Just write

There’s a question that aspiring fiction writers such as myself like to ask successful fiction writers:

“Do you have any advice for me?”

I don’t know what we expect to hear - maybe something like, “Hold your head sideways for better reception from the muse.” But the answers I see are pretty basic.

Stick with it. Don’t get discouraged by rejection. But most of all – sit down and write. 

In the late 1990s I had the pleasure of meeting David Drake at a book signing in Virginia. He was at the time my favorite author, and I still consider him to be the best military sci-fi writer around.  He’s also one of the most prolific in his field.

According to Drake, one of the secrets of his success is that he writes for eight hours a day every day. It doesn’t matter if he’s sick, if he’s got other things to do, or if he doesn’t feel like writing. He sits down and he writes.

In 1997, Pete Abrams began publishing an online comic called SluggyFreelance. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth your time, but be warned – you’ll have to read more than 6,000 of them to catch up because Abrams has been publishing daily … for 17 years.   

In a 2010 interview, Abrams said, “When I started, I knew that most businesses took two to three years to become profitable—I heard that at some point. And when I started the strip, I made it daily and I treated it like it was my profession before it was paying me full-time.”

Abrams has missed a few strips here and there, and he often uses filler on the weekends and holidays. But he’s published a comic almost every day for the past decade and a half.

Drake and Abrams are both top-shelf writers and storytellers. It’s hard to say how much of that comes from honing their craft each and every day, but it’s a good bet that all of the practice has helped. If you do something all the time you’re going to get better at it – and if you neglect something, it’s never going to improve … or even get done at all. 

I’ve been dreaming of being a fiction writer ever since I was in my 20s, but something else has always come up. No regrets here – I wouldn’t be the person I am without the experiences of the past two decades. But now that I am collaborating with my co-author on my first real fiction book, I try to make it a point to remind myself every day how important it is to do the simplest thing possible.

Just sit down and write.