How does one salve one’s conscience when one doesn’t actually feel like writing? I’ve begun to think the answer is books on writing. Maybe not creating them because that’s, like, writing, but COLLECTING them is certainly one of the best forms of procrastination going. I have shelves of the suckers. But how useful are they? Once you’re past the “how to format a manuscript” stage, and you know all about grammar, spelling, and punctuation, what can these tomes do for you besides make one look very writerly?

As far as I can tell, these books fall into a few categories. There are reference works for writers: handy-dandy guides to poisons, what happens at a crime scene, how to survive in the Regency era, etc. It’s pretty easy to figure out which of these you need and they are by far my favourite type. Just the facts in small words that even writers can understand. Here are two I go to again and again:

Then there are writing guides that are structure-focussed books. How to write mysteries/ horror/ romance/ bestsellers, etc. Mileage on these varies hugely. I’ve yet to find a really good one on horror. And, even when these guides are good, they need to be applied with common sense. Take romance for instance: Are you really going to use the same approach for writing a Harlequin Presents as for a dark paranormal romance? Hmm—the Cowboy Vampire Firefighter’s Secret Baby Werewolf Surprise?

For good genre-fiction techniques in general, I personally like Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass and Bob Mayer’s incomparable Toolkit.

There are books about finding one’s writing inspiration, but I’ve never been inspired to pick them up.

There are also myriad books about individual issues, like dialogue, description, character and so forth. I suppose that one could fill a book with a minute examination about one of these topics, but I’m not sure I’d want to read it. The best straight-up advice I’ve found is in Stephen King’s On Writing. He has a fabulous way of getting right to the point. I’ve pulled more nuggets out of this volume than any other, and only half of it is how-to.

I’m sure there are plenty of other fabulous choices, and some might be gathering dust, unread, on my shelf. The point is that I think once you’ve found those craft guides that resonate with your process, those are the keepers. It won’t be the same list for everyone, and that’s okay.

It takes me forever to write a proposal. I’m fairly sure my agent just doesn’t believe me anymore when I say that I’m going to produce one.

It’s not laziness on my part, nor is it lack of ideas. It’s trying to connect my germ of a concept with the finished product. There are a lot of obstacles, not the least is which requiring great tracts of time to ponder the whole thing and answer some key questions.

One number one: what genre is this? For some, this is easy. For me, not so much. I tend to write in between, around, or hopping to and fro genres because that interests me. It tends not to interest industry professionals quite so much, despite their vaunted love of mash-ups. Eventually one has to settle on what a proposed book MOSTLY is, just so folks know where to file it. If one colours too far outside the lines, the marketplace tends to shy away. Sucks, but true.

Two: who is the main character? The standard answer is “whoever changes the most.” I’d rather say: “whoever I think I can stand hanging around my head for the next six months.” The point is things get a lot easier if you have one focal character, even in a romance. If, like me, you are prone to ensemble casts, it becomes critical. One very important reason is that readers like to have a character to cheer for. The more time they spend with the protagonist, the more sympathy has a chance to build. It’s not that the other characters aren’t nice people, but readers like that familiar touchstone.

Three: how much world do I really need to build for just a proposal? Um, all of it? The more unfamiliar the landscape, the more work has to be invested. This is what sucker punched me on the current WIP. I finished the first draft of the first fifty pages last night and realized those gaping holes were due to bad preparation. I hadn’t made enough decisions about the universe, so (shockingly) it didn’t manifest on the page. I had created universe lite (all of the cosmos, none of the gravity) and it worked about as well as artificial sweetener. An easy fix, but it goes to show sloppy doesn’t pay.

So, yes, it is possible to spend hours working on your book without actually writing a word. You need to dream up a world, decide on your market, research your market, and ponder your cast list before much else happens. This is why it is entirely permissible to sock someone who sneers at your paltry page count and says, “Gee, you’ve been at this for ages and is that all you got done?” Grrrr.

Better yet (and more productive than outright homicide), keep a notebook of these decisions so that progress is still measurable. Check off what choices you’ve made and jot down why. Word count isn’t everything, but work accomplished certainly deserves reward.

Lately I’ve been dipping into my someday-I-gotta-read list of classics and catching up on gems like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Valley of Fear and Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. They’re novels written for pure entertainment. Sure, some things about them are dated, but as adventure yarns they stand the test of time. There’s ticking clocks, secrets, comedy, conflict, exotic scenery, betrayal and heroism.

These books break a great many “rules” espoused by today’s fiction-writing experts. Not that Doyle and Verne would necessarily care. They must have been doing something right to stay in print for at least a hundred years—but we do see some things in the nineteenth-century novel we don’t see much of in today’s pulp fiction.

Point of view is one. The Victorians weren’t shy about using the wide-angle storytelling lens, aka the omniscient view. With that, an all-seeing narrator sets forth long passages of description about a location, society, or milieu. It makes me think of an opening sequence of a movie, where the camera lovingly pans over the countryside to set the scene before the star enters the picture. Today, we’re told get into the action and deep POV as soon as possible. That’s great, but there’s something to be said for taking time to set the scene.

Another interesting difference is that the authors way back when weren’t shy about what we’d call authorial intrusion. That is, the author expresses their opinion about what’s going on in the story, sometimes very directly. While I’m less tolerant of this, I’m forced to admit that part of Dickens’ unmistakable touch is his personal opinions—be it around social injustice or the right kind of Christmas office party. Though these interjections would be chopped out now, his exhortations add a huge amount of character to his books.

Another custom fading into the sunset is a certain level of narrative complexity. Even in the seventies, there were sprawling best-sellers with a bazillion characters, all with their own points of view and story arcs. In genre fiction, these days (and, yes, this is a sweeping generalization with significant exceptions) we get the hero, heroine, maybe villain, and rarely anyone else. And, they’re generally focussed on one main storyline with only piddling subplots. Even juicy double couple romances are becoming hard to find. Why the push to keep it simple? After all, readers aren’t stupid and surely could follow more than one story arc.

Probably there are many reasons, and some of it is undoubtedly just our current tastes. One, I’m sure, is the price of paper. More complex = more pages = more expensive. Not a good thing unless you’re an ebook.

Anyway, I’m not saying these older practices are better or worse, just that it’s interesting that some very successful and long-lived stories don’t adhere to the current concept of “good” writing. This may seem obvious. However, my experience reading some older works was a bit of “wow, this is different” combined with “huh, that works okay.” And it also reminds me that storytelling comes with a very full toolkit. Surprise and variety are good. As writers, we shouldn’t forget that.