Pat Miller's Write Mind

1. Be willing to listen to your editor.
My first grade writing in the front of my Mickey Mouse Club scrapbook reads “Patty Wallace”. Beneath it I had written "do" with arrows pointing in front and back of my name. I was imitating the symbol my teacher used. It meant, “Do the indicated part over”. Age six, and trying to please my first editor!

2. Know your audience.
A year later, my grandmother was coming from Missouri to Hawaii where we were stationed. I overheard Mom say she was not going to believe the prices here. To help Grandmother, I wrote a shopping guide. I stapled ten Big Chief tablet pages and copied newspaper prices for things she might need. Shredded Wheat, large box, and the price.

3. Write well and people will pay.
We moved to Ohio the summer before fourth grade. One of my stories was published in our little school newspaper. The paper had a cool, chemical smell and my words were no longer in graphite, but a sophisticated Gestettner purple. The papers cost five cents each, and I was heady with the knowledge that people were paying to read my work.

4. Put your heart into your writing.
By high school we had moved from Ohio to Texas to Virginia. There I won a writing competition with historical fiction about the first Battle of Bull Run. My research revealed that civilians packed picnics and planned to watch from surrounding high ground. The bloody disaster cured them of their hope for a quick end to the war. I imagined how that would have felt for the watchers. And then I wrote.

5. Repurpose your work for different markets.
I returned to Texas for college, and loved my new life. However, the workload and the new freedom sometimes conflicted. When pressed by a deadline for freshman English, I rewrote my Bull Run story from a different character’s point of view with only minor research needed.

6. Respect what your reader brings to your work.
As a young mother, I loved reading to our twin sons and daughter a year younger. Despite hearing a variety of books, my children asked to hear the same books repeatedly. The books that made me groan resonated with them in ways I didn’t understand. But they knew what they liked.

7. Yes, you do have time for writing.
Authors find time to write. They get up extra early, write on their lunch hours, or talk into tape recorders as they drive. Because I worked full-time and we had three children in 15 months, time for myself evaporated. However, there was still bathroom time! Read on the toilet, write in the tub. Those minutes added up!

8. Write what you know.
When our kids were little, there were no cell phones or e-mail. We couldn’t afford long distance calls, so I wrote long letters to the grandmothers. My mother saved those letters in a scrapbook which she waited 25 years to share with me. I was able to relive the early years that had blurred in memory.

9. Writers have to write.
Hairdressers tell me they look at strangers and imagine them with better cuts. Interior designers remodel mentally when they visit. I found myself making up stories about people in waiting rooms with me. Little tablets resided on my bedside table, in my purse, and in the glove compartment of the car, ready to record overheard dialogue, dreamed scenarios, and sudden inspirations.

10. “The only failure in writing is when you stop doing it.” (Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg, Bantam Books, 1990)
Despite the unkind critic that shares my brain or the grouchy deadline monster that lives beneath my desk, I keep writing--articles, books, workshop handouts, e-mails, blog posts, scrapbook journaling, and lesson plans. The need to communicate is at the core of being human, and it has never been easier to put one’s thoughts into words. One day the writing will be carved on my headstone—until then I continue to write.