Writing Hurts Like Hell: How to Write a Novel When You Don't Have Time to Write a Short Story

By Biff Mitchell

Written for busy people like you who have always wanted to write a book, Writing Hurts Like Hell: How to Write a Novel When You Don't Have Time to Write a Short Story, guides you step-by-stop through the process of writing a novel from conceiving an idea, to developing the idea into a well-plotted story, and then revising your finished first draft into a manuscript that's ready to send to an agent or publisher.

This workshop-in-a-book breaks the entire process into manageable tasks that will fit into even the busiest of schedules and allow you to set up a writing regimen that suits your needs.

The concepts and approaches in this book were developed over a period of ten years of teaching writing workshops through college extension programs and literary workshops, including the Maritime Writers' Workshop. As a result, this book is full of activities that will have you opening doors to your creativity within hours.

Biff Mitchell is the author of five published novels and numerous short stories and poems. His background in adult education and passion for writing makes for lively reading and a realistic, hands-on approach to finally writing that novel you've been dreaming about for years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Biff Mitchell
• Release date: Jul 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9780986790317

Biff Mitchell

Biff Mitchell is a speculative fiction writer known mostly for his quirky humor and keen insights into those aspects of life that likely won't be relevant to anything in our lifetimes, but possibly in some future reality. His most recent publication, Blowing Up (from Double Dragon Publishing) unleashes a barrage of mostly humorous short stories guaranteed to confuse and amuse the most contemporary reader. That just might be you. But...before you dive try dipping your literary toes into some free reading at crazymanadventures.com. Be warned though...nothing good can come of any of this.

Book preview

Introduction

Are you that person who says: I'm going to write a novel someday. Here's my idea… And, in a space of five minutes, you outline a compelling plot for a story that's bound to be a bestselling novel followed by a blockbuster movie and your avid listener praises the idea, astounded by your wonderful imagination, and says he can hardly wait to read it…and see the movie.

But you have a full-time job and after work, you have a family to care for, errands to do, chores around the house, a social life and maybe some personal studies or courses to keep up with your job. Or you’re a student with courses in the day, reading and research in the evening, papers to write, a social life, family to see on the weekends and breaks. Or you’re retired and have grandchildren to babysit, a park bench the needs sitting on, and you just can’t get around to writing that novel that’s bursting to spring out of your imagination.

Life happens.

You meet your friend a year or two later and he asks, So how's that novel coming? I’ve been checking the New York Times bestseller list and haven’t seen it yet.

But you haven't even started. All you have, and ever will have, is a five minute elevator pitch.

Until now.

Now you have this book and you're stepping out of the elevator.

This book is based on ten years of teaching writing workshops through the University of New Brunswick’s College of Extended Learning. The first time I taught the workshop, it was a dismal failure. I went into all the humdrum topics that every writing workshop covers, including grammar. I figured, since I was a writer and had some novels published, I knew how to teach what I’d done. I won’t get into the details; I’ll just leave it at this: It was a boring workshop. Boring for me and boring for the students. When the term was over, I swore I’d never teach another writing workshop again. Over the summer, though, I thought about the workshop and asked myself where I’d gone wrong.

The first thing that came to mind was that I was trying to teach people how to write. I couldn't do that. People learn how to write by writing, re-writing, writing and re-writing. One thing I could do though was teach them how to be writers. I could give them the same tools I used to become a writer…without the mistakes, the setbacks and the delusions. I could show them out to perceive the world around them as a writer sees it and approach their writing realistically.

The second thing that came to mind was the classroom. I taught the workshop in college classroom full of straight lines and fluorescent lights.

I also realized that I was teaching the wrong thing; I was teaching people how to write a novel, a book, a publication with pages and binding and ink. What I should have been teaching was how to write a story. And it occurred to me that I wasn’t teaching them how to write the way I did: fast, furious, with no regard for spelling, grammar or good writing. I had it all wrong.

I spent most of the summer putting together a whole new workshop. And during this time, I asked other writers how they felt about writing. Their feelings were pretty much the same as mine: writing hurts like hell. Suddenly, I had a name for the workshop, and a purpose: Take some of the hell out of writing and teach people how to become writers.

The new workshop wasn’t anything like the previous one. We met in the classroom the first night and then ranged out into the city to malls, coffee shops, bars, studios, parks, peoples’ homes. We held one class live on a radio station. We held another in a hot tub. I changed the teaching approach to allow for more discussion and less lecturing. We had more in-class writing with students reading aloud and the rest of us pointing at them and laughing. Well, not really. The rule was to applaud after each reading. You’d be surprised at how quickly this will bring the shyest person out of the "quiet’ closet. I taught them to write the way I write, without thinking about every line and paragraph…just getting the action, the movement of characters and settings, the story.

The workshop continued for another nine years, until I decided it was time to turn it into a book and design another kind of workshop (a project still in progress).

During this time, it occurred to me that most of my students were busy people…college students, business people, retirees with less free time on their hands than when they were working, teachers and professors…mostly people who didn’t have time to write.

But they started writing during the workshop and they kept it up.. Some of them have written novels, novellas, series of short stories, plays…and a better proposal or business letter.

I can't promise you’ll write a bestseller that will turn into a blockbuster movie (none of mine have) but I can promise that, if you follow the directions in this book, do the exercises and apply yourself, you will finish your book. And it doesn't have to be a bestseller, it doesn't have to plop you into the driver’s seat of a silver Lamborghini, it just has to be finished so that you can look at it and say, I didn't just talk about it…I did it.

You did it.

And wouldn't that feel good?

Chapter 1

About You and This Book

CAUTION! Read this entire book from beginning to end before you attempt to do the exercises.

I mean it.

***

Before I finished my first novel and managed to trick a publishing company into publishing it, I must have started at least a hundred novels, getting three or four pages, or up to thirty or forty pages into them before tossing the wrench and crawling under a rock with a bottle of wine. I always (well, almost always) started off with a great idea, something I knew would enthrall readers and have agents banging at my door with movie contracts clenched in their fists.

I’d sit at my typewriter (an archaic device for putting words on paper without auto correct and spellcheck), head blazing with my great idea: It was sort of a dark and stormy… I’d get a few pages in and everything would stop, like someone had doused the fire in my eyes with a pail of sand.

It was discouraging. Painful. Embarrassing (especially when I told my friends I’d have a bestseller written the next time I saw them). It really sucked. And it happened repeatedly. Eventually, though, I’d crawl out from under my rock with an empty wine bottle and get on with my life until the next great idea slipped a banana peel under my foot.

This, unfortunately, describes the plight of most aspiring writers.

People have this romantic vision in their head of sitting before monitor and clickety-clicking out a masterpiece on a diet of coffee and more coffee. But that hasn't happened or you wouldn’t be reading this book.

On that note, let’s look at some of the reasons why people never write that life-changing novel they spend so much time talking about.

Why Most People Never Write a Novel

They Put It Off

Everybody has a story in them, and almost everybody at one time or another has said, I should write a book someday. Someday. Unfortunately, the longer they put off someday the less likely it will ever happen. Part of the reason: people build up the idea for their story―along with their expectations―to the extent that they fear starting the book because it might not be up to what they expect. They may even be afraid they don’t have a story after all. They might have two or three pages worth of story they keep repeating, a beautiful rough idea that will never be fleshed out.

They Don’t Have Enough Time

Some people genuinely want to stop talking about writing a novel and start writing it. Unfortunately, they don't have the time. They have full-time jobs, families to raise or studies to pursue. I know retirees who spend more time raising their grandchildren than they spent raising their own kids.

They’re Waiting for the Words to Flow

Some people actually sit down in front of a computer or a notebook (I wrote the first draft of my first novel in pencil. Don’t you do this.) with every intention of writing that novel. Right now. Here I am, fingers on the keyboard, doing it. And