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So, you want to be a writer.

It can be daunting to know how to get started as a writer. A lot of us feel we can write, know we can write – or better yet, know we can’t not write. We love the unfolding of stories beneath our pens, the spray of words across a computer screen, the sound of imagery narrated in our heads. We are story-tellers, truth-seekers, teachers, and sharers of life’s joys and sorrows, beauties and uglinesses.

But there’s a huge gap between scribbling our thoughts in a journal or writing a couple of essays in a college class and actually being a writer. I know I’ll be contradicted by… well, by everyone on the Internet trying to make a buck selling you their Super-Amazing Get-Rich-Quick-Writing-from-Home System for only $97 or $297 or $497, but while writing may come easily to you (and it doesn’t especially matter if it doesn’t), actually being a writer is hard, hard work. Not the hardest ever, but hard enough.

I don’t say this to discourage you, or to test your mettle, or anything like that. I want you to be a writer. Or I want you to at least have given it a shot, to have at least tried it on – better that you try and fail than to not become a writer out of fear, laziness, or simple lack of knowledge. But if you’re going to become a writer, I’d like you to be prepared for the long haul, and all those scammy “anyone can write” programs and products do a piss-poor job of preparing would-be writers for the job of actually writing.

So this series, which I intend to be 4 posts long (but that’s subject to change if I feel like it), will look at what it takes to get into writing as a professional pursuit. The goal is to take you from getting started to the point where you’re just getting your feet under you and “standing up” in the writing world. I hope you won’t quit your job and hole up with this blog and a stack of legal pads – writing is a dangerous career and all writers have to make sure they have a steady, reliable income, whether at a “day job”, through an established network of publishers and editors, or via a constant stream of freelance commercial work.

Building Up Your Chops

The first step you need to take if you’re going to become a writer is to build up the basic skills you’ll need to write well. If you dream of becoming a writer, you might already feel you write pretty well – get over yourself. While you may have a way with words, there is no writer who can’t do with a little improvement (read in most cases: “a lot of improvement”) .

Learning to write well is more than just learning command of grammar, structure, and narration – though those are all important. On top of that, you need to learn the jargon of your new industry – what a “dek”, “lede”, and “nut graf” are; the difference between a novella and a novelette; the ins and outs of direct submissions vs. using an agent; how to write a query letter or proposal; how to identify an appropriate market for your work; and so on.

That’s not to say you  shouldn’t be writing while you’re learning. By all means, write! But make sure you’re working on the other stuff too. Taking writing classes and workshops, reading books about writing, and blogging are all ways to build up your basic writing chops – get into them!

Take classes

If you have the time and money, you might consider pursuing a college degree in creative writing or journalism. While the jury’s out on whether these programs are a fast-track to fame and riches – or even to publication – the skills you learn will certainly help you in whatever path you decide to pursue as a writer.

However, a college degree is by no means essential – plenty of writers, even most writers, don’t have a degree in writing, and many don’t have any degrees at all.

But the classroom experience can be quite useful – you’ll get some feedback (at least from your instructor; students are supposed to give feedback but somewhat notoriously most do not, or give useless feedback) and you’ll have ample opportunity to push your skills into unknown territory.

Your local community college probably has dozens of writing classes you can take for usually rock-bottom process. Semester-long for-credit courses at the community college I teach at run about $130.

Community colleges, and many universities as well, also offer shorter not-for-credit courses through their adult extension programs. These courses might meet only once or twice a week for 6 weeks or every other Wednesday for two months or whatever. Because they are intended for adults they often offer courses in the evenings and on weekends to accommodate working schedules.

Other options include the Learning Annex if they have it in your city, local writing conferences (which often offer workshops as part of the program), or short programs offered nationally with 2-4 weeks residency.

Books

These are some of my favorite books on writing, the ones I’ve found most useful over the years.

• William Zinsser, On Writing Well: This book is my go-to book for writerly style. With clear, likeable language, Zinsser spells out how to craft solid, readable, and stylish prose. This book is a joy to read, and I find myself “dipping in” quite regularly when I need a dose of inspiration.
• Stephen King: On Writing: Easily one of the best books ever about the process of writing. You don’t have to be a fan of King (I’m not) to recognize that the man knows how to write in ways that reach deep into the hearts and souls of readers. Here he gives advice both on how to reach your audience and how to structure your life as a writer – all wrapped up in an inspiring and at times heartbreaking auto-biography of King’s own writing journey.
• Robert Bly: Secrets of a Freelance Writer: Although intended for aspiring freelance writers – and particularly for commercial writers – Bly offers plenty of advice about managing your career as a writer, as well as very strong tips on crafting persuasive language.
• Michelle Ruberg: Handbook of Magazine Article Writing: This is on my list because this is closest to the kind of writing I do, and the direction my own career is heading in. Covers the nuts and bolts of coming up with ideas, pitching stories, and working with editors, as well as the steps to research and write a compelling article (most of which would apply to any non-fiction writing).
• Philip Martin: The New Writer’s Handbook (2007): A collection of articles all offering practical advice on everything from tracking your writing goals to brainstorming ideas to building your author’s website. There are articles about every possible kind of writing in here, which means plenty for everyone.

You’ll notice the absence of Elements of Style. I own it, of course, but I find that I almost never open it – and have never just sat down with it and soaked it all in. Your mileage may vary, of course – Stephen King swears by it, and will lay a curse on any writer so full of pride as to not own a copy (I just squeak in under the wire on that one!), so it’s probably worth your while to at least have a copy. I just can’t promise you’ll learn much from it.

Blogging

I’ve been pretty vocal about why writers should blog, but in this context, the important thing is that blogging a) gives you a regular outlet to practice writing, b) puts work (potentially) in front of an audience and therefore invites feedback, and c) helps build your “platform”, that collection of marketable qualities that make up your salability as a writer. (I’ll talk more about platform later in this series.)

The Passion Test

One of the side-benefits of investing time and energy into improving your writing is that it functions as a kind of self-test of your passion for writing. This is important because, contrary to our idealistic desires, a lot of writing is a deadly slog through idea-less wastelands. If you’re going to do commercial or journalistic writing, you’ll find yourself writing about topics you could not care less about – and it had better be scintillating prose. If you’re going to write novels or non-fiction books, there will come a day when you absolutely do not care one whit about what happens next.

What’s more, while you might have plenty of ideas right now, you’ll use them up – and without passion, it can be damned hard to come up with new ones. Even worse, you’ll find that the ideas you do have simply don’t interest you any more.

Then there’s all the dull-work. Oh, yeah, it’s not all martinis and nymphomaniac fans in the writing world. There’s a lot of bookkeeping, doing taxes, filing, networking, filling out obscure paperwork (non-disclosure agreements, publication contacts, image licenses, etc.), legal mumbo-jumbo, and so on – all the stuff that you probably thought you were escaping by becoming a “creative person”. Oh, no no no – in fact, given a writer’s income and lack of institutional support, you are probably going  o be doing more business stuff than any business person you know. And if you don’t have a real passion for the writing, for the whole kit-and-kaboodle of the writing life beyond the simple act of putting word to paper, you won’t make it.

Next time: Breaking into the writing world.

And here’s the kicker — your commission ranges from 4% to 8.5%, which means that, depending on how many sales you achieve and what your agreement with your publisher is, you may end up making more from Amazon sales than you do from your royalties! Look:

Royalties: If you sell a book at $19.99, and get 5% of the wholesale price (usually 60% of the cover price), you’ll make .05 x .60 x $19.99 = $0.60. If you sell 100 copies, you’ll make $60 in royalties.
Amazon Associates: The same book might be marked down at Amazon to $15.99. If you sell one copy, you get 4% of 15.99, which is $0.64. If you sell 100 books, your commission is 6.5%, which nets you $1.04 per copy, or $104 for 100 books. Of course, you still get royalties on those books, too.

To create a link, you can log into your Amazon Associates account and select from dozens of “Widgets”, including ones that will scan your page and automatically create banners targeted towards the keywords on your page (it’s called Omakase). I don’t generally like their widgets, though they’re ok as ads to run in your site’s sidebar. Usually, I create links manually, by adding my associate ID to the end of the URL for a product page. Here’s how:

1. Search for a product. For illustration, we’ll use my book Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War.
2. Go to the product’s main page and copy it’s URL. For my book, it’s: http://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-at-Dawn-Cold-War/dp/0745325866/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203705368&sr=8-1
3. See that string of numbers after the title and before where it says “ref=pd_bbs_sr_1…”? We only need the link up to there, so cut everything after the slash.
4. The new URL looks like this: http://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-at-Dawn-Cold-War/dp/0745325866/
5. That’s enough to find the book with, but it doesn’t have my associate ID attached yet. My associate ID code is “dwax-20”, and I’ll just add it to the end — Amazon is really good at picking out your associates ID.
6. The new URL looks like this: http://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-at-Dawn-Cold-War/dp/0745325866/dwax-20. Clicking that link will take you to the exact same page, but I’ll get credit if you buy the book. In fact, I’ll get credit if you decide not to buy it and buy something else, instead, as long as you entered the site using my link.

Barnes and Noble also has an affiliate program, if you prefer working with them for whatever reason. I find Amazon’s to be far more useful (in terms of providing value to website visitors) but in the end, it’s links to books — and whichever company you feel offers the best combination of value and compensation should get your traffic. Borders recently “divorced” Amazon, launching it’s own online bookstore after several years of fulfilling orders through Amazon. Their affiliate program, then, is only just getting off the ground, but if you prefer Borders, that’s the way to go.

Use your affiliate link wherever you promote your book — on your website, in your email signature, on forums, anywhere you can paste a link. Obviously the vast majority of your sales will not come from you telling people where to find your book, but if you’re an active promoter, a significant number of sales will come from your link, which will be a nice bonus above your regular royalties — and you won’t have to wait a year to collect, either.

Turns out, very hard. Indexing is not a simple exercise in any way; each entry has to be thoughtful and necessary, the best way to find a specific piece of information. You have to imagine who might use your book and what kind of information they might seek, and then predict how they might seek that information. You have to weigh every keyword — every name, theory, book title, event, place, organization, etc. — to decide whether its use in the text is significant enough to direct people to it. Like I said, it’s hard work, and much more an art than a science. (Incidentally, indexes are copyrighted works, which reflects their status as an original expression of thought.)

In the end, I did the index, and I think I did a pretty good job of it. I started by using index cards (that is their name, after all) but that got old really fast, so I developed my own system using a notepad, Excel, and Word. Here’s how:

1. Go through each chapter of proofs, writing down each word you feelcould be in the index, followed by the page(s) on which it appeared. Use a pen and paper for this, and allow plenty of latitude on whether or not a term should end up in the index — you’ll winnow later.
2. After an initial pass through the book, make a second pass to catch any terms you don’t decide to include until a later chapter.
3. One chapter at a time, copy the word lists into Excel. One column for each keyword, and another for the page numbers (multiple instances separated by paragraphs). For subheadings, put the main heading, followed by a dash, followed by the subheading, like this:
   

   Steward, Julian — as Columbia professor

4. After each page is entered, sort on the keyword column. All the subheadings sort together because they share the same first part (the heading).
5. As you enter each page, check to see if there is already an entry for each term and add the page numbers to that, or add a new entry at the bottom if this is the first time the term appears. If you make a mistake and add a duplicate, no big deal, because when you sort, the duplicates will end up next to each other and can be easily identified and combined.
6. Enter a page, sort, enter a page, sort, and on and on until done.
7. Check to see if there are any duplicate entries and combine them: cut and paste the page numbers from one into the other’s entry, and delete the now-empty row.
8. Now, edit. For any entry that has more than 5 or 6 page references, consider adding sub-headings. For any entry that has only one or two page references, check to make sure the mention is significant. Review each entry and decide whether it is the best way to find the information it points to. Add cross-references (“Anti-communism, see McCarthyism”; “see also Columbia University”). This is real editing of real writing — you have to be sure that every word adds to the value of the piece, just as you would if this were a novel, short story, or essay.
9. Once all the entries are in order and you’re satisfied that your index is both thorough and accurate, copy and paste the two columns into Word. Use “Paste Special” to paste as unformatted text (otherwise it will paste as a table).
10. Clean up the formatting, adjust the text size and font, make everything look nice, and you’re done.

Signing up is a little tricky. You have to have an Amazon account, which is easy enough — who doesn’t have one, these days? Once you’ve logged in on the Amazon Connect page, it will send you an email to verify your email address. You click the link, return to Amazon Connect, and continue. You’ll have to “claim” your books — you can claim anything you’re the author of or have a chapter in, from what I understand. This is handled using a nifty little search bar — search your name, and click “add” to claim which ever titles in the results are yours.

Here’s the tricky part — you need a third party — an agent, a publisher, or an editor — to verify your “ownership” of the title. Once you’ve added a title, there’s a little “Select verifier” button; clicking it brings up a form to add your verifier’s contact information — name, company, email, and phone. I chose my editor. They’ll contact your verifier (hint: your verifier might not know about Amazon Connect, so best to tip them off to expect to hear from Amazon) and once you’ve been vouched for, you’re ready to go.

Now, here’s something nice: you can add your blog’s RSS feed! Which means your latest posts on your blog will appear on Amazon — which is nice for me, since I talk about my work a lot in my personal blog (dwax.org, if you care). Of course, if you post stuff on your site that would be out of place on Amazon — maybe you write erotica and children’s books, and keep an erotica blog — it might be a bad idea to use your blog’s feed… You can still add posts directly to your page from inside Amazon, whether or not you also import your blog posts.

It takes a while to verify your account, but you can log into your profile page and start adding pictures, a bio, and even posts immediately (although posts won’t show up until your account is verified). If you’re self-published, check with your printer or publishing service to see if there’s someone there who can verify your authorship — I’m not sure exactly how that works (if anyone’s had any luck with that, let me know in the comments).

Amazon Connect seems like a great deal for published writers — although naturally it only allows you to reach out to Amazon shoppers. I don’t know if other online book stores will follow suit, but if they do, hopefully they’ll all allow you to import posts from your blog’s RSS feed. I could see setting up a new blog for each book and feeding posts to several online bookstores from that single point. I can’t see logging into several different bookstores on anything like a regular basis and creating new posts for all of them — sounds like a logistical nightmare. That said, it might be what’s needed, since few publishers offer much in the way of marketing these days except to their top sellers. Since Amazon is clearly the #1 online bookseller, a little effort there might go a long ways towards making up for the lack of marketing from your publisher.

Note: I know that many authors are upset with Amazon over their poor treatment of self-publishers. Some are boycotting Amazon and focusing on B&N or Borders to promote their work. I’m sympathetic to that cause, but if you have a traditionally-published book, you can’t afford to ignore Amazon sales. If Borders or B&N offer a similar service, I’d recommend using theirs, too, but Amazon is, as far as I can tell, the only one to offer something like this.