Focusing on that moment of inception, that first twinge of “ah-ha,” allows you to slow down and really consider what it is that’s drawn you to your idea, to understand how it came to be. It’s such an exciting, euphoric feeling that writers charge ahead, exploring what-ifs exploding like fireworks in their mind’s sky.

Story ideas often feel like being struck by lightning, or suddenly seeing the world in color when it was previously black and white. Question #1: What’s the first time you thought, “Ah-ha! There might be a book here?” So, our mentoring faculty did two things: We bought an egg timer and we developed a set of four simple pre-writing questions we’ve come to call, “Take Your Idea on a Date,” designed to help you get to know your book in all the right ways.

Why? Because that’s a harder question, and often one they have yet to unearth. With these five little words, it quickly becomes obvious that many writers know what happens in their book but can’t articulate the central conflict and question around which it revolves. One of the first questions I ask the writers I mentor through The 5 th Semester residencies is, simply: Tell me about your project. It’s like dating someone and putting all of your effort into finding out what their favorite color is, or what size shoe they wear-details that have no bearing on whether you’re a good fit together-instead of asking them significant, deal-breaker questions about their future goals, if they want children, or where they envision themselves living. And while this type of planning has its place, in my experience as both an author and a writing mentor, it isn’t particularly useful for really getting to know your story in a way that’s going to help you stay on track from beginning to middle to end. Some people love pre-writing: compiling timelines and planning and research, doing character deep dives and questionaries, vision boarding the setting… I am not one of those people. Or that writing about your book is going to take all the magic out of it-the story will come together once you get going. I know what you might be thinking: that you have to get all of this out of your head and down on paper now, before you forget some essential element.

The key to writing a book is to first write about it, delving into the how and why of your premise. Four things, to be exact.īecause the key to writing a book is to first not write it. And before we go much further, in the words of David from “Schitt’s Creek”: “I feel like that needs to be celebrated.” Go, you! If you’re like a lot of people right now, you’ve resolved to make this the year you finally get that book written.

The Dog Year by Ann Wertz Garvin