I Don’t Think I’m Ready To Write A Book

Table of Contents

• Crumbled Like A Crunchy Cookie
• Focusing On…
• Starting Over Again
• Up Next…

Writing stories is my thing. But honestly, my stories aren’t that good (yet). I often have great story moments, but I need those moments to be cohesive parts of an amazing story. Not for those ‘moments’ to be the only good thing about my stories.

But how did I get here, writing this post after a year plus of blogging about the stories that I’m writing?

Well, last week I was re-reading my old stories and my writing cracked me up ( another way to say that I was laughing really hard). The story concepts have great potential but geez, the writing is comically poor.

Out of everything I read my favorite line is from a scene that I wrote for a class prompt. The scene is about someone who runs for the first time. More specifically a man who runs in his new prosthetic legs and then falls. The line was this…

“I crumbled like a crunchy cookie”.

I remember aiming to write an immersive and energetic kind of scene where my readers can get a glimpse of what the protagonist feels while running. Yet reading it with fresh eyes, I’m not sure that crumbling like a cookie fits his fall. I thought the simile had a nice sound to it. And yeah, the ck sound is doing something with the c’s and the k in the word like. But the simile is just not as good as I thought it was. It may sound nice but it doesn’t create the best image.

-Side note: Is that even how you spell the ck sound? Is it k or ck?

Anyway, after reading some more terrible metaphors and empty lines, I realized that I may not be ready to write a full story at the very least, and definitely not a novel. And I don’t know why I thought I could. Knowing all that I know now if someone asked me how to be an author, I’d tell them to start by getting good at writing and to keep writing before going after publishing anything.

For some writers that season of getting good at writing could take months or years. However long it takes, there needs to be some season for focusing on (some level of) mastery in the art of writing before actively working toward publishing a book or piece. The great thing is after you get good at writing these earlier practice pieces can be edited and published in some way.

So getting good at writing needs to be my focus before I set my sights on writing a book. With the right starting goal, I may just write a good book on accident.

That line, the one about falling like a cookie, is from about 1 year or 2 ago and I’ve gotten much better since then. It would be unfair to say that I’m not ready to write a book based on one piece of old work. But the thing is, I noticed a lot of the same flaws in my recent work. Not so much with similies, thank God, but things like sentence structure, cohesiveness, tying story elements and scenes together, transitioning from one story part to the next, and so on.

While I am very excited about my progress, focusing on writing a book instead of on learning how to write very well, has still left me decently behind.

But luckily all it takes is a quick change in focus. So now, I am officially no longer focusing on writing a book ( my debut ) until I can get my writing to a level that I am comfortable with. Until then I want to focus on improving the quality of my writing. I can’t write a book, successfully publish a piece, or gain any sort of readership if my writing and stories aren’t good or at least decent. And while more writing will help with this, I have some specific things I want to start with.

With any sort of bettering, the basics are phenomenal references. Based on what I’ve read from my work so far, here is what I want to start improving and working at…

And in order to get a good grip on these basic things I’ll

I think I’ll also use story prompts to practice these basics. If you’ve read this post then you already know my opinion on story prompts. It’s still the same and this is a great example of something story prompts are great for: practicing stories and story aspects.

To some extent, I’m starting over again. For 2023 I was set on revamping things like my blog content and newsletter but I did not plan to go back to the basics in creative writing/fiction/story writing. But if going back is what it takes to move forward then I guess I’m back to the basics.

And after a good while of trying to write a book, I’ve learned that it’s best to start my writing career by first getting good at writing.

A lesson learned for sure.

Up Next…

This post is the perfect segway for my next post.

The last thing for me to introduce is myself. Which would technically be a re-introduction. As January closes and I get ready to get into new content I really want to close out the month by re-doing an updated version of my writer goals. So look out for the introductory post on the third and final theme/grand topic on this blog: The Writer.

In the next post, I’ll re-introduce myself, go over new/refined writer goals, and lay out my plan for success.

And of course, on Saturday I may publish a Writing This Week (WTW)

If you made it to the end of this post share as you please, comment what you feel, and be on the lookout for news on the revamped newsletter.