An invitation to what looks like a great fiction-writing course came in today’s email, with a “sneak peek” at one of its lessons:

Trust Yourself

As a writer, you have to keep all of the elements of craft in your head at once. But, as Bell suggests, “if you are trying to think of them as you write, you’ll tense up.” To this end, it’s a good idea to NOT think about these elements too much as you write your first draft. Tune out your inner editor. Allow yourself to take risks; write freely and without inhibition. Trust your instincts.

The important part is that your hand keeps moving, writing paragraph after paragraph, scene after scene, page after page. After you’re finished with your first draft, then you can go back and polish it, paying attention to the elements of craft, refining your characters and their motivations, heightening the conflict, and reorganizing the structure.

Sign up today for Write Great Fiction: Revision & Self-Editing and take advantage of the 20% off any September and October course by using coupon code SEPT209 at checkout.

(I left the sign-up info in because it looks like a good course–and because I want to balance my use of it as a negative example.)

This is NOT the way to write great NON-fiction. This is the way to write non-fiction slowly, painfully, and unproductively. It may be cathartic, or have other benefits, but it is just what my methodology (Joel’s BookProgram) was designed to remedy.

To write non-fiction well and quickly, you do the following:

• First create your structure. The structure bears your message.
• Within the structure, remember that “the diamond is your friend.” This tells you exactly what your structure must do to serve your message–and thus, your reader.
• You do NO writing until the structure is COMPLETE. Then you ZipWrite, quickly and easily.

I’m grateful to Brian Klems, the Writer’s Digest Online Community editor, for giving me the opportunity to verbalize this clear contrast between great fiction writing and great non-fiction writing.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE POLYMATH

It feels like the whole world is holding its breath for the Apple tablet. But maybe we’ve all been dreaming about the wrong device. This is Courier, Microsoft’s astonishing take on the tablet. More (including video)

If you are a coach, consider entering Milana’s “Coaching Entrepreneur of the Year” contest. It’s free. (I’m a judge.) http://bit.ly/1w2UH1

The prizes are impressive! Hope to see you in Dallas in October!

Good bye, dear Mary. Thank you!

Dictation software has improved to the point where it is actually practical for writing. The challenge, of course, is that when we talk, we don’t necessarily structure our utterances according to plan.

Speak your book!

The methodology I teach for book writing — Joel’s BookProgram™ — has as its central meme, “structure before content.” If you create your structure, you can then easily dictate the segments at the lowest level of the structure. In the case of a book, this would probably be subchapters — portions that are 200 to 600 words in length.

Why use dictation software? For many, speaking is easier than writing. Most people can speak much faster than they can type.

I have found another, more subtle, reason for dictating rather than writing: speaking seems to come from a different place in my brain. As a result, what I dictate often has more emotion than what I write, even more authenticity.

Why not use dictation software? For one thing, even though speech recognition has improved dramatically in recent years, the software still introduces weird errors, due to imperfect recognition. That is actually not a significant disadvantage, since most writing needs a round of editing anyway.

There’s the cost of a package that includes software and a high-quality microphone. Current prices are around $200, for the leading PC and Mac software.

There is also a learning curve, both in terms of getting used to dictating instead of typing, and in terms of using your voice to control your computer and perform editing functions during the dictation process.

Can dictation take the place of transcription? Yes and no. Transcribers can handle noisy input, and multiple speakers in the same recording; dictation software cannot.

The most popular packages by far on the market today are Dragon Dictate for the PC, and MacSpeech Dictate for the Mac (also built on Dragon technology). Both are about  $200, and come with a good quality microphone. Incidentally, the quality of the microphone is critical; don’t try to save money by buying a cheap mike.

In short, dictation can:

• Save you time
• Make your writing sound more authentic
• Require you to learn a new workflow

Dictation may not work for everyone, but for most book authors, it’s worth a shot.

My friend, writer Martha Engber, is looking for 1 or 2 people to share a table at this conference:

I’d like to market my two books at the Jack London Writers Conference, a large and local two-day event that brings writers from all over the Bay Area. The conference is Friday and Saturday, Oct. 9 and 10, at the Crowne Plaza Center in Foster City. Here’s the URL: http://www.jacklondonwritersconference.org/.

If so, how many other writers would you need to split the cost of the table to make the effort worthwhile? (Two writers would each pay $125, three would each pay $83, etc.).

Write to Martha: martha@engber.com

Outstanding writing advice from copyblogger:

Think it’s impossible to write with a knife?

Not at all. You might even say it’s essential.

Well, to be more precise, no one actually writes with a knife. But good writers do edit with one.

For them, writing involves two separate but closely intertwined mindsets: crafting their message and then cutting away everything that’s not their message.

Yesterday, Jon Morrow talked about why you need to tighten up your writing. Today we’re going to talk about how.

Write for yourself, edit for your readers

Really good writing always begins with the desire for self-expression. Let your mind and heart say what they want without restriction. You’re rough-hewing the shape of your thoughts.

But once the broad contours have emerged in your first draft, you take your knife and carve off all the extra bits. Sculpt your article until the important details are clear, not hidden by chunks of irrelevant or uninteresting verbiage.

It isn’t easy. As writers, we all have a tendency to fall in love with our words. So here are seven tips to help you cut to the chase.

1. Find the spine of your content and stick to it

A blog post is a focused piece of writing — it shouldn’t aim to address more than one tightly focused topic.

Yes, that story about your telecommuting co-worker and her embarrassing webcam moment is pretty darn funny. But if you can’t make it 100% relevant to the point you’re trying to make, don’t use it.

You can’t make your audience chuckle if they’ve clicked away.

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