In my apparently ongoing attempt to explain why amateur writers get it all so terribly wrong, we take a look at why so many go so completely wrong because they don’t have the slightest clue what they’re writing or why.

It really brings us to a dichotomy. Do you want to write to entertain yourself or do you want to write to entertain an audience?

Pick one!

I ran into this gem over on a writing forum which, recently, I’ve started to poke my head back into, mostly out of boredom. Someone was asking how they could figure out where their story was going if they didn’t want to know where their story was going? From what they were saying, they couldn’t possibly think about it beforehand because if they did, they’d just get bored and stop writing. If they didn’t, they’d just produce complete crap and get disheartened.

So I asked what their purpose in writing was. Did they just want to make themselves happy jotting down little stories for their own bemusement or, were they looking to build an audience, get published, sell books, etc.

They, of course, said both.

Well, you can’t really do both, at least not as your primary motivation for writing. Either you have to produce work that an audience wants to read and presumably pay for or you can just make up stories in your head for your own edification.  Pick one. That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the process of writing, I certainly do, I wouldn’t keep doing it if it was miserable, but my primary purpose at the moment is to put out work that I know an audience wants to read and enjoy. That’s my choice. Make yours.

I can’t tell you how many times I see this though. These are people who aren’t remotely clear on their motivations. They’re looking to have fun and expect that fun to magically produce a saleable work in the end. It doesn’t work that way. That’s really why people like George R.R. Martin aren’t getting anywhere fast. He wants to have fun. He gets bored quickly if he actually has to produce anything worthwhile. It’s why Game of Thrones will probably never be finished before he drops dead. He gets distracted by shiny new projects which is why he’s never working on the thing that actually makes him money.

I saw a talk between him and Stephen King once, where King said he wrote 2 pages a day, no excuses and Martin couldn’t figure out how to do that. He writes when his “muse” shows up and gives him a blow job. His drafts are a mess. He has no clue where he’s going and no idea how he’s going to get there. George R.R. Martin has no work ethic, period and his publishers let him get away with it.

Now King is a pantser, but he’s a well-motivated pantser. He produces manuscripts on a deadline, faster, in fact, because he really wants to write stories that his audience will love. He’s been doing it so long that he understands how his books go together. It comes naturally to him. It might take him a while to understand the overall plot but once he does, the rest is easy.

This is where so many amateurs go wrong because they not only have no clue what they want to write, they have no idea what to do with it once they do. Add that to the fact that they don’t want to know because it “ruins the surprise!”

Your own writing isn’t supposed to be a surprise! You’re telling a story. It’s like sitting around a campfire, trying to spin a yarn and not having the slightest clue what you’re doing. I’m sure we’ve all heard bad storytellers. It’s not a pleasant experience for the audience.

That’s why people really need to figure out what they’re doing and actually do it. Your feelings really don’t matter, which seems to be a surprise to a lot of people these days. Writing, especially if you’re writing for an audience, is hard work. It’s not supposed to be a pleasure. It’s supposed to take effort. Most people don’t go to their day job because it’s an ongoing orgasm, it’s supposed to be hard. You just have to do it if you want to get anywhere.

It’s really sad how many people cant get that through their heads these days.