How I write

After publishing Molokai Reef (MR), my son Darren asked for any advice on writing his Sci-fi novel.

 

My 2 cents on writing - in no particular order...

 

1.  Just write, don't edit.  It's easier to go back and edit rather than write new material.  The problem that I've discovered is that I often delete paragraphs, characters, and/or chapters that I've written.  So what's the point in editing if they end up in the trash bin?

2.  Just write.  In MR and TLP (a book I'm writing now), I find the characters that evolve during novel-creation as the most important or most interesting are rarely the ones that I thought would be interesting.  In TLP, for instance, a driver for the Lieutenant Governor was just a driver - - - then he evolved into a key character.

 

3.  Don't measure progress by page count.  Page count, as you know, is a function of formating, font size, and leading.  From my research, traditional novels fall into the 60k to 100k range.  I aim for 80k.  MR is 80,878 per SmashWords (I don't recall Open Office's count.)

 

4.  I wrote MR with MS Word while I was in Hawaii, but the final version was tweaked with Open Office.  I am using O-O to write TLP

 

5. O-O is missing a grammar checker.  I've found grammar checkers very useful.  The O-O people, when I checked, either claim to never make grammatical mistakes or feel that including it would be copying a Word feature.  They are EXTREMELY anti-Microsoft.

 

6.  How to format the novel?  If you plan to submit your novel to traditional publishers via an agent, then you can download the submittal format from the agent's web site.  I self-published and every site is different.  For the Kindle, Amazon wants simple HTML.  SmashWords wanted an MS Doc format.  Createspace, an Amazon subsidiary that published the paperback edition, wanted pdf.  As you can imagine, e-book readers don't want the usual book format - no headers or footers, no extra lines for spacing purposes other than the chapter title, etc.

 

Good luck - and remember:  JUST WRITE!

 

(Image from Sara Paretsky's blog (author of V.I. Warshawski novels - terrific books set in Chicago.)