blank page, whether computer or paper (and if you have trouble with one, try the other) is to write something like "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country" or "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" or your favourite song lyric - because it is easier to add words to a page that already has words on it. You're not staring at blank whiteness trying to figure out how to write something to start it because it's already been started.

Take joy in it. It's not worth it if you don't like it. Most people never, ever, ever become famous. Most people get a five grand advance, earn okay royalties but nothing to quit your day job over, and never become famous. Some people, of course, grab the brass ring, but better to assume that you are not Dan Brown or Bob Salvatore or Patricia Cornwell - you're less likely to be disappointed. Write whatever you can - if someone offers you a writing job, take it. Write as often as you can, always, and everything you write adds to your chance of getting a book deal.

But take joy in it. Writing, largely because so many people think they're qualified to do it, is a job that does not reward, is full of competition, and is amazingly hard to convince people is real work for unreasonable wages. Or, to put it another way, getting a five grand advance for a 100K word book is getting paid half a cent a word.

Not a good wage.

Do it because you like the process, all of it, from idea to sales, not because you think it'll be easy and/or lucrative - it's not.

And the third point, as is so often true, is the most interesting.

There's this fiction that we should all write what we know. JA Jance, in fact, wrote a book called Hour of the Hunter on the premise that a man renowned for his advice to write what you know and his murder mystery was actually a killer. And you can certainly take it to that extreme.

But. As Ruth Rendell points out (and as any decent editor or writer can tell you) what is interesting about you is your ability to create universal truths and characters and emotions out of specific, non-universal circumstances. If your character is killing someone, chances are that the murder is not interesting (not even if you kill them by dipping them in honey, then setting bees on them) but the mindset of the killer is.

Are you a killer?

Hopefully not.

But can you create the thoughts that might lead someone to murder, report them interestingly, and make it so that everyone who ever thought for two seconds "I am going to kill him!" says "RIGHT ON, BROTHER!" at your writing?

Now you're an author.

Bob Salvatore is not a famous author because he is a good author. In many ways, he's technically very bad. But he has a loyal - indeed, rabid - fan base, particularly for his Forgotten Realms novels, because the story he chooses to tell with Drizzt Do'Urden is Bob's story, his sense of isolation and unwantedness and his inability to find kindred spirits and, eventually, the friends he made. And that story has resonated with thousands upon thousands of teenage and early-adulthood young men, who felt the same way and didn't see someone speaking for them. Bob took his experience, wrote it down, and found out quite quickly that he was the voice of a generation who felt lost and alienated.

In a lot of ways, he lucked into that. His story resonated with readers. Many authors' personal stories wouldn't. I could give two shits about the fact that Patricia Cornwell worked as a receptionist in an ME's office when she penned her first Scarpetta novel except that it informs her writing and makes it much better researched than, say, Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, which is bonbons for the mind. But Bob's personal story was interesting - and he is the exception to the rule.

But what he did is not.

He could create the feelings of angst and loneliness and alienation that Drizzt felt and share them with millions of readers because he felt them. Doesn't mean that he's an alien being on a planet where such beings are universally distrusted, or that he was almost sacrificed as a baby or that he killed his father in a fight to the death - just that he could take the emotions Drizzt felt and make them real and make them universal and give them to his readers, who responded rabidly.

That is writing what you know. If you've never been raped, have you never actually felt hurt and violated and scared and confused and angry and depressed?

Probably.

You could write a believable scene if you can feel that, or if you can create the impression that you feel it. If that means reading a whole lot of emotionally-charged prose (romance novels may be overly drippy, saccharine, and personally distasteful, as well as escapist fantasy, but I've read more than one that surprisingly nailed the woman's thoughts in any situation that didn't have to do with the protagonist) and you don't want to do it - better not decide to be an author.

So that's my theory. Enjoy what you do, don't expect to get rich at it, and do it every damn day, just like your nine-to-five. Writing is work, not relaxation, and you are not a "writer" if you won't put the work into it to be one.