I’ve always been a bit of a nerd, which I know is shocking, based on the many photos of me looking dashing that populate the Internet. I was that chubby kid with glasses who read a lot of fantasy novels that were way above his pay grade—I can still remember reading the rape scene in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant when I was ten years old and wondering who in hell had allowed me to buy that book. I got my first computer (a Commodore 64) when I was twelve, and spent countless hours typing in BASIC programs from Byte Magazine.

I’ve loved computers ever since. I’ve dabbled in programming, I’ve installed multiple operating systems, I’ve blanked my MBR and I’ve had to reinstall my OS from scratch while sweating bullets and praying to unseen gods. And while I resisted the initial smartphone wave, I do love my gadgets and my Apps. I love eBooks and have an extensive library of them so I’ll always have something to read, no matter where I am or what I’m doing.

I’m no Luddite. Yet, when people ask about what kind of software or gadgets you need to write a novel, the answer is obvious and immediate: None.

The Void

I’m not a very organized person. The idea that writing a novel requires a spreadsheet, a notes App, a database, and specialized software makes me feel like I’ve inexplicably decided to become an accountant, and without attending one day of school I’ve already scheduled the licensing exam.

If I had my druthers, in fact, I’d still be writing novels on my old manual typewriter, which sounded like awesome thunder when you banged away on it, the ink in the ribbon slowly fading until the letters being printed on the page were theoretical at best. Believe me, if I could convince publishers to let me submit my novels typewritten like that, I would. I stick as close as I can to that construct, though: A simple word processor, a white screen, a keyboard. Sometimes I still make the automatic “carriage return” motion when I’m typing. I often smack people in the face because of this, and fights break out.

Now, if you like lots of software to help you write, I don’t care. And you shouldn’t care if I care. You write however you want, and I’ll continue to use a pen and paper and—grudgingly—a word processor, and nothing else. At least until I’m powerful enough to force my will on the publishing industry. Until then … I abide.

My very first powerful experience with reading came when I was in grade school and I discovered The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I’d seen an animated version of the story on TV not long before, and the discovery that things on TV might be based on books that I could read over and over again was kind of mind-blowing (I am old enough, remember, to have lived during the dark times when TV shows were on once and often never seen again—a time before streaming, before DVRs, before color and music). To then discover that there were six sequels was almost too much for me.

I took the Narnia books out of the library again and again for months, just bringing them in so I could check them out again. When I finally bought copies for myself with my allowance, I noticed for the first time there were other books I could read, too. And so began my Life as a Reader.

Beige

Naturally, for a long time my reading was confined to classic fantasy like Tolkien and any fantasy story that involved people traveling from this world into a magical universe. If the cover art implied high school kids fighting orcs, or businessman learning to fight for his life in a sword-based gladiator school, I was sold. And in turn its little surprise that the first five thousand things I wrote when I started working on my own stories were just pale imitations of that basic trope—kid from this universe travels to magical world. Because my reading was pretty monochromatic.

Read to Write

You’ve no doubt heard the advice that if you want to be a better writer, you should read more—more often, more widely, more deeply. Reading anything will teach you something, but you also need to read diverse books by diverse authors. You want to learn as many different lessons from as many different people as possible. So when someone tells you to read more, do it—but read outside your current channels as much as you can. Read other genres, read books by authors outside your cultural experience. Read YA novels, and literary novels, read history and academic works, read everything.

Diversity moves along the Y axis, too—time. It’s easy to get stuck reading only current authors. It makes sense, even; if you want to sell work to the market, it’s good to know what the market has embraced recently. But you should also delve backwards in time. Read books published long ago—and not just the received “classics” of literature. Read pulp, read dimestore paperbacks, read serialized 19th century novels by someone not named Dickens.

Don’t just read more—read it all.

The other night I was out with some writer and agent friends having drinks and spreading malicious gossip (as we do), and the subject of author jealousy came up. Someone was telling a story about an author behaving badly because another author was enjoying some great success, and even though author #1 was plenty successful they felt slighted.

Authors get jealous of each other all the time. We all simultaneously think we’re geniuses and fear we’re frauds, so when someone else sells scads of books or wins awards or gets a big advance we feel rage that we’re not getting those things (even if we’ve gotten them before) and then get really drunk, convinced we’ll never publish again, and end the evening weeping openly as we toilet paper some random stranger’s house, pass out in a dumpster, and wake up to write again.

The secret to jealousy isn’t to deny it, but use it.

Rage Against Other Novelists

I speak from experience. A few years ago I went to a conference and after the first day I realized that I was approximately the 256^th most important author there. Other writers had bigger deals, other writers had more support, longer lines—other writers, basically, had everything, and I got really depressed. I was convinced I’d had my shot and missed it.

On the place home, I wrote some of the best chapters of my life, chapters in a story that eventually evolved into We Are Not Good People. That book was partially fueled by rage and jealousy.

So, next time you’re feeling like other, less-talented authors (read: all of them, naturally) are getting the money and attention you deserve, don’t waste your time being an asshole, or a passive-aggressive frenemy to the other writers in your circle. Get to work. Take that negative energy and like Emperor Palpatine grow stronger from it, and write with a sense of desperation. It’ll pay off. And it comes with fewer police summonses.

One of the most difficult concepts for a lot of writers (myself included) to internalize is simple but powerful: Bad writing is subjective.

Let that sink in for a moment. We’d all like to think that great writing is somehow measurable, something we can apply science! to and create a formula that will allow us to accurately detect it. One of my secret fears as an author—and I can’t possibly be alone in this—is that I am secretly a terrible, terrible writer, and history will remember me as the 21st century Edward Bulwer-Lytton—the guy who wrote the famous line “It was a dark and stormy night” that is now used as shorthand for purple, tortured prose. It would be comforting to think there was a test for bad writing that would either confirm or refute this—but there isn’t. It’s subjective. All we have is general consensus.

The Sentence

After all, let’s consider Bulwer-Lytton’s famous sentence. The short version isn’t actually bad, is it? “It was a dark and stormy night” may not be the most inspired phrase ever composed, but it certainly isn’t so terrible. In fact, Wikipedia points out that the phrase had actually been used by Washington Irving decades earlier, and yet Irving isn’t pilloried for it. Part of that has to do with Irving’s generally higher literary reputation, of course, and part of it has to do with the rest of Bulwer-Lytton’s sentence, that is usually left out for brevity’s sake:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Okay, the terribleness of that sentence is more apparent now; it sort of just staggers to a period, doesn’t it? And yet, it is really the worst thing you’ve ever read? I doubt it. A few relatively minor edits and it would be an unremarkable but totally workable sentence.

It’s good to keep this in mind—there’s no scientific way of nailing down what, exactly, bad writing is—and styles come and go, making it more complicated. What was once a perfectly acceptable sentence in the style and genre of the time can slowly become the most-mocked sentence in history. So when you get feedback on your work in progress—or a review of a published book—and someone hates a sentence or a whole raft of sentences, remind yourself that bad writing is subjective. Revision and editing are often exercises in re-arranging perfectly fine words. And if you’re destined to be the next Edward Bulwer-Lytton, at least you’ll be famous.