How to be a Writer: Equipping for the Boss Battle

In this installment, I’m going to talk about the tools you need to be a writer, a topic I’m not an expert on at all.

In my origin story, I explained that after I’d left my previous job, it took me three weeks to get the motivation to actually start writing. After days of drifting in a sea of procrastination, I finally woke up one morning to see the Land of Motivation on the horizon. I told myself this was going to be the day. The dawn of a new era! I could feel success in my soul! Or maybe I just really needed to pee, because I always drink too much hot chocolate before I go to bed! Either way, I got out of bed pretty early, which means it was before 10 am.

Eager to get started, I brewed six cups of coffee and fed my cat before he exploded. (If you have a cat, you understand the urgency with which you have to feed your cat in the morning. Their fragile lives are held in a delicate balance during the four to eight hours in which you are sleeping. It’s only with the right combination of frantic meowing, face-pawing, and aggressive door-clawing that they can unlock the breakfast prize, thus prolonging their tenuous existence for a few more hours.)

("O proud death, What feast is toward in thine eternal cell???")

Then I ate some store brand Captain Crunch and scrolled through social media and my email for about an hour.

Then I got “dressed” into a different pair of stretchy pants and a different pair of socks from what I’d slept in, because how you dress really sets the tone for how you want to perform at your job. So I picked my most comfortable yoga apparel, but I live with my boyfriend, therefore I make sure all the colors match because it’s still important to make an aesthetic effort when you’re in a relationship.

Three hours later, I was ready to get started.

I sat down at my computer and rested my fingers on the keyboard. I could feel the inspiration just flowing through me. I knew exactly what I needed to write. With a deep breath, I began, my fingers flying across the keyboard. What felt like seconds later, I sat back and read what I’d written.

It was perfect.

“How to be a writer,” I’d typed into the Google search bar.

I mean, everyone has to start somewhere, right? You can learn anything on the internet! In fact, like 90% of my search history is just me asking Google for life advice. From, “can cats eat tomato sauce?” to “can I do my own eyelash extensions?” (yes, and yes, but it’s really hard), the universe's collective wisdom is just a search bar away. I was confident that Google would teach me everything I needed to know in the next five minutes, and then I could spend the remainder of the day making in rain bestselling novel pages.

Spoiler alert: I did not learn how to be a writer in five minutes.

Basically every single Wiki how-to page and author blog said the same thing: “Just write!”

“You can talk about writing all day,” published authors advised smugly, “but to be a writer you actually need to write!” I wondered if publishers were just constantly inundated with authors submitting blank sheets of paper. I felt like I’d done a Google search for “how to be a professional racecar driver” and the advice was, “Drive a car really fast.”

(Apparently "writer" and "racecar driver" are not in the top four most desirable careers).

You know how they say guns don’t kill people, people kill people? That’s how Google works. EVERYTHING is on the internet. If you aren’t getting the results you want, the problem isn’t with the internet — the problem's that you’re asking the wrong question.

I was much more successful when I changed my search to, “What tools do I need to be a writer?” I got tons of results.

As I read through this endless trough of internet wisdom, I realized writing a book is basically just a boss battle. Because one of the first things you learn when you’re playing video games is you can’t just stroll into a boss battle with 40% HP and some broke-ass sword you picked up three levels ago. You need to know what you’re up against and equip appropriately. And save your fucking game, because you’re probably going to die a few times before you get it right.

("Uhh...I'm running if you are!"- Rikku, upon entering battle with Ultima Weapon)

It seems like every author's setup varies a little based on personal preference, but I found five common threads:

1) Coffee. I think we all know this already. If you want to be a writer it’s mandatory that you have some kind of substance abuse problem. Lots of writers pick coffee, but I guess there are variations — tea, Mountain Dew, those sparkling yerba mate cans that cost $3 each if you still have a day job and can afford it such luxuries. Whiskey is also a popular choice. When you level up and you get to be a really good writer, you can do lots of coke or get really into absinthe. Steven King used to do tons of cocaine and look at how many books he’s written! Fitzgerald basically wrote all of The Great Gatsby drunk off his ass! Charles Dickens smoked opium, and now every high school student until the end of time will be forced to read the cliff notes of Great Expectations to pass their 10th grade English class! The catch-22 is that obviously your writing gets better the more mentally and emotionally impaired you are, but drugs and fine liquors are really expensive so you kind of need to become a bestselling author before you can become a bestselling author with addiction issues. On a related note, Joseph Heller was stone cold sober when he wrote Catch-22 — but it took him 8 years. The bulk of The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde was written in six days (you guessed it: cocaine). If you’re wondering whether I just knew all this off the top of my head, the answer is I did an internet search for “authors with substance abuse problems,” and now I’m an expert. 

* For more juicy gossip about mostly dead people, here’s a list of “25 Great Writers Who Battled Drug Addiction and Alcoholism."

2) Scrivener. I could write a whole separate blog post on Scrivener — so I will next week. For now, here’s a little overview: Scrivener is a writing program. The best comparison I can come up with is that it’s like taking Microsoft Word, a bulletin board with 100 sticky notes on it, a 3-ring binder full of scribbled late-night ideas, and your Pinterest board, and then putting it all together in one program with auto-save and the inability to accidentally delete three years worth of work. 

Then when you’re finished with your masterpiece, Scrivener automatically compiles all your shit into manuscript format, so when you submit it for publication, the interns tasked with filtering out all the self-proclaimed “next Catcher in the Rye, but from the perspective of a hardcore Coldplay fan!” novels won’t laugh at your book and burn it. I used to do all my writing in MS Word like some commoner, but then I decided I was better than MS Word. And by “decided” I mean I bought my refurbished laptop for $250 off of Amazon, and it sure didn’t come fully equipped with MS Office. I honestly don’t know who can afford to buy Office — shouldn’t it be a basic human right?! I decided paying $40 for Scrivener is a much better investment, and I think the money just goes to a nice fellow and his small team of six freelance people in Cornwall. I skimmed through about half of the tutorial and it’s all written in classic dry English humor, so it’s got my stamp of approval.

3) Pinterest. I thought I was really creative when I started a Pinterest board of pictures that reminded me of characters and places in my books. I subsequently learned that most authors have some sort of “inspiration board,” whether it’s Pinterest or Tumblr or just hand-drawn sketches. Deviant Art is another treasure trove of fantasy ideas; talented artists spend their precious free time drawing pouting Elvish maiden warriors with blue hair so we can better visualize our characters! Or masturbate to them; I’m not really sure who their main audience is. I think it’s like 50/50, which is pretty good for the internet.

(For when you need just the right outfit that says, "Silicone isn't cheap in Middle Earth")

4) Books. I spent one afternoon just pawing through my romance novel and fantasy collection so I could pick out the books with a writing style and tone that was most similar to what I wanted to achieve with my own work. The problem: 80% of my book collection is on my Kindle.

 I’ve always believed in supporting authors by buying their books instead of borrowing them or buying them used, but another part of me believes in buying everything secondhand because I’m cheap. So aside from my Kindle collection, I only own actual books I’ve been able to hunt down at Goodwill (if you’re in Portland, the Goodwill on Cornell off of 26 has the best selection of romance novels). 

I also have a two reference books sitting next to my computer: “On Writing Romance” by Leigh Michaels (a how-to guide to the basics, which I paid real full-price dollars for), and “Thinking Like a Romance Writer: TheSensual Writer’s Sourcebook of Words and Phrases” by Dahlia Evans (for when you’re looking to find 90 words to describe nipples).

(It's also very educational.)

5) Music. I once read that Stephanie Meyer’s classic work, “Twilight,” the proto-masterpiece of YA romance, was written under the influence of a Muse CD. Think about that for a second: Muse is not a terrible band. I once saw Muse in concert and it was a pleasant evening (to be fair, I was trying to see their opener, Silversun Pickups, but my friends who shall not be named showed up super late and we barely got there in time to catch their final song. We’re still friends but it’s important to cling to trivial 8-year-old resentments for nostalgia’s sake). If you have seen the acclaimed motion picture adaptation of “Twilight,” you may also remember that a Muse song was featured on the soundtrack during the awkward vampire baseball scene, because that’s how Stephanie Meyer truly envisioned that scene going down when she was writing it. I don’t know how Muse felt about this, but I do know that Stephanie Meyer is rich now, and she probably got to meet Muse, a band she clearly loves (if she didn’t meet them at the time, she can now afford to buy the entire band and make them sing to her live while she writes). 

I think the takeaway lesson here is that authors should choose their writing music very carefully. One could choose to write in silence, but then when your book is adapted into film, your soundtrack will be chosen for you by Hollywood movie execs, and it’s going to be nothing but Flo Rida songs.

(Well, I guess now we know.)

****

Going into battle with these five essentials, I found I haven't needed very much else. Also optional: a space heater for cold feet, water (in a cup with a LID! — just trust me) to balance all the coffee, a cat to sit on your keyboard whenever you’re getting really productive, one of those microfiber dusters to get 16 lbs. of cat hair out of your keyboard, and headphones, so your roommates don’t hear that you’re just playing the same five songs over and over again.

Am I missing anything?

Writer friends: tell me what’s in YOUR writing toolkit!