Four Lessons from my First Book

I wrote a book during the pandemic. I had no business writing one, but I did anyway, and now it is out in the world for you people to confirm this fact.

In writing this book (which is available here), I learned some things. A few things, actually. I probably could have learned a few more, but even so, I consider myself lucky to have captured these lessons that I have since written down. If you are so inclined, below you will find these four lessons that I learned writing my first book at 22.  

Write just for one person

Despite being an amazing writer (at least according to my grandmother), I have to understand that some people aren’t going to like my writing. Everyone has different opinions and preferences; it’s part of what makes us human. But some people still try to please everyone.

Hi, I’m some people. In the first drafts of the book, I found myself being torn in every direction, writing in an effort to appease anyone who came to mind. I kept thinking, Oh, Ezekiel wouldn’t like this sentence, or Tony would think this passage is too much. Sometimes I would find myself in impossible predicaments where I wrote passages that Jeff would like, but Tony wouldn’t, and changing it would only reverse the scenario.

Instead, I learned to write like only one specific person is going to read it. This isn’t a new concept. All the great authors had their muses. Hemmingway had his wives (he married and divorced several times). Fitzgerald was perhaps unhealthily obsessed with his wife Zelda. Jack Kerouac based many characters on his best friend Neal Cassady. These people provided inspiration while also forcing them to focus their writing to a single audience.

I started to write with one specific person in mind. Rather than feeling like I was writing with a crowd of people behind me, looking over my shoulder and giving me unwarranted suggestions, my writing became a single conversation with this individual. The crowd faded away, and I was free to focus my efforts.

Who do I write for? Wouldn’t you like to know, weather boy. Using a single person as my target audience helps to focus my writing and prevents me from worrying about what others might think. Now I only have to worry about what one person might think (still very exhuasting).

Write what you want to read

I used to read all the fancy journals that writers are supposed to read. The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, really any journal pretentious enough to put “the” in front of their name. I would read the stuffy pieces in these journals, attempt to replicate their stuffy writing, and would never quite succeed. I would give up halfway through.

One day I realized that I did not like reading these stuffy pieces. Life is short, and I already have spent way too much time reading things I did not like (I was a Political Science major). I started to write like my favorite authors, and I instantly found myself writing so much more. Friday in Florence is heavily based on Cannery Row by Jon Steinbeck and A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, two of my favorite books that were re-read several times during the process and inspired much of my writing.

Let it breathe

I finished the first draft of FiF in early August of 2020, after which I decided I deserved a break. The official reason for this was that I wanted to give myself a few weeks without thinking about the book, so I could come back and edit with a fresh eye, something I heard all the good writers do.

I struggled with this. For better or for worse, I hate it when I don’t finish something. I didn’t want to become another one of those people who never finished their book. Also, I was bored, and writing that draft had helped me kill many hours during California’s first lockdown.

But I stayed strong (by distracting myself with a little work and a lot of League of Legends), and the result paid off. Coming back from my three-week break, I noticed that the ending of my book (which I initially thought was Pulitzer level writing) was complete shit. I wouldn’t have noticed this if I had immediately gone into editing mode. So, take a break every once in a while. It’ll help you in the long run, and after all, you deserve it.

Get your ducks in a row before you dive into the pond

When I started writing FiF, I had zero idea of how it was going to turn out. I had a few vague characters, a setting, and not much else. This was a mistake.

 I’m still of the opinion that authors don’t need to, if they even should, flesh out exactly what happens in the plot before writing it (rather let it grow organically from page to page), but I definitely should have fleshed out my characters and setting before starting.

I wasted an incredible amount of time rewriting sections because this scene no longer made sense with how I viewed this character or looking up names of streets and other small details about Florence. The majority of the writing didn’t need these details but fixing them took up most of my time.

If I can stress anything in this article, it is this. Know your settings and characters before diving in. Even if you end up not using one or changing it later, this saves so much time (and exasperation) in the long run. This can also be summed up as “do the fucking research!”

Those are the lessons I’ve learned so far, and I’m sure there are more to come. I’ll be happy to recieve them, though, forthat means I’m still writing.

Six Writing Tips From John Steinbeck

Steinbeck has been my favorite author ever since I was forced to read Cannery Row freshman year of high school. Friday in Florence was heavily inspired by (sometimes dangerously close to) Steinbeck’s writing style, with me even borrowing a few characters from his books. I felt it fitting to end this little mini-series of the tips of my favorite authors with the one who inspired me to become one. Without further ado, below you will find the six major lessons on writing by John Steinbeck.

Accept Fear

It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.

Steinbeck won a National Book of the year award, a Pulitzer in Literature, and countless other awards for his writing. If anyone could be confident in their storytelling, it was him. Yet with every story, fear was always present. I can’t speak for Steinbeck in what caused this fear; maybe fear of not doing the story justice, or fear of how it will be received, but if one of the greatest writers of this country still felt that fear at the beginning of each story, then you will as well. Accept it, and keep going.

Don’t worry about finishing

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

We start a project with grand ideas of how it will finish. How it will look, how it will be received and adored by the masses. We rarely achieve what we envision in our minds, and the frustration of this inevitably can paralyze the writer. Don’t worry about the end result. Worry about the page (or screen these days) in front of you. Or as a much smarter person once said, “just keep swimming.”

Write for One

Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

When I first started Friday in Florence, I spread myself too thin. I kept trying to bend my writing so it would appease every face I thought might read it. In trying to please everyone, I wasn’t able to please even one.

I ended up choosing a certain person who had actually inspired some of my writing and writing like only they were going to read it. Rather than feeling like I was writing with a crowd of people behind me, looking over my shoulder and giving me unwarranted suggestions, my writing became a single conversation with this individual. The crowd faded away, and I was free to focus my efforts.

I wish that I had known this at the beginning.

Stay Disciplined

All sorts of things might happen in the course of this book but I must not be weak. This must be done. The failure of will even for one day has a devastating effect on the whole, far more important than just the loss of time and wordage. The whole physical basis of the novel is discipline of the writer, of his material, of the language. And sadly enough, if any of the discipline is gone, all of it suffers.

In writing, there is no boss. At most, you have an impatient publisher or a nagging agent, but for the most part, you are the boss. It’s up to you to have the discipline to clock in every day, to take responsibility for a bad day, and still show up the next. To be a professional. The greatest writers were not great because they were favored by constant inspiration or talent, but rather because they had the discipline to keep going when both evaded them. Stay the course.

There is no magic formula

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that make a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.”

Everyone hopes that there is a secret to writing. The fact that I have spent so much time researching my favorite authors’ methods rather than actually creating something myself is a testament to this hope. There are tips, better ways of doing things that save time and focus efforts, but there are no shortcuts. Find something worth expressing, and then try your best to convey it sincerely. 

Understand it never gets easier

I will end this article and mini-series with this. Steinbeck, after winning every award for writing possible, including a Nobel prize, had this to say about the craft.

 I remember one last piece of advice given me. It was during the exuberance of the rich and frantic '20s, and I was going out into that world to try and to be a writer.

      I was told, "It's going to take a long time, and you haven't got any money. Maybe it would be better if you could go to Europe."

      "Why?" I asked.

      "Because in Europe poverty is a misfortune, but in America it is shameful. I wonder whether or not you can stand the shame of being poor."

      It wasn't too long afterward that the depression came. Then everyone was poor and it was no shame anymore. And so I will never know whether or not I could have stood it. But surely my teacher was right about one thing. It took a long time - a very long time. And it is still going on, and it has never got easier.

      She told me it wouldn't.

Here’s to it never getting easier.

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Five Tips F. Scott Fitzgerald used to become a Timeless Writer

If there was a Mount Rushmore for great American authors, I am sure that Fitzgerald’s face would be the first to be carved. His The Great Gatsby is widely regarded as one of the best books of all time and has been an unreachable standard for young writers everywhere.

In this continuation of my journey to become a better writer, I read several letters and articles by the Gatsby himself and distilled five main themes that drove his writing. They are listed below to be read at your pleasure.

Have a System

Invent a system Zolaesque…but buy a file. On the first page of the file put down an outline of a novel of your times enormous in scale (don’t worry, it will contract by itself) and work on the plan for two months. Take the central point of the file as your big climax and follow your plan backward and forward from that for another three months. Then draw up something as complicated as a continuity from what you have and set yourself a schedule.

When I first started writing, I believed that stories should grow organically. Start with a premise, setting, and some interesting characters, and see what happens. This wasted so much time. I kept having to go back and rewrite certain sections and chapters because they no longer fit where I wanted the book to go, an annoying task that caused me to procrastinate and lose valuable days of writing.

Spending time in the beginning to create the structure of your book not only safeguards against the worst of this time-wasting but also provides a framework for a schedule. Having something to measure how far you’ve come and keep you accountable to progress. If I had done even a few more weeks of outlining for Friday in Florence, it would have been released at least three months earlier.

Choose your word with care

You ought never to use an unfamiliar word unless you’ve had to search for it to express a delicate shade–where in effect you have recreated it. This is a damn good prose rule I think…. Exceptions: (a) need to avoid repetition (b) need of rhythm (c) etc.

Fitzgerald along with his friend and confidant Hemingway were known for using short, easily understood prose to describe profound and complicated subject matter. Their ability to create such complex stories that everyone from the average fourth-grader to an 80-year-old can understand is the mark of a master writer.

Also like Hemingway, Fitzgerald had a deep aversion to overusing adjectives in his stories.

About adjectives: all fine prose is based on the verbs carrying the sentences. They make sentences move. Probably the finest technical poem in English is Keats’ “Eve of Saint Agnes.” A line like “The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,” is so alive that you race through it, scarcely noticing it, yet it has colored the whole poem with its movement–the limping, trembling and freezing is going on before your own eyes.

All of this goes to show that one does not need a thesaurus to be a good writer. Use words people know, and use action over adjectives.

Kill your darlings

In a 1993 Saturday Evening Post article, Fitzgerald touches upon one of the hardest parts of writing.

 “This is just bullheadedness. Better throw it away and start over.” The latter is one of the most difficult decisions that an author must make. To make it philosophically, before he has exhausted himself in a hundred-hour effort to resuscitate a corpse or disentangle innumerable wet snarls, is a test of whether or not he is really a professional.

Learning to cut what is not needed in your writing, however well written it is, is something with which all writers struggle. I especially should have cut out more than I did in FiF. This dilemma has been more famously described as “killing your darlings,” a quote attributed to American greats like Faulkner and Wilde. It is the people who know how to do this, according to Fitzgerald, that separate the professionals from the amateurs.

Who to write for

“My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

I’ll end this list with this. There is a lot of conflicting advice on how to direct your writing. Steinbeck says to write for one person. Publishers want you to write for a specific demographic, the one that will buy a lot of your books. Fitzgerald has a unique view that I haven’t seen in any other authors, one that I think is the reason that his books remain so timeless. Write for whomever you’d like, but understand that writing is a gift that can transcend lifetimes. Make sure that it lasts.

A Few Tips on Writing from Amor Towles

I’ve started a small series where I take a few of my favorite writers and compile their best tips for writing. This second issue is on my newest favorite writer, Amor Towles.

I picked up Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow the day before the first lockdown in California, a choice that became one of my best in 2020. Since then, I have re-read the book three times, and everything else he has put out since and before. It is safe to say that he has become one of my favorite authors. 

I spent the last week or so going through his various interviews and profiles and came up with four main principles that he follows when it comes to writing.

Study the greats.

Amor has spent much of his life studying his craft. Yes he studied at both Yale and Standord (which I heard are alright schools), but that perseverance has extended past his years in college. Amor and three other friends have a book club that has been going strong for the last 15 years, with them coming together every month without fail to discuss a new book. If you do the math, that  amounts to over 180 books. That’s 180 books that Amir has analyzed, critiqued, and learned from to influence his own writing, and it shows. There was a reason his first book was a NYT best seller.  

Plan it out.

By the time Amor begins to pen the first words of his novel, he has already been working for at least a year. The reason, Mr Towles is a ruthless outliner. 

And that takes me about a year to two years, where I just start thinking through every element: the settings, the scenes, the individuals, the events. And so by the time I write chapter one, I have most of the book sketched out.


Amor does not constrain himself to this outline, though. He remarks that he frequently discovers new things about his characters as he writes them. Instead, the outline serves as a foundation, a structure to fall back on when inspiration isn’t hitting like it should.

Inspiration comes to those who work.

There is a common belief in writing, or any creative work, that inspiration drives the action, and one needs to wait for it before work can be done. Amor would disagree.

I almost never start with inspiration. If you start to write a scene or an idea, if you can stick at that for 20 minutes, eventually you can get lost in the process and the creative function takes over. The imagination suddenly kicks in. You almost have to dive in and start to work, and eventually, if you get in the groove, you can flourish.

Don’t use waiting for inspiration as an excuse for not getting to work. Dive in first, stick with it, and eventually you’ll start swimming. 

Follow your fascination.

Amor would be the first to admit that he is no expert on the subjects that he chooses to be the setting or theme of his books but would say that they are areas that he has been interested in for some time.

Rather than pursuing research driven projects, I like to write from areas of existing fascination. Even as young man, I was a fan of the 1920s and 1930s, eagerly reading the novels, watching the movies, and listening to the music of the era. I used this deep-seated familiarity as the foundation for inventing my version of 1938 New York in Rules of Civility. Similarly, I chose to write A Gentleman in Moscow because of my longstanding fascination with Russian literature, culture, and history.

Hemingway had a similar view, where one should write what they know. Having a longstanding curiosity of a subject allows one to draw from past experiences and knowledge rather than going out and researching, as well as adds a personal touch. And at the risk of stating the obvious, it is much easier to write about a subject you enjoy rather than one you don’t but think the reader would.

Liked this? Hated it? Somehow found a typo (it’s rare, but crazier things have happened). Let me know.

Hemingway's Six Tips for Writing Well.

I’ve started a small series where I take a few of my favorite writers and compile their best tips for writing. The first issue is about the old man himself, Hemingway.

Hemingway was a darn good writer. Few people would argue against that.

As typical of someone who is darn good at something, their methods and thinking are usually studied by people who wish to achieve that level. I’m not a darn good writer, so I looked to Hemingway for advice on writing.

Most of the best advice that Hemingway left behind was aggregated in the book, Hemingway on Writing, edited by Larry W. Phillips. These include letters between Hemingway and his contemporaries (such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound) as well as the writings of prospective writers who sought out his advice.

From this, I observed six main themes that drove Hemingway’s writing.

Always be observing, then empathizing.

“When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen.”

Hemingway was obsessed with writing “true sentences.” Sentences that were accurate as possible to the meaning or scene they were trying to express. Whether that was how a certain setting looked or how a character reacts.  

To achieve this, he focused on his powers of observation. Find the words that perfectly matched what he saw, heard, smelt, and felt. Most importantly, listening. 

“Watch what happens today.” Hemingway once told a young prospective writer who had joined him on a fishing expedition. “If we get into a fish see exact it is that everyone does. If you get a kick out of it while he is jumping remember back until you see exactly what the action was that gave you that emotion. Whether it was the rising of the line from the water and the way it tightened like a fiddle string until drops started from it, or the way he smashed and threw water when he jumped.”

“Then write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling you had.”

This reaches a whole another dimension when it comes to humans.

“The hardest thing in the world to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn…”

To write a “true character” Hemingway tried to be as empathetic as possible. An interesting thought, since Hemingway was known to be a surly character. He had strong opinions, and lord have mercy for whoever told him otherwise. 

He was a different person when writing.

“As a man things are as they should or shouldn’t be. As a man you know who is right and who is wrong. You have to make decisions and enforce them. As a writer you should not judge. You should understand.”

To create true sentences, one must learn to observe and listen, then empathize. 

Keep the momentum.

Like all writers, Hemingway struggled with resistance and writer’s block. But like all great writers, he found ways to stay on track.

The first way was to end the day when you’re on a roll.

“Always [best] to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.”

The second way was to at the beginning of the next day, re-read your story up to the point you left off in order to keep the same flow.

“The best way is to read it all every day from the start, correcting as you go along, then go on from where you stopped the day before. When it gets so long that you can’t do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start. That’s how you make it all of one piece. And remember to stop while you are still going good. That keeps it moving instead of having it die whenever you go on and write yourself out. When you do that you find that the next day you are pooped and can’t go on.”

Keep it simple.

“It is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.”

Hemingway is known for his short, direct prose, one honed from years as a journalist. This simple prose allowed him to take complicated and profound subject matter and express it in a way that all people understood (The average reading level of his books hover around the fifth and sixth grade).

He achieved this with a ruthless focus on all aspects of his writing. Words were chosen with care, and adjectives were often omitted (he had a lifelong suspicion of them). Most sentences were short and to the point, with long sentences reserved for ones of importance. Even his punctuation was consciously simple.

My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.

*This article has some really interesting statistics on how Hemingway constructed his work compared to other writers of his time. Well worth checking out.

Always be improving.

Hemingway was competitive. In all forms of life, but especially in writing. While writing was something he did simply for the sake of, it was also something he did to be better than others. Not better than his contemporaries, though, but chasing the greats before him.

“[A writer] should have read everything so that he knows what he has to beat… The only people for a serious writer to compete with are the dead that he knows are good. It is like a miler running against the clock rather than simply trying to beat whoever is in the race with him. Unless he runs against time he will never know what he is capable of attaining.”

Hemingway wrote down a list of all the authors young writers should read and learn to emulate, which can be found here. 

Understand that you’ll never be as good as you can.

Despite his insistence on improving, Hemingway understood that his writing would never reach the level he believed it could.

…writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done—”

Writing is an activity of constant struggle. A struggle to find interesting topics and stories, and to write those stories in ways that are true, entertaining, and interesting. In trying to better yourself, it becomes even more difficult. It’s a grueling climb up a mountain that never ends.

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

Stay the course.

Despite this, Hemingway advises staying the course. When the young prospective writer from earlier asked Hemingway if he could be a good writer, Hemingway told him in his usual abrupt fashion.

“If you work at it five years and you find you’re no good you can just as well shoot yourself then as now.”

When you say it like that, might as well give it a shot. 

For Hemingway, writing was a brutal, difficult experience that took everything out of him. (He used to describe it as “sitting down at my typewriter and bleeding”). But it was also a freeing experience for him, and he was never more satisfied than whenever he wrote a sentence he deemed true.