The best writing advice

I have a wonderful friend Nancy Row—author of the blog Wacky Mommy—who writes both fiction and non-fiction. Way back, when I edited a bridal magazine, Nancy wrote articles for the publication (besides doing a lot of other writing too, including for The Oregonian). We soon started workshopping each other’s projects and finally, close to twenty-five years ago, we were in a writer’s group together.

I was writing short stories at the time and experimenting with novel writing. Nancy told me to think of the rough draft of a novel as the scaffolding. Before a building can be built the scaffolding goes up—and once the building is built, it’s torn down. But the building can’t be built without the scaffolding. After attending a particularly informative writing conference, I learned to start my scaffolding process by diagraming the arc for the story and then the arcs of my main characters. Now for every story, once the diagramming is done, I write a detailed outline for my story, chapter by chapter, that is 20 to 30 pages. Once that’s done, I begin my rough draft. My goal is to write fast and complete that draft as quickly as possible so I can start editing, rewriting, and polishing, where I believe the art of the story takes place.

I apply the same philosophy to other areas of my writing life. I’ll often brainstorm and outline marketing material one day—and then write it the next. I keep folders for future projects where I tuckaway ideas, sketches, and research sources until I’m ready to start…scaffolding. So much of being creative is starting out with small steps and then building on those ideas, floor by floor. 

So thank you, Nancy, for that great advice. I’ve made great use of it!