Some of the best advice that can be given to a new author is that they just have sit down and write. Get words on the page. It doesn’t matter how good those words are or how your sentence flows, you’ve just got to get that information down. Because if you’re not writing, you’re not accomplishing anything.

Now, naturally at some point you’re going to go back through and delete all of the terrible parts. That might be 50%, it might be 80% and, you know what, sometimes it will be 100%. But that’s life. I heard a quote somewhere once that said, “Writers should keep track of the words they cut, not the words they write.” I have no idea who said it, but it sure sounds like solid advice to me. Particularly since you’re probably going to cut three times (if not more) what you end up keeping.

And yet, as I sit here, preaching this advice, I have to admit. I’m terrible at this myself.

I’ve reached a point in Penumbra that is ending up very exposition heavy. Let me tell you, I am so bored writing it. Which has it’s benefits. I have to be grateful about the fact that I can recognize that this part is boring. After all, if it’s boring for me to write… it’s going to be doubly boring for anybody else to read.

I fancy myself pretty good at splitting exposition up. Moving it around, hiding it in dialogue, that sort of thing. Of all the problems my writing has, I don’t think info dumping is necessarily one of them–at least not in my polished work.

But the problem is that in order to get that polished work, the words have to be on the page first. I have to slog through writing the long exposition parts in order to get to the point where I can edit it and make it a good section. AND I HATE IT.

Which is why I say, you’ve just gotta push through. Right now I’m steeling myself and just letting me fingers do the work. It may be boring, but it’s gotta be done. I need the raw material that I’ll eventually be able to refine into a fine piece. But that doesn’t make it any easier.