Gabi Coatsworth of the Write Connextion Blog asked Patrick  to share some writing tips with her readership.

I recently asked Patrick McCord for some writing tips for those of us hoping to get our 50,00 word novel written this November. Do let me know which ones you find helpful.  I personally am fond of tip number 4. It worked for Hemingway, and it seems to be working for me. Patrick certainly has the credentials. He describes himself as a fugitive from Hollywood, where he learned that his talents were more analytical than presentational. He’s an award-winning poet, published short story author, and he has sold teleplays and a screenplay. As a college professor, he has specialized in story- and identity-cognition in film and literature.  He is currently Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of The Editing Company and is developing the Write Yourself Free(SM) Writing Manual.
The Editing Company and the Write Yourself Free(SM) workshops are housed in a 19^th Century carriage house in the center of Westport, CT that features a dedicated Writers’ Room. Patrick and his partner Tish Fried  have launched The Editing Company Publishing. Their first book, Resurrecting Democracy, is available on Amazon.com.

1. Writing is a habit. Don’t wait for inspiration; the need for inspiration is a myth.  If you have a habit of writing 4 or 5 times a week, you will finish your projects. If you wait for inspiration, you’ll have a few inspired beginnings, never finished. All you need is 15 minutes of writing a day to keep your story cooking on the stove of your pre-conscious imagination. But if you wait for once-a-week inspiration, you’ll find the story-stew has gone cold and moldy. To create habit, make a schedule and stick to it.

2. Writing is play. So play, already. Make a mess. Fretting about punctuation, about the phrasing of a perfect sentence, or about what your audience thinks— these considerations hogtie your imagination. You’re just begging for writer’s block. In order to get to your best drafting self you have to dare to write something awful. The Jungian psychologists say, “Write the Shadow!” Don’t be nice; get crazy. Fun writing can be naughty, terrible, unreal, psychedelic, depraved, or, yes, poorly phrased, or, gasp! unpunctuated. Don’t get it right, get it writ.

3. If you want your story to move, write characters’ perceptions as they goal-seek. Readers connect with a perceptually rich, motivated character.  Readers turn off to involved explanation. Get your imagination into the character’s body, and let the words connect to your characters’ nervous system. What does your character want and how is s/he going to get it? That’s what drives the story!  What does if feel like to be in conflict when a goal is frustrated? Get characters acting, talking, and moving; don’t bother explaining.

4. Hemingway’s Insight: stop writing when you know what happens next; end your writing session before you exhaust your ideas. Linguistic research shows that conversations that are left unconcluded stay in mind longer than those that have closure. If you want to keep your story simmering in the back of your mind, stop when you have a really good idea. Knowing what you want to write next will leave you eager to sit  down the next day and get writing instead of cleaning the house, emailing or texting, etc.

5. Your first draft is a discovery draft, so write fast. As you write your first draft, don’t waste time re-reading what you wrote the day before; you’re wasting time. Characters evolve as they seek goals; writers evolve by finishing stories. Use each writing session to teach yourself to tell stories, not to revise pathologically. And write fast. Revise later.