In a guest post on Chuck Wendig’s blog, Jeff Macfee shares five things he learned while writing his novel Nine Tenths. “I could write pages of the things I believed before writing NINE TENTHS that I’ve since set aside, for the better,” Macfee says.
- Productivity picks you. You can’t always pick when your mindset will be most conducive to writing. “You should learn when you’re most productive, and write then, as much as life allows,” Macfee suggests.
- You’re not the second coming. “I learned I had skill gaps,” Macfee says. “I still do. And that’s fine. I can be the writer I am. So can you.”
- Clever dialogue is not a story. “Early feedback complimented my dialog, and in a world where I had any number of other writing struggles, I was more than happy to believe I had dialog sewn up,” Macfee writes. “It’s great to have a strength. But even strength needs editing.”
- A unique premise isn’t enough. When Macfee started writing Nine Tenths, superheroes hadn’t yet started dominating our culture. By the time he finished…not so much. “After I accepted the whole superhero market saturation thing (or mostly accepted) I realized what I should have realized all along—it’s the characters, stupid,” Macfee writes. “If I cared about the characters, other people would care.”
- Writing is fun. “The whole point of writing is that you, the author, enjoy the process,” Macfee says. “Why else are you writing? I forgot this lesson more than once. You will too. Forget. Relearn. Repeat.”
