I find that every week as I come here to The Midnight Hour I’m writing about writing. I hope it doesn’t bore. This week I have really no set subject, and due to the stress level these past few weeks I find it’s a relief to have no real set agenda, even for a blog post. I’ve spent most of my time this week single-mindedly checking off things on a list that Have To Get Done, and I intend to relax a bit, starting right now.

Are you comfortable? Good. Let’s talk about writing. More specifically, let’s talk about writing books. Even more specifically, books about how to write. I know I said I didn’t have an agenda, but it’s just the way this post grew.

One of the questions I get most often is, “What writing books would you recommend?” To which I usually reply, “The only writing book I advocate is actually writing a book.”

That’s not the whole truth. There are one or two books I recommend without reservation–Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, for example, and Stephen King’s very fine On Writing, as well as Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which I’ve quoted before as intensely valuable for any creative person. (Okay, so two books and a style guide.) As far as I’m concerned, the rest of the production of books about writing or how to write is expressly designed for one purpose: to separate nascent writers from their money and give them a self-help jolt that absolves them of any responsibility toward actually getting the frocking work done.

Out of mercy, if not respect, I won’t mention any of the egregious offenders I’ve thrown across the room in a fit of pique. And I fully understand your mileage may vary.

There, disclaimers done. Read on only if you are interested in my opinion.

Books about how to write are a thriving subsection of the self-help industry, and I’ve read a few in my time. They seem to fall into four categories:

1. The Actually Useful. Or in other words, the three I listed above. (Sorry, I haven’t found anything else to go in this category.) These are the books with the lowest quotient of BS and the highest quotient of practical, readable advice.

2. The Fool And His Money. Books which claim to be able to teach you the sure way! to getting! published! This is a print version of the recently-infamous Zooty and Flappers, or any other thing that disobeys Yog’s Law. These books tell you it’s easy, by following a few simple steps, to Get Published. That is a bold-faced, unmitigated lie. It’s not easy.

3. The Terribly Pretentious. Tortuous and usually full of postmodern fuzz, or (conversely) so full of New-Age crap about writing being a Metaphor or Simile that they are useless to anyone who wants to refine their craft or produce a usable, readable product, whether it be a novel or a sonnet. This group is distinct from but intimately related to Category 4.

4. The Whine-A-Thon. These are books, purportedly about How To Write, are actually about how haaaaard writing is and how one must suuuuufferr to do it. The authors of Whine-A-Thons usually list–sometimes in prose that half-manages to be pretty only because of the individual reader’s Schadenfreude–all the reasons why being a writer is so hard it can only be undertaken by the delicate flowers who suffer artistically and at length while writing longhand in their towers, on creamy parchment with a gold-plated fountain pen watered with tears and dipped in the delicate flower’s delicate blood.

To which I reply, go deliver a goddamn pizza or something. Take up plumbing or gardening. If writing hurts you this much, for God’s sake go do something else.

You can guess which category I have the absolute least patience with.

Now, writing is hard work. It is physically, mentally, and emotionally challenging. Personally, the only thing I’ve found as challenging and rewarding as writing is motherhood. I sincerely feel that writing is what I was meant and made to do; I feel it is, insofar as I can have one, my life’s purpose. Refining my craft and seeking to produce a readable end product is my goal, and it’s not optional. It is what I do every day, just like breathing.

I realize not everyone feels the same. People write for a variety of reasons–for attention and review, in an attempt to gain celebrity, to work out emotional traumas, to feed their ego or unburden their soul, to bare their wounds or to fill their lives. But those who call themselves writers only to gather attention for how haaaaaaard they’re working at suffering are perhaps the most insidiously damaging to the fledgling writer seeking guidance.

The fledgling writer may think, well hell, if it’s this tough, I shouldn’t even attempt it. Which may be what the Whine-A-Thoners intend. The fledgling writer may also think, I can’t suffer this much or this artistically. Maybe I shouldn’t be a writer. Same end result. The field is narrower and the Whine-A-Thoner has just pulled the hat trick of one-upping someone emotionally, which, I suspect, is what largely drives these books.

To me, there is an intimate connection between predatory and hurtful behavior in writing groups (or classes) and this emotional hat-trick. It’s the same hat-trick some of my female relatives pull at family gatherings–whoever’s most put-upon and martyred wins the prize, or something.

This is the absolute last thing any fledgling writer needs. Basically writers are all in the same game: we are communicating. What helps us communicate is the means to refine our craft and use our language for maximum clarity, and the ineffable law that decrees we each have a story to tell. We will all tell our stories with varying success and some will be published, others e-published, some will languish in drawers or live only on paper seen by their author. What helps are the things that teach us better craft: how best to use the language; the rules of punctuation and grammar (so they can be broken, in some cases); and our experience with what works on the page to best telepathically bond with a reader and tell the story.

What does not help are shortcut scams, the suffering-flower game, New Age bunkum, or tortuously-dense pretentiousness.

What does help are explanations of the simple rules.

1. Know your language. Study your language, for it is your tool, and as a good carpenter does not let his tools become rusty, so your knowledge of your language should not be rusty.
2. There isn’t a “right way” to write a novel. There’s only the way that works for you to write this novel. (For the word “novel” you can substitute poem, play, chapter, essay, etc., ad nauseum.)
3. Put your bum in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard, and DO IT.
4. The first million words are practice. You have permission to write the worst dreck in the world, as long as you’re actually doing #3.

Rule 3 is the other reason why I won’t recommend writing books. Reading them can be mistaken for actual effort, which it very rarely is. You get a false sense of accomplishment that would be better gained by the same time spent with your bottom in the chair and your fingers on the keys.

And Rule 4 is the piece of advice I wish I could tattoo on the inside of every fledgling writer’s eyelids. (Ugh. Bad mental image. But nonetheless.) In the immortal words of Yoda, “Do, or do not. There is no try.” It does not matter what you’re writing, young Jedi. What matters is the act of writing itself.

I cannot count the number of times that the actual, physical act of writing saved my life. This is not hyperbole. The discipline of sitting down each day and getting the words out is a useful tool. But the act of creation–that act of making something where there was nothing before–IS LITERALLY MAGIC. Not only magic, but that of the highest degree. It’s a hat trick worth knowing, and like any act of magic, it requires discipline, patience, willingness, and hard work.

It’s funny, but to coin a phrase, for every small step you take toward writing, writing takes a hundred steps toward you. Sitting down and showing up on the page every day is an act of will that opens the door for writing to step through, to make something where there was nothing before. You don’t have to make a Porsche. You can start out with a bicycle, or even a wheel.

Even a single gear.

And from that, wonders.

Good luck.