You Have One Job to Do as a Writer — If You Skip it Your Reader Will Run

How this one key writing ingredient will make or break your story

Whether you write fiction or non, there’s a key piece of your writing toolkit that’s unavoidable. It doesn’t matter if you write novels or news, steampunk or sensationalism — this one ingredient is a must for all writers.

Ready?

First, let me share a story — We’ve got a key ingredient in our house. The ingredient makes every meal taste better, every birthday card more enjoyable, and every craft project more beautiful.

The key ingredient is love.

Ask my son what makes mommy’s cooking so much better and those will be the first words from his mouth with no hesitation. When he comes home from school with ripped pants from the playground, I tell him not to worry. His pants got extra love today. If he digs through his closet and uncovers a slightly-broken toy, we tell him, “That’s the way it should be. That toy got extra love.”

So, as you move through your writing journey, I don’t want you to pick up the pen or keyboard without first asking yourself this question.

The question matters.

Because the answer matters.

It doesn’t matter if you write ad copy, the five-o-clock news, or some epic fantasy novel. The question is: Do you care enough?

This is the key ingredient in all great writing.

The writer must care. And I say this not to sound patronizing. Although I’d probably feel that way if I were you too. I say this because your reader will feel it.

This is the same reason some Japanese business-people bow while they’re talking in the phone. They know the other person can’t see the respect, but the receiver can feel it.

• The reader feels your level of care in your word choice.
• The reader feels your level of care in your descriptions and mood.
• The readers feels your level of care in the effort you take to craft a great story.

We need your level of care to soak into the writing. Otherwise, we won’t enjoy it as much. We’ll know you’ve phoned it in. We’ll put it down and seek different writing.

What if you don’t care about the writing?

The best answer is to stop. If you can’t do that — as in, you need to write to eat — and the client work isn’t something you enjoy — it’s time for a mind-shift.

I realize not every piece of writing is gumdrops and rainbows.

While it’s impossible to love every writing project equally, there are ways you dissect a project to ensure you give it your all.

First, attack the writing project like a professional. If you need to eat from the fruits of your writing, you’ll have projects you don’t enjoy. It’s time to shut that part of the brain off, and dig through the project to uncover the one nugget you do like.

Second, fire the client as soon as you can. If you truly hate doing work for this person, stop taking their writing jobs. You do both yourselves a disservice. Replace this person with a client’s whose work you love.

Third, change your state. Mental state is critical with writers. Our work is done with our brain and emotions. If the computer has a bad fan, the writing will suffer. Get moving. Make yourself a quick, little writing ritual that works as an instant mood-boost. Your mental state affects your outcome. Good or bad. Make it good. The writing will feel good to the reader.

How to write good

If you want to write well, you’ve got to add the key ingredient — love. This is the difference between a translated technical manual (have you tried building a bike lately? Holy hell) and a piece with care baked-in to every sentence.

This isn’t woo-woo. It’s science.

We make almost all our decisions based on emotions. Not logic. We’re much less in control than we think we are. When you write with care, the reader will feel the care. She’ll understand the care, subconsciously. When you write and the project feels like a chore, your great novel will read like the bike manual in my garage.

• There’s beauty in everything. Wabi-sabi the hell out of your writing project. Find perfection in the imperfect. Maybe you hate the project as a whole, but there’s something inside to love.
• Turn the project around. Perhaps the client’s original idea wasn’t good. Maybe the client didn’t have enough care in the idea. Suggest a counter-idea that you’ll both love.
• Only choose the “hell yeah” projects if the writing is your choice. If you writing something you don’t enjoy (and the project is for yourself) you’ve got no one to blame but the one with two thumbs, looking back at you in the mirror.
• You’ll know you care, because you’ll feel it. The project will light you up. You’ll lose track of time — even when the writing is hard. This isn’t about writing something easy. This is about writing well.

We need you to care

We want to read more of your work, but we’ll stop if we can feel the yuck in your words. We’ll abandon you as one of our favorites if you continue to phone it in.

85 years or so isn’t much time to get this right. A third of that time is spent sleeping. A third is spent working and picking up dog poop. The final third is for family and friends. By my rough calculation you get about 20,000 hours to get it right.

If you don’t care you’ve wasted both our time.

Writing is all about time. You buy some of the reader’s time from her. She can’t get it back — ever. If you’ve won her time with a great piece of writing, you’ve given her a gift. If you’ve stolen her time, she can’t return it for a better experience.

Writing is a huge responsibility — accept it or not.

Not everyone will agree with me — cool. But for those who do, I’ll continue to do my best. To get a little better every day. And, where possible, to accept only the writing projects I care about.

We need you to care.

It’s the only writing we want to read.

We’re waiting for you.

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August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.