Blog # 2: Ray Atkins and His Writing Habits

My first important writing habit is to quit while I’m ahead. This is also not a bad tip for you gamblers out there. In the context of writing, however, what I mean is that I try to stop my day’s work at a good place in the story, a spot where the writing is coming easy and the prose is not strained. This tactic is actually mentioned by Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, and for me the habit has been a life-saver. When I first began to write long fiction, I would write each day as if it were my last. The problem with that was that I often had difficulty getting started the following day, because I had used up all of my material. I found that it was much easier to pick up the thread if I had stopped while there was still something to say.


My second important writing habit is to let the work mature once it has been completed. By this I mean that I resist the almost-overwhelming urge to send out my work to publishers, editors, and the like immediately after completion. The reason I do this is simply because I have found out the hard way over the years that the longer I let a “completed” piece age before one final proofread, the more I find wrong with the story. When I first finish a piece, I am still too close to the material to see the flaws, be they simple typos or more serious issues. But if I put the story away for a while, the issues literally leap from the page during the proofread. Incidentally, there is no clear endpoint to this phenomenon. I have two books in print, and I would change parts of each right now if I had the chance.

My final important writing habit is to show the work. I can’t overstate the importance of letting other people read and comment upon the work-in-progress. I’m going to get personal here for a moment and admit that I am afflicted by a serious condition which causes me to believe that every single word I write is a pearl. I am absolutely certain that each and every phrase is a life-changer for some deserving reader. My only defense against this malady is to get input from people I trust. I have a small cadre of readers who will tell me what I need to hear, even if it isn’t always what I want to hear.

If I had to pick which of these habits is the most important and perhaps the most universal, I think it would be number two. Writing is hard work, and once a piece is completed, my tendency is to want someone else to tell me how great it is, either verbally or, hopefully, with a check. Plus, by the time I finish a long piece, I am heartily sick of the thing and just want it gone. But writing, like wine, improves with age. The few times I have neglected my own advice, I have regretted it.