Writing Tips
By Claire Delacroix (who also writes as Claire Cross)
© 2005 Claire Delacroix Inc. All Rights reserved
As an aspiring author in today's marketplace, you have an asset that I didn't have when I started out fourteen years ago. In the early nineties, it was very difficult to obtain information about what publishers were buying - beyond reading their current releases - and more difficult to find information about writing genre fiction. Authors often did not know of other authors, even in their own cities and towns, and we had no really good way of finding each other beyond a chance meeting at a conference.
The internet is the big change that is a tremendous asset to aspiring writers, because it makes information readily available. You can access workshops through online writing groups; you can surf to find out more information about any given house, or even any editor of agent. You can learn about new initiatives at publishing companies almost as soon as they are announced and you can find fellow authors to share companionship and news.
The downside of this wealth of information is twofold. The raw quantity of data can be overwhelming, and it's very easy for a writer to use all of his or her "writing time" online. You can waste away days in chatrooms and listserves, purportedly learning, but at some point, you're just losing time that you could spend writing. Writers write. Sooner or later, you need to sit down and just do it.
The second downside of this explosion of information and advice is that you hear more and more often that there is a "right" way to do something, and only one "right" way. A school of thought has evolved that insists here is a "right" way to do everything, from writing a synopsis, to pitching a book, to writing dialogue, and well beyond. These methodologies are effectively transmitted over the internet, and although well-intentioned, these "rules" (and our adherence to them) leads to a certain sameness between books. In contrast, no one told me the "right" way. On one hand, I probably made a lot of false starts because I didn't have a mentor. On the other, I found my voice and my way of telling stories much more readily, because there was no one scolding me for taking chances. I usually didn't even know I was taking a chance, let alone breaking a "rule". Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't - the important thing is that I learned something about the craft of writing from every experiment I made.
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