Advice to other writers

I received an email from another ex-patient from the temple who was interested in writing a memoir about his experiences in sobriety. His story is fascinating and could would likely help others. I think that there will never be enough of these stories for people to read. When I was a drunk I would search bookstores for any stories of hope in regards to addiction. Anyway I'll reprint here some of the advice which I gave him. Perhaps some of you readers also have a book in you. I'm no expert but still very much a beginner writing but here was my advice;

I will tell you what I have discovered about writing. I would frequently, throughout my life, begin writing something but then go back and read it and be so discouraged by what I had written that I would abandon any further writing and destroy the evidence of my crapness. I didn't realise that the first draft of any manuscript is allowed to be terrible and nobody needs to see it. It is only after the first draft is finished that you go back and make it readable.

Writing a book takes time and a lot of energy. For example, the first email you sent me yesterday seem to have over 200 words in it. If you made yourself write 200 hundred words everyday about your story in one year you will have over 70,000 words which is a very respectable sized book. You may find that you write a lot more than 200 words a day. The main thing though is that you continue writing until the project is finished. This may take years.

The important thing when you are writing the first draft is not to read what you have written and don't attempt to edit it, at least that has been my experience. If you want you can record any changes you wish to make in a notebook but don't mess around with the manuscript itself. It will only likely discourage you. When you have finished the first draft of the manuscript you can tell people that you have written a book if you want (but I would advise against showing this first draft to anyone).

After you finish the first draft of the manuscript is when the real hard work begins for many people. It may take many rewrites to get it to a place where you feel that it is readable, but the fact that you have written a first draft should be motivation enough to keep you going. When you reread your first draft you may feel a bit discouraged about how crap it is. This is normal.

When I was writing about the temple I felt driven to get it finished. Telling my story felt more important to me than how crap my writing was. As you say, when you do something from the heart it just feels right. I ignored the above advice and just published as I went along. I would write a chapter most days and publish it as part of my blog on the internet. Very little time was spent on editing. People began reading my blog and some provided positive comments and this motivated me to finish the thing. It was only when I had finished that I realised that I had the basis of a book.

I later went back and reread the whole blog and was a bit disappointed with the standard of the writing. . I spent months rewriting the whole thing and this led to the book. I don't know if I would have the nerve to do this blog method of writing a book again.

I am currently writing another book, two in fact. This time I am just concentrating on getting the first drafts written and not showing it to anybody.

I really wish you all the best with your writing.
Get your arse in the chair and don't expect yourself to be the next Stephen King.
The joy is in writing the damn thing. If it helps somebody else or it gets published is a big bonus.

I have found the following podcasts helpful.
If you have itunes you can easily download them all or you can listen online.

http://isbw.murlafferty.com/
http://www.writingshow.com/

There are plenty more if you search the internet.

I would also advise that if you have time, and can't do it already, that you learn to touch-type.
There are plenty webpages and free programs on the internet to teach you how to do this.

Paul