Kathi Macias
It is said that writing is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. I absolutely agree, and I’m sure most successful writers would echo my sentiments: Inspiration is the easy part.
Over the years I have spoken with and taught beginning writers from all around the world, in all sorts of settings. I have helped them review, edit, and rewrite their work, and I have found one common thread among those would-be writers who eventually become published authors: They are willing to devote themselves to the not-so-easy part of writing—the 90 percent perspiration.
As I worked with these many writers I discovered what I consider to be the simplest and most practical writing method available—the train-of-thought method. This excellent, well known writing method did not originate with me, but it seems no one had ever taken the time to put the method in book form. I therefore decided to do so myself.
This is not a book about proper grammar or punctuation, or how best to choose the voice or set the scene for your great American novel. There are already countless books covering those subjects, if that’s what you’re looking for. But if you want to know how best to take your thoughts and dreams and put them into a clear, compelling, readable manuscript, then this is the book for you. Having personally seen the train-of-thought writing method help so many new writers learn to organize, write, and polish their ideas into successful manuscripts, I offer this book to those who would do the same. May it direct and encourage you as you enter into the 90 percent perspiration phase of your writing career—the serious phase through which true writers are formed.
Kathi Macias is an award winning writer who has authored or co-authored fifteen books, including the popular Matthews and Matthews detective series from Broadman & Holman (Obsession, The Price, and The Ransom), and the bestselling women’s devotional A Moment A Day from Regal Books. She has also edited, rewritten, or ghostwritten more than 100 other books; published numerous articles, short stories, and poems in various periodicals; and serves as a staff member for a major manuscript critique service. A former newspaper columnist and string reporter, Kathi has taught creative writing and business writing for nearly two decades in various venues across the country. She is a popular speaker at writers’ conferences, churches, women’s clubs, and retreats, and she has appeared on several radio and TV programs. A mother and grandmother, Kathi lives in Homeland, CA, with her husband, Al, where she is currently at work on several writing and editing projects.
It’s not that we don’t want to make our readers think. All writers have some sort of underlying message that we want readers to chew on for a while, hopefully even after they’ve finished reading our work. But we also want them to be clear on what that message is. The only way to assure that happening is first to be sure that we ourselves are clear on what we are trying to say.
Every well constructed object, whether a twenty-five-story building or a brief magazine article, must begin with a firm foundation. And that’s what this first chapter is about: properly laying the foundation—or in this case, the “track”—of your manuscript. We begin at the beginning, and if we work through the entire piece correctly, then when we’re finished we will have come full circle, ending up right back where we started, standing upon the firm foundation that supports the entire manuscript and leaves our readers with a clear and satisfying takeaway thought.
And so I challenge you: Can you capture the heart of that masterpiece that is burning inside of you and write it down in one brief, succinct statement or synopsis, understanding that this statement is the “takeaway” you want to impart to your readers? In other words, when your readers finish reading your piece, will they have been able to find the meaning of your manuscript within the one-line synopsis that was the starting place for your writing?
Before we begin trying to isolate and write down that one-line statement for your masterpiece, let’s take a look at a couple of brief writings that I’ve dug out and dusted off from my own ancient files. The first is one of the very short “about town” columns that I wrote for the local newspaper way back in the mid-’80s. The weekly column was called “My Two Cents’ Worth” because that’s just about how much they paid me to write it, and also because that’s all it was—my two cents’ worth of opinion. So trust me when I tell you that the piece you are about to read is not very deep.
