Intros are easy to write. You just summarize what you’re about to say or present the questions you’ll be answering. Conclusions are tougher. You could summarize what you said again, but it’s a dull way to wind up. What are the possibilities for conclusions?

1. Return to the beginning. Repeat a statement from the opening paragraph. As I said, this can be a dull end, but it’s still better than just cutting yourself off.

2. Make a payoff. Satisfy the reader somehow and they will accept that as an end. I already suggested answering the opening question, but after working it over for the length of the article, a strong clear statement makes a good close.

3. Tie-back to the middle. End by referring to something you said at any point in the piece. If something you said was especially important, really brings out the theme of the article or is unique to the article, that’s a good tie-back.

4. Write with a time-line to finish with a natural ending. It can be the logical order of events in a story or steps in an activity. This forces something to come last.

5. Find the last location. Where has everything been headed in a story? Or where does the argument for your nonfiction piece logically end?

6. Write an epilogue. Sure, the story is over, but what happened next? What is expected next by the experts? What are the possible future directions for research?

7. A good quote. Not a great way to end an article, but if nothing else is working and you have a good one, go for it.

8. Make a call to action. Find a motivational message to end the piece.

That should give you some ideas for when you come to the end of an article and realize you need a conclusion but you’ve already said everything you want to say. I know I’m ready for a conclusion when I’m thinking of typing, “Well there you go. That’s the story on that.”

Like any writing tip, reading it is one thing, using it another. Pick a few you’ve never used before and give them a spin.

Article text copyright 2012 David Arthur Smith. All Rights Reserved.

Nobody is born a prolific writer. Go ahead. Give a newborn a crayon and paper and see how fast they can crank out a novel. I’ll wait here.

Back already? But seriously, writing must be learned. There can be no innate ability to write because it’s not that kind of skill. The only innate ability you need is enough intelligence to learn to read and write. With practice, you can only improve. That’s the first key to prolific writing. Practice. The more you write, the more you will be able to write.

The More You Write, the More You Will Be Able to Write

The more you write, the more you will be able to write. There. I’ve said it three times now. Don’t forget it. Don’t ignore it. If you truly want to be a prolific writer, take every opportunity you can get to write. When something needs to be written at work, volunteer. When you check your e-mails, answer immediately. If you don’t have one already, start a journal so you can write when you have nothing to say. Yes. Keep writing even when you have nothing worth writing about. You’re practising sentence structure, composition and spelling.

Once you have the writing habit, you will find yourself writing articles and longer pieces as a matter of course. The article you’re reading now was meant to be a short note on an article idea, but I kept writing until it became the article. Writing every day does that for me and it can do the same for you.

Like Any Skill, Study is the Key to Success

Just doing a lot of writing isn’t going to make you a great writer. You need to learn to spell correctly, to compose a sensible sentence and to write something that others will enjoy reading. If you’ve set a goal to become a prolific writer, it’s safe to assume you’re already a prolific reader. Keep books, articles, magazines, blogs and other material on writing in your reading list and you will become increasingly skilled as a writer.

It’s easy to fall into a routine of reading the same kinds of writing material. We grow comfortable with some kinds of writing tips and can’t quite get interested in others. That’s because we haven’t studied those other writing topics enough. If you recognize this problem for your own studies, now you have an action plan. To get the most benefit from studying how to write, choose the writing topics you’ve been avoiding. For me, it’s grammar. I never learned it in school. Instead, I picked it up reading thousands of books and play it by ear. I’m working on that.

Writing Doesn’t Need To Be Hard Work

Perfectionism has killed more writing careers than all the editors who have ever lived. Okay. I made that up, but I’d bet it’s true. If you try to sit down and write perfectly, you are going to be constantly held up looking for the right word to say next, the right idea to follow the last, the perfect flow for your writing… There are so many things that just don’t come out right the first time you write something. You need to kill your perfectionism, at least when you write the first draft of anything. And that’s the key; the multiple draft process.

When you use the multiple draft process, you give yourself a way around perfectionism. The first draft can be a mess as long as you get all of your ideas written out or the basic story in its proper sequence. The good writing can be saved for the second draft.

Almost all writers use multiple drafts. The first draft gets the writing done, but in a condition that isn’t good enough to be published. With the knowledge that you have enough material for an article, short story or book, you can go ahead and fix it up to where it’s good.

The simplest method is to read through the first version several times and make repairs with each read. The first time you revise, do it big. Look for major gaps and do some more first draft writing to fill them in quickly. With each new read through, make increasingly detailed repairs until you find that all you’re fixing is spelling and grammar. Then, do a final review specifically for spelling, grammar, sentence structure and readability. Now you have your final version. Easy, no?

Keep Finding More Mentors

Since you’re reading this, you already know that you need to keeping honing your writing skills. Whenever you seem to be learning nothing new from one source, find another. I know you read writing blogs. Have you read some books on writing? How about books on writing translated from another language? Another language implies another culture and the potential for new ways to visualize writing. There are also writers’ groups which can give you some interesting feedback as well as help make writing a more social activity. And don’t forget night courses in writing at universities and colleges in your area.

If you feel like you haven’t been learning any new writing skills lately, maybe it’s time to find a new source of learning. On the other hand, maybe you’re too busy writing. Even better.

Article text copyright 2012 David Arthur Smith. All Rights Reserved.

Visit the site map for Writer On Fire.

Most writers have a few tricks for dealing with writer’s block. Unless a solution requires sitting down and doing some writing, it doesn’t work. The only real solution for writer’s block is to start writing. Anything will do, but journaling is one of the easiest solutions.

Journaling into writing

The basic idea behind journaling is to just get writing anything. Even if you just spend an hour writing garbage or the same sentence over and over, you’ve killed inertia.

This is stream of consciousness writing. You can wander through all kinds of topics, some related to your writing and others not. Just sitting at the keyboard and typing away can put you into a writing mood so you can abandon the journal. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. There’s another way to get some useful writing done on days like this.

Journaling into article writing

This is a more useful type of journaling. Write about the subjects you wish you were writing as articles or for your book. Since there’s no script and no expected audience, you can write anything. Contradict yourself. Wander off topic. Ramble on about things you know wouldn’t sell.

Once you are free from the invisible audience that exists when you are writing something you intend to publish, a freedom comes into your writing that lets you write more. Out of the ink shedding can come the start of some good articles or chapters.

Journaling into short stories

I find the most effective way for me to break writer’s block is writing fiction that nobody is going to see. Whatever mood I’m in is probably not a writing mood or I’d be writing whatever projects I have on the go. Writing fiction is a way to imagine some entertaining reality instead of working on writing.

Pick a character or story to match your mood and make up a story. The great thing about short stories is you don’t need to plan much, or at all for that matter. Writing it in your journal makes it even less important to follow a plan. You can wander from topic to topic and place to place. Talking about rambling seems to be making this a ramble. Maybe an example will help.

Jeb didn’t mean to kill the monkey dog boy, but just scare him. Someone had switch the ammo in his shotgun to from rock salt to buckshot. He hid in the bushes to see if anyone would come to see what the noise was. Took a pull from his pint. And waiting is boring. He hid in the bushes and nursed his pint for 20 minutes before deciding nobody was going to come check out the shot. He went over to the body. The guy was dead all right. But, it wasn’t a teenager. It was Ranger McFuddyduddy. “Shiite! Someone gonna know where he at. I gotta git him outta here now”, he said to the trees. Now Jeb wasn’t any weakling, except when it came to alcohol. He’d worked the farm since he was old enough to walk and then the hamster factory after went to work in the logging mill after farming went bad. He hoisted the ranger up onto his back and trudged bac. He grabbed the ranger by the back of his collar and dragged him over to the helicopter.

Well, you get the idea. Even if nothing like a short story comes out of the effort, it’s practice at writing first drafts. You don’t need to correct anything. If you don’t like a sentence or idea, type something else, just like any first draft writing.

My own journaling used to look mostly like technical writing until I realized I could take it somewhere useful with these tricks. Now my journal warm up first thing in the morning often results in a new article.

Article text copyright 2012 David Arthur Smith. All Rights Reserved.

Visit the site map for Writer On Fire.

It’s been four months since I posted an article here and WordPress is still showing regular visitors. It’s about time I started posting again.

I wrote an article a day for two months. Sometimes I wrote more than one article, but I wrote whatever I wanted. Writing articles dominated but I also wrote book reviews, short stories and nonfiction on a few other topics.

Synopses

The short story writing reminded me that I still haven’t written a full length book. A book is the penultimate goal for any writer. I think the magnum opus must be reserved as the ultimate writing goal.

My past attempts at writing a book have fallen short. I made my first attempt before I read anything on writing. No synopsis and the result was a 30,000 word novella. For my second book attempt, many years later, I wrote a 1400 word synopsis and the result was heading for 50,000 words, so I stopped. Publishers want 100,000 words for a first novel, give or take 10,000 words. Where did I go wrong?

When experienced writers talk about how to write a book, they recommend using a synopsis that’s one tenth the length of the final book. I really thought I could get away without doing it right. I was wrong. I’m writing a full synopsis this time. I’ve managed to keep it down to 5000 words so far by staying light on some of the details until the plot is on track. It’s a lot easier to revise 5000 words than 100,000 and there has been a lot of revision to get the story straight. The best books are like the best movies; a combination of story and action.

Outlines

There’s a good reason outlines are recommended too. At one percent of the final book, a tenth of the synopsis, they are a way to review the synopsis quickly. Experienced authors know what they’re talking about when they share their writing tips.

The outline and synopsis for my novel are about finished. There are a few changes still to go and then I can revise the synopsis to it’s full version. The only danger is that the first draft may be too long, but it’s easy to cut while almost impossible to add on. So, no worries.

Blog Posts

The plan four months ago was to build up a pile of writing articles and post every day. Based on reader feedback, I may post two or three times a week. That isn’t going to happen immediately. For the last couple of months, I’ve been planning my novel using the synopsis. I’ve got most of the story in my head, but I still need to write it.

While I sometimes set unrealistic goals and then shoot myself down for failing to reach them, alternating between nonfiction articles on writing and working on my novel appears to be reasonable. I’ve been doing that anyway with two months on fire for article writing and two months on fire for writing a novel. There’s no reason not to keep both fires going on a daily basis.

The blogging fire is a clerical activity. Select a completed article, find a creative commons licensed image for the top, copy and paste the article to the blog, check the formatting and update the site map. The only writing is in response to comments.

The Focus

Most of the new articles will be on either article writing or writing a novel. I will continue to strive toward articles about writing more and writing faster. Every type of writer can relate to those goals. As you keep writing, the quality of your writing improves and your productivity goes up. I try out lots of different writing ideas myself. While I don’t stick to all of them, the experiments result in more finished work and that’s what it’s all about.

The plan now is to post an article a week, just like before, and two or three when I find I’m writing a lot of articles. You won’t be waiting long for the first post. I’ve got 35 writing articles to pick from.

Article text copyright 2012 David Arthur Smith. All Rights Reserved.

Visit the site map for Writer On Fire.

I know many of you are wondering, “If this writer is on fire, why is he only posting once a week”?

Partly it’s from having too many other things going on, like a full time job and a search for a new full time job. But I also have too many writing projects besides blogging.

I’ve taken my own writing advice and given one project top priority. I am writing at least one article a day every day. That being the case, why am I not posting more yet?

When I’ve tried posting more often, the number of articles ready to go diminished quickly and I was back to posting less frequently. What to do?

I’ve added a posting formula. It’s an Excel formula, but I’ll explain it in plain terms. If I have less than 26 posts waiting to go up, I post once a week. More than 25 ready and I post every 6 days. More than 35, every 5. More than 45, every 4. More than 55, every 3. More than 65, every 2. More than 75, every day.

Since posting once a week gets almost no visitors and posting every 2 or 3 days gets loads, it only makes sense that I stop posting until I have enough articles to meet that schedule. If you are one of my few regular visitors, I apologize. There may still be a few posts during this transitional period, but not many.

The advantage of the above formula is that I can spend a month working on a novel or other big project without suddenly running out of blog articles. The post frequency might go down slightly, but then I do write the odd article while I’m in the middle of other writing projects. No matter what writing project has priority, I can always find time to write the things that most interest me. By getting my own writing in better order, I’ll be able to write more about you and your writing. Writing more is definitely the way to go.

That is especially true for this blog because writing inspires articles about writing.

Article text copyright 2011 David Arthur Smith. All Rights Reserved.

Visit the site map for Writer On Fire.

Have you been posting on your blog regularly, but not getting many visitors? The first question is, are you creating enough inbound links? If other sites aren’t linking to your blog nobody will find you. The two most popular ways to get external links are through social sites and by leaving meaningful comments on other blogs. If you’ve got those methods covered, visitors may simply be overwhelmed by the amount of content.

You blog within a niche so visitors interested in your subject will become regulars. But, your visitors won’t be interested in every sub-topic or category. For example, if you write about software testing and post an article about regression testing, you will get visitors interested in regression testing. If the previous 8 articles were a series of related articles about writing defect reports, any visitors who are already good at defect reports may be put off and leave. A site map can solve this problem by leading visitors to exactly the articles they want to read.

What is a Site Map?

A site map is a listing of all of the pages on a website, arranged in hierarchical order. This is the main page on some websites. If you have a blog, a sitemap is a way you can help your readers find everything you’ve written on their favorite topics.

Decide Your Major Topics

The first step is to organize all of your posts into major topics or categories. Think of these as what you would use for chapter titles if your blog was a book. Each post should have only one category. Each category shoud have a good collection of articles, either now or planned for the near future.

Sort Your Posts Into the Categories

To begin your site map, you need to list all of your blog posts in a file with links to each article. Here’s an example of the html for a page link.

<a href=”http://writeronfire.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/write-more-daily/”>Write More Daily</a>

The web page url goes in the quotes.
The title of the page replaces the bold text.

Next, sort your list of posts by category. If you’ve already been using categories of some kind, doing this can reveal two problems. The first is multiple categories that should be a single category. The other is a single category that has become a miscellaneous catch all and should be divided into two or more categories. Fix these issues if they exist.

You may also notice some good categories that have few articles. That’s one of the benefits of organization; discovering ideas that need attention. Now you have a lead on what sort of articles your blog needs most. Writing those posts will make your blog more appealling for visitors searching for that topic.

Finalizing Your Site Map

If you have a huge number of categories, sorting them alphabetically may be the logical plan. But, if you can organize them similar to how you would chapters in a book, that may prove more useful to visitors. For example, the site map for Writer On Fire uses a section with writing types from easiest to most difficult. This way, a visitor interested in Article Writing can move on to Freelance Writing when they’re done the secton on articles.

Within each category, new articles should be added to either the top or bottom consistently so that returning site map users can find new content fast.

Your site map is a page, not a blog post. Go ahead and create it using the file you just made.

The link to your site map should go in the row of links at the top of your site. If you don’t have one of these, visitors will have a bit more trouble discovering you have a site map. In this case, I’d recommend a link in the sidebar and another at the end of each blog post after your sign off.

Remember to update your site map after every post and visitors who can’t return often will have an easy way to catch up on their favorite articles.

Article text copyright 2011 David Arthur Smith. All Rights Reserved.

Visit the site map for Writer On Fire.

There are plenty of reasons you’re not writing your book. They won’t all apply to you. Everyone has different holdups and hangups. I’ll do my best to put the problems in their likely historical order of your evolution as a writer. And, speaking of evolution, that’s the first block.

1. Your definition of yourself as a writer hasn’t evolved far enough

The earliest that you might define yourself as a writer is when you only want to become a writer. You haven’t written anything except e-mails and papers required for school and work. But you want to become a writer and think of yourself as one anyway.

Once you stop thinking and start doing, you’ll be looking more like a writer. But you need to get something to the point where it’s worth publishing. Then you might call yourself a level two writer, but you’re still not really a writer.

When you finish some writing work and put it out there where others may read it, then you are tentatively a writer. In the olden days, you could only send your work to publishers. If they didn’t like it, nobody would ever see it. With the web and blogging, you can get published even if your writing sucks. The same rule still applies at this stage. You’ve made it this far if someone buys your work. Either a publisher literally buys your work or your web writing attracts an audience.

A word of caution about that audience. If you only write one article a month, you’re not going to attract an audience even if your writing is fantastic. Visitors won’t bookmark it. You’re also not going to attract an audience if nobody knows your work is out there, even if you post an article every day. Post at least one article a week. Spread the word about your articles on social sites and by commenting on similar sites. Then you’ll know if you’re good enough to attract a following.

The final stage, the one where there is no doubt you’re a writer, is when you keep writing and are able to turn it into a profession. If you haven’t written your first book, keep writing and turn yourself into a writer through hard work. The book will come.

2. You don’t think your book is important or interesting enough

It’s important to you or you wouldn’t want to spend the time to write it. Your friends and family may not be interested in what you’re writing, but that’s not who will be reading it. You need to get feedback from a larger audience.

Do you have 500 friends on facebook, 2000 Twitter followers, and/or other social media sites where you could get opinions? If so, ask a few questions related to what you’re writing.

A more labor intensive method, but worthwhile, is to write some articles related to your book and put them up on a blog. You’re writing the book anyway. Articles are a good way to get important ideas clear before writing a chapter. If you’re working on fiction, you could write a series of short stories about different characters. Write 30 or more articles or short stories first and then create a blog at WordPress.com or another free site. Then, post daily, let your social media crowd know about every post and comment like crazy. You’ve already got the articles written, so you have time. What kind of comments do you get on your posts? Are you starting to feel more positive now?

3. You doubt your book will be marketable

Research what is selling. Go to Amazon and search for books similar to yours. If there are loads, that means there’s a demand. If there are only two, your doubt is confirmed.

4. You keep delaying the work

It’s easier to work on short stories and articles than a book. There’s a satisfaction in finishing a project. You can take an article from start to finish in a couple of hours. A book may take a couple of years; at least a couple of months for most writers. How can you get around that?

Break your book project into milestones. Corporations do that with their big projects. So can you. The completed outline is a milestones. Each chapter completed is a success. And not just once. Each first draft chapter is one success. Each second draft chapter is another success. Each read through for final draft can be a milestone too. And once it’s ready for publication there will be more milestones as the publisher requests changes.

I know you also want to have something to show for your work and chapters don’t fit the bill. Between all of these milestones, you can still write articles and short stories. Just make sure it’s between the milestones and get back to the book.

5. You fail to plan your book

If you come up with a book idea and just sit down to write it, you are doomed to failure. A book is a huge writing project. You’re not going to write one as fast as you can read one. You need to work on a synopsis that tells the story briefly or, for nonfiction, runs through all of the main topics you will cover. Once you have a synopsis you’re happy with, you need to create an outline for every chapter. Once you’re at the outline stage, you’ve done enough planning that you can write your book with good chances of success. If it’s your first book, it may not come out the length you expect. That’s how we learn. You’ll adjust the amount of content for the next one.

6. You overplan your book

You don’t need to create a plot that covers every single detail. You might as well be writing the first draft if you’re going to do that. Follow the steps described in the last tip. The synopsis should be less than 10 pages long. The outline should be around 10% of the final length you desire for your book.

7. You’re trying to go it alone

Writing is a solitary activity. Nobody can argue against that, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t get others involved. You have family and friends that support you in other things. Talk about your book project. Bounce ideas off of them. Describe scenes from your novel to see if they’re believable. Once they know what you’re working on, they will be asking questions about your progress. That’s one more reason to keep forging ahead.

Article text copyright 2011 David Arthur Smith. All Rights Reserved.

Every writer would like to write more material of higher quality in less time. I’ve seen my own writing go from around a year to produce 10,000 words down to a couple of weeks. This first overview of how to write more comes from 25 years of writing off and on. After more research and many writing experiments, I’ll write another post like this.

What are the secrets to prolific writing?

1. Journal Daily

Set a word count goal of at least 1000 words a day. Make it higher if you can. If you have even the slightest desire to work on some writing other than your journal, do that instead. Even if the desire isn’t there and you start with journaling, be ready to jump ship at any time. If it’s a file you already started, go there. If not, let your journaling go off in the direction you want to write and then port it over to a new file when you’re written out.

2. Use Multiple Drafts

If you’re writing short pieces like magazine articles or blog posts, having several at each stage of the writing process gives you something to work on no matter what your mood.

Are you loaded with ideas? Add to your Writing Ideas or One Liners file.

Are you feeling talkative? Turn ideas into first drafts and work on those that are in progress.

Are you ready to work but your imagination isn’t on board? Work on second drafts. The material is already there. You only need to add and cut.

Have you been in a critical mood lately? It’s final draft time. Correct spelling, grammar, sentence structure and flow.

If you’re working on a book, the multiple draft process still applies. Many writers say you should pound out the entire first draft before doing any second draft work. The reasoning is that you’ll get bogged down perfecting your early story and never get the book written. That’s a good point, but if your imagination isn’t working for you what you’ll produce is imitation of formulaic writing.

A better way to tackle multiple drafts within the context of a single book is to always begin at the (current) end and do a bit of first draft work. If it isn’t kicking in, go to your second draft bookmark. I go low tech for file bookmarks and just insert “<second draft bookmark>” within the text. If that isn’t working either, go to the final draft bookmark and be the editor.

3. Shun Perfectionism

Nothing will kill your ability to be a prolific writer faster than trying to perfect your work before moving on.

When all of the basic ideas you wanted to write are in the file, call it the first draft. It doesn’t matter if it’s out of order, full of mistakes and notes, or the wrong length. Those are issues for other drafts.

Once your piece is in a sensible order and all of the ideas have been explored as far as you intended, call it the second draft. Editing is for the final draft. It’s at this point that I add the year to the file name for articles. They’re short enough that I can do the final draft editing when it’s time to submit them. It also prevents the final draft from dragging on and on.

The final draft is the easiest one to drag out. You can keep editing forever if you don’t put a limit on it. Once you’ve gone through your writing a couple of times looking at the details, do a final edit for flow. Decide in advance that it’s the final edit. Read it quickly to make sure it’s easy to read, correct any additional errors that jump out at you and call it done.

4. Boot Your Drafts Up the Line

This tip applies only to articles. Pick a minimum number of articles you want to have at each draft level and work on keeping above that goal. I’ve already mentioned that I promote articles to final draft status before they are quite there. The same can be done for second draft articles.

When you need more second draft articles, do what you can with your Writing Ideas or One Liners file. If you’re not at all inspired by the next idea in the file, copy and paste it into a new file and call it a second draft. It’s not, but it will be there when the time comes that you’re in the mood for working on second drafts.

You shouldn’t have any trouble keeping your count up in your Writing Ideas or One Liners file. That’s the next tip.

5. Always Be Ready for New Ideas

No matter what you’re doing, be on the alert for writing ideas. Whether you’re reading, writing, researching, working or playng, writing ideas will come up. Get them written down somewhere immediately. You won’t remember them later.

Stupid ideas you add can always be deleted later. Good ideas you don’t add are gone forever. Mostly. And you can never be certain which ideas will be good or bad.

6. Use Martin Caiden’s First Draft as Final Trick

Martin Caiden claimed that he sat down at his typewriter and wrote the final draft straight through in one week or less with no revisions. An associate has written that he saw Caiden do exactly that on more than one occasion. He sent those one draft books off to publishers and 80 of them got published. Many were made into movies and one became the Six Million Dollar Man TV series.

I believe the secret is being willing to throw away one draft articles (or books) that don’t make it. If we write enough of them, it’s a possibility. It becomes an even stronger possibility if we write one draft articles for all of our writing ideas. I know my own ideas file gets so big sometimes that I need to go through it and delete the least appealing ideas. Those would be good ideas to practice with.

Those are the prolific writing tips that come most easily to mind for me now. I’ll keep learning and practicing. So should you.

Article text copyright 2011 David Arthur Smith. All Rights Reserved.

Guiness World Records cites Ryoki Inoue as the world’s most prolific writer. He has written over 1000 novels using his own name and 39 psudonyms. He has written a book in an afternoon. He’s written one overnight. He’s written as many as three books in one day. All of his books are in Portuguese, even his book on how to write. Without an English translation, this is my guess on how to write the Ryoki Inoue way. Luckily, I was able to find some articles in English where he gives a few tips on writing pulp fiction.

Inoue’s Pulp Writing Tips

1. Write your first inspiration. Worry about where it goes later. Abandon inertia at all costs.
2. Alternate between several projects at the same time.
3. When a story problem occurs destroy whatever is in the way. Kill characters. Blow up buildings. Whatever is necessary to keep moving.
4. Writing is 98% perspiration. Talent and luck are a minimal influence on success.

Preparing to Write Like Inoue

We’ve all seen the movie Pulp Fiction. If not, this probably isn’t your writing style. Stick with writing quality books over a period of months. Pulp means writing exciting flawed actions stories over a period of weeks, days, or hours. You decide what you’re going to write before you sit down at the keyboard. Once you’re there, you write until it’s done, stopping for only the most necessary interruptions.

Inoue, like Martin Caidin, sometimes ignored the need for sleep to get his writing done. In one story about his writing, he sat down at his laptop to write a book at 10pm. He finished it at 5:30 the next morning. Sounds like a blast. It also sounds like he’s a fast typist. There’s one thing for you to work on, but your typing speed will increase anyway the more you write.

Since your goal is to write fast, the best practice is short stories. Pulp methods won’t work so well for nonfiction articles. I’m using Caidin Method 101 from an earlier article to write this article. If your goal is writing novels, short stories are a great place to start.

As I did with Caiden, I want to set up a couple of steps for writing like Inoue. I’ll base them on what I’ve been able to read about him in English and assumptions made from that.

Inoue Pulp 101 – Short Stories

Short stories are a great warm up for writing any kind of book. If you find you can’t put together a 2000 word mystery, for example, you should be glad you didn’t try to write a mystery novel.

Before sitting down to write your short story, have a good idea what you want to write. It needs excitement and action. Realism is for literature. This is pulp fiction. The main characters can do anything, have any skills, their moral code can be based entirely on their own prejudices. That sounds a bit like what you might say about a chance encounter with any stranger in this post existential age, but your characters are people of action. They aren’t afraid of consequences like prison or violence. That leads to more action. Keep the conflicts coming. If it gets too complicated, kill or destroy until the path is clear again. Finish by destroying the main conflict that is the theme of your story.

It takes time to dream up new stories. If you can prime yourself for writing one short story a day, that’s a good start. If you have many other obligations, that may be enough. Write a pulp fiction short story every day and within a couple of months you will find you can write them much faster.

If there is a final exam to this exercise, it is getting to the point where you are willing to share your daily short pulp fiction stories.

Inoue Pulp 201 – Novels

One way to move up to writing pulp novels is to keep writing short pulp but make your stories longer and longer. One day you will realize you’ve written a book. Inoue’s own books were mostly between 100 – 200 pages. Not quite Steven King length.

While we can sell short stories to magazines and books to publishers, there really isn’t much market for story lengths in between the extremes. If you become a popular novelist one day, you can sell collections of novellas or put them in anthologies, but that’s about it.

The best plan is to try and move from short story length to book length as quickly as possible. In other words, when you sit down to write a story, plan to write either a short story or a book. If the book turns out to be a novella, don’t worry about it. Tomorrow, you will be writing another book.

While Inoue could get away with a 100 page book for the Portuguese markets, the English markets demand at least 300 pages. When you can write a pulp novel of at least 300 pages that you would be willing to submit to a publisher, you’ve passed the final exam for this exercise.

Where’s the Profit in Pulp Fiction?

Articles about pulp fiction say that it is a thing of the past. But, have you read the top selling crime, action and thriller writers? Pulp fiction is still here. It’s just better quality. It’s done using multiple drafts and with thorough proofreading. The inconsistencies are cleaned up. The main characters are still larger than life. Violence still wipes out story problems.

Writing pure old fashioned pulp fiction is good practice for writing higher quality novels that are no longer seen as pulp. Once you can write a pulp novel fast, you can use that as your first draft process. The second draft can be your chance to add warmth, realism and meaningful relationships.

I hope these prolific writing articles are inspirational. The proof is in whether you find yourself writing more. They’re working for me.

Article text copyright 2011 David Arthur Smith. All Rights Reserved.

These methods are called Caidin Methods because Martin Caidin is the inspiration. We don’t know what his methods actually were, but would like to write like he did. For example, he wrote the best-seller Marooned in five days of nonstop writing. Since he never wrote about how he pulled off his one draft book trick, we must make assumptions. His advance preparation was either all in his head or writing that he never looked at while writing his books. At least, those who were present when he wrote never saw him following any notes.

Warming Up to Caidin Style Writing

There is one kind of writing most writers do that is one draft as final draft. Journaling. Any journaling could be thought of as Caidin style practice. To really imitate him, we need to write complete pieces in our journals.

To do this, take the time to plan what you are going to write in your mind first. Then, write it. There are two approaches. One is to journal about topics you don’t plan to write for submission; pure practice. The other is to write articles that you will eventually sit down and write in one draft for Caidin Method 101. Never looking back appears to be a rule. When you decide to write an article in one draft after having already written it in your journal, don’t look at the first version. Any points you don’t remember may not be worth writing anyway.

Caidin Method 101 – Articles

It’s logical to start with short essays before attempting entire books. Since Caidin was a scientist before he was a novelist, we can assume he wrote many short papers before he ever attempted a book. You should do the same for your own one draft as final draft writing.

I’ve already mentioned writing the article in your journal first and then ignoring that version when you sit down to write the real article. You can also write it as an article more than once. To truly imitate Caidin, don’t look at the earlier version(s) when writing the latest.

This is a variation on the multiple draft process for writing. Instead of drafts, you have versions. The versions may come out different enough that an early version could be a separate article. Just be sure to submit it some place other than where you send the final.

You pass the final exam for this method when you can write an article in one draft as final draft without writing any early versions. Proofreading before submission seems a reasonable step even though Caidin himself claimed he never did this.

Caidin Method 201 – Book Versions

This is what I assume would have been Caidin’s early method for writing a book in one draft. Sit down and write a book in one draft. Don’t like it? Too many problems didn’t get resolved. Forget about it for a while and return later to write the same book again in one draft without looking at the first version.

To use this method, write an outline version of your book in one draft. Getting the story straight in your mind ahead of time will help a lot. Read your outline a few times. Then, write a first version without looking at the outline version. Continue with a second version without looking at earlier versions. Repeat until you have a version you are willing to submit to a publisher or want to move on to your next book. Read each version several times before moving to the next. Proofreading is allowed.

You pass the final exam for this method when you write a book that you would be willing to submit to a publisher.

Caidin Method 301 – One Draft Books

This is the way Caidin said he wrote all of his books. Sit down and write the book in one draft with no revisions. If you have already completed Caidin Methods 101 and 201, you should be able to do this without writing too many turkeys.

It might seem like a waste of effort to write a book and then throw it away, but consider the difference in time invested. With the multiple draft method, you write and rewrite one book. With Caidin Method 301, you write several different books in the same amount of time.

Like Caidin Method 201, you pass the final exam for this method when you write a book that you submit to a publisher. The only difference is that you’re only writing one version of each book and you must submit a manuscript.

This article was written using Caidin Method 101. I deviated from the plan by writing it in my journal. It’s not the first time I’ve written an article in one draft this way. Now for more practice.

Article text copyright 2011 David Arthur Smith. All Rights Reserved.