Gold9:

Golden Rule No. 9

Writing every day makes you

a better writer in every way

If you want to be taken seriously as a writer, you must write something every day even if it's a letter or an e-mail. Ernest Hemingway used to warm up every day by writing a letter to his publisher or a loved one.

You can warm up by taking the Postcard Challenge, which I have set up in the hope that you will keep coming back to my web site to get your creative juices working.

I personally write a minimum of 1,000 words a day and an average of 3,500. I invariably used to write at the crack of dawn until breakfast, then for three hours up to lunch; took a quick nap and then wrote until an evening dinner, and rounded off with two hours before going to bed.

These days I help my darling wife with her four-times-a-day home dialysis treatment and fit my writing schedule in with her needs. As you can imagine, we have had to make great changes in our everyday lives since my wife suffered renal failure, but writing has been like a blessing for me.

I have still been able to earn, and I find that writing is a wonderful form of escapism. It has helped me handle what has been an enormously stressful time. When my head hits the pillow I am thinking ahead to the next chapter, and when I wake up the next morning the first paragraphs are nearly always waiting to pour out on to the page.

There is a simple tip about how to go about writing a book that will at first seem laughable, but I promise it makes sense:

Always start with the first word, and then write the second word, then the third until you have completed your first sentence.

Then write the first word of the next sentence ... and continue in this way until you have finished your first chapter. Then write the first word of your second chapter, then the second word ... and so on and so on until you have finished the book.

Then read what you have written, and start to rewrite where necessary.

This sounds stupid and obvious, but I assure you it is good advice. Writing a book is like walking. You must first of all take that first step. One written word after the other. Hillary could not have conquered Everest without that first step. Armstrong could not have reached the Moon without taking that first step towards the spaceship. Shakespeare could not have written any of his works without committing the first word to parchment.

So, please, get that first word down and that first sentence ... and that first paragraph. You can always rewrite it later. But until you have got the first word down, the book will stay locked in your head.

First of all, decide on your storyline. Jot it down in summary form, a chapter at a time. Then take each summary and build it up into three or four thousands words for each chapter. There are no hard and fast rules about how many words to a chapter. Just enough and no more is another piece of stupid-sounding but invaluable advice.

If you are writing a novel, think of the people and events you know, and then if necessary exaggerate them. If you write about bores, your book will be boring. Try to think of an angle that gives it, for want of a better word, a novel twist. If you are using real people in your imagination, make sure you have disguised them by the time they are transferred to the page (see the legal eagle advice in Golden Rule 18).

There was a popular theory among writers and some literary critics in the 1970s that novels did not need stories. I was pleased to see that theory being trampled on towards the end of the 20th Century because I am the old fashioned sort who thinks that a book should have a good beginning, a good middle and a good end.

Never worry about letting your imagination take you off in a different direction to that in your outline, provided of course you have the skill to follow the thought process through to a conclusion that makes sense to your reader and is an improvement on your original concept.

Decide where you are going to base your story. For instance, if you are writing a book about the Money Market you need to choose between Wall Street, the City of London or the exotic world of the Far East. Use the background that you know best. Get each scene in your mind as if it is appearing on the screen in a film, and then type it into your word processing program (or, if you prefer, write it down on paper).

I am an exceptionally quick writer, probably because of my background as a reporter having to deliver to a tight deadline. I give myself the target of a chapter a day, which is usually 4-5,000 words. Then I go back over every sentence and edit and re-write until I am happy. I rarely take more than 25 days to complete a book. Most other writers I talk to like to take much longer, but I am programmed to write quickly. As my critics might point out: I am a quick but not a quality writer.

To give you an example of my speed, in 1996 I was commissioned to write six comedy novels based on the Carry On films. That was the good news. The bad news was that all six were needed at the printers within three months. I met my deadline with two weeks to spare: six books, 450,00 words. Mind you, they enraged many Carry On buffs who felt my novels were less than satisfactory. There were a few others who considered them little masterpieces..

The novels have been the source of much debate on Andy Davidson's magnificent www.carryonline.com website, where my Carry On Abroad novel is currently being published. You can get some idea of my standard of writing, and you can decide whether you are wise listening to any advice from me! You can also discover how a professional-looking web site should be presented.

I considered myself a quick writer until I learned about a 19th Century scribe called Ingraham, who responded to an urgent call from his publisher by writing a 33,000 word story within 24 hours. No typewriter or word processor for him. He wrote it all in longhand.

At his peak, crime writer John Creasey used to average 10,000 words a day and gave himself a target of 12 books a year.

Something to bear in mind if you are serious about entering the world of authorship is that you should grow a second skin. Several of my books have been ripped to shreds by Fleet Street hatchet men who have never had a sniff of a publisher's contract. You have to learn to take criticism on the chin and come back writing.

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, "You can please some of the readers some of the time but not all of the readers all of the time." There is not an author on this planet who can satisfy everybody. Shakespeare, the Master, has as many people who cannot abide his work as those who adore it.

But remember, Shakespeare used to have a thoroughly researched background to his plays. Sound and detailed research is an absolute priority as is revealed in Golden Rule No 10.

The golden rule is write every day ... and get that first word, that first sentence, that first paragraph down. You cannot start without them.