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Rand obviously had something going for her. She didn’t lack for productive firepower. Her two best-known works, “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” weighed in at 750 pages and 1,200 pages, respectively. In total, she authored more than 15 books and many more were written by other authors about her enduring career. There is even an Irvine, Calif.-based Ayn Rand Institute founded in her honor.

But here we boil down Rand’s best practices to her five-step writing process. A short treatment to the hundreds of pages she produced in her books about fiction and non-fiction writing.

Step one: Limit your subject. This might sound elementary but it’s a common mistake writers make. Rand advised writers to ask three questions at the start of any project.

1. What will I write about? Define the topic and stick with that focus. And be sure that you can cover it adequately within the parameters of the project.
2. What do I want to say about this subject? Determine the theme of your project – the point of view that you want to communicate. There’s a lot of writing that takes up space and time but doesn’t really have a lucid point or destination.
3. Is what I have to say new? Am I adding something to the sum total of human thinking and creativity? If not, then don’t put pen to paper at all.

Step two: Judge the audience. Understand who that audience is. Most of us, and certainly all business writers, are writing to an audience. So, to write persuasively we need to identify the characteristics of our intended audience.

Step three: Create a plan of action. Like many experienced writers, Rand was a firm believer in the power of the outline and suggested two tests to measure an outline’s completeness. The first is the essence test. An outline is complete only when you can understand it as a unified whole. The second is the test of final causality. This test, which Rand adapted from Aristotelian philosophy, says that when your outline establishes and details a logical chain of cause-and-effect steps that lead to the established conclusion, it is complete. Many writers still refuse to do the upfront work involved in drafting the outline. Yet, a well-conceived outline can speed the writing process and make it sure-handed.

Step four: Draft from the subconscious mind. Rand suggests that you write without stopping and, to the greatest extent possible, without consciously thinking out each sentence. This technique sidelines the internal editor and allows the mind to roam freely and fully express its creativity.

Step five: Edit objectively. Rand proposed a three-level approach to editing.

1. Focus on the structure of the work. At this level, you need to ensure that it progresses logically – that scenes and ideas build on one another – and that it respects the reader’s intelligence.
2. Focus on clarity. Make sure the writing is communicating exactly what you intend it to. Rand said writing’s purpose is to communicate exactly what you intend it say. She warns writers to beware of “over-condensing” (cramming too much into a sentence or paragraph). Clarity is fundamental to writing but it’s often sacrificed for stylistic considerations.
3. Consider style. Her style tips include:

* Don’t complicate a simple thought
* The simpler the words the better
* Don’t use sarcasm, pejorative adjectives or inappropriate humor
* Don’t use bromides (i.e., trite sayings)
* Don’t use unnecessary synonyms

This approach certainly worked miracles for Ayn Rand. Though the Russian-American novelist, playwright and screenwriter passed from this world in 1982, her most popular books remain mainstays in bookstores across America. No bookstore of any size or seriousness would be without The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Her books, almost 30 years after her death, are expected to sell 2 million copies this year, up from an average of about 300,000 per year.

We would certainly do well to follow Ayn Rand’s writing techniques.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike Consol is president of MikeConsol.com, which provides business writing seminars, Web 2.0 strategies and media training to midsize and large companies. Consol spent 17 years with American City Business Journals, the nation’s largest publisher of metropolitan business journals with 40 weekly newspapers across the United States.

Put your magnum opus aside for a few days and rest. Then give the manuscript one more critical look. Are you sure you’ve said everything you want to say? Once you’re satisfied, you’re ready for the next crucial step to making your manuscript the best it can be—a peer review.

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A Necessary “Evil”?

A peer review involves sending your manuscript to fellow writers, other experts in your field or genre, and readers in your target audience for their feedback. As those who’ve been through the process know, a peer review can be frustrating and nerve-wracking. The reviewers’ role is to help you “see” what you’ve written, and you may get feedback you don’t want to hear. But you also garner valuable information to make your book better.

Reviewers point out what’s working in the text or storyline and what isn’t. They may nitpick on the wrong things and take you on tangents, offering suggestions that don’t advance your ideas. Still, feedback from reviewers is essential because they bring a variety of perspectives to the book—as your buyers will. Be prepared for ideas that could be so far off you wish you could take back your manuscript and say “never mind.” But also be ready for dynamic and brilliant suggestions.

Keep Reviewers on Track

To ensure reviewers’ comments are valuable as opposed to distracting, guide the process the best you can. How? Consider these suggestions:

• Be specific about what you want peer reviewers to look for.

• Ask them if the content seems complete or if you’ve overlooked something important.

• Also ask them to forgive typos, punctuation glitches, and the like, as those issues are addressed in the editing process. You want them to focus on content.

Be Grateful for Valuable Feedback

Resist the temptation to skip the peer review. Reviewers’ questions often reveal muddy spots that need to be cleared up. Thank them! It’s easy to get your nose too pressed to the computer screen to see the overall picture. Peers may notice places where you need to expand on your message or where you haven’t used words correctly. These problems you can fix with a little more thought and a good word or language reference. But don’t rely on reviewers for nitty gritty editorial glitches, or you could receive a confusing patchwork of opinions. Best to let your editor ensure consistency and precision when it comes to details. You can’t expect that from peer reviewers.

When you instigate this review process, you’ll find that people appreciate being asked. What’s more, you’ll have ambassadors out there when your book finally launches.

About The Author

Barbara McNichol helps nonfiction authors through expert editing and her searchable e-guide, Word Trippers: The Ultimate Source for Choosing the Perfect Word When It Really Matters, available at http://www.BarbaraMcNichol.com.

One year to a Writing Life. Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer's Art and Craft. Available @ Amazon

Dear Joyce, Michael Chabon had over 15,000 pages of his follow up novel to” Mysteries of Pittsburgh” that he tossed because he got similarly bogged down with no sign of the novel ever ending. His unpublished behemoth is called “Fountain City”, by the way. Chabon was loathe to stop, but he set his novel aside and wrote the bestseller, “Wonder Boys” in a relative short time. The moral: Maybe setting an unwieldy novel aside isn’t always a bad thing. However, there is another option where you may be able to salvage the “good stuff” in a different form. It won’t be easy, but here is a systematic approach to perform major surgery on your manuscript. CAUTION: This is NOT for the weak of heart!

1. Consider what you have now as not a novel, but a cauldron swirling with ideas. This is the start of finding some characters and the bare bones of a story.

2. Print out a copy of what you have with the pages numbered (regardless of how it is set up or your previous vision) just number 1-700.

3. Divide your stack into ten sections – okay, maybe 20 sections in this case (you do have 700 pages after all).

4. Tackle one section at a time and DO NOT look at them in chronological order. Repeat, DO NOT look at section 1, then 2, then 3. Do them randomly, 20, then 5, then 7….

5. Get a pack of colored highlighters (red, yellow, green, plum….)

6. Assign a color for dialogue – blue, a color for description – green, a color for just good writing, et cetera. Use whatever categories are important to you, but not Exposition, please.

7. Go through one section at a time and highlight the best bits under each category. Remember, do the sections out of order and take a good break between sections. You are looking for the best bits, not the okay bits, not the good stuff, the absolute killer dialogue and description and writing.

8. When you are done with the highlighting, re-type it from scratch under the categories (dialogue, description, good-writing, action…). Yes, I said re-type it.

9. Now, pin the pages to the wall and see what your absolute best stuff is and organize it in a fairly logical sequence. You know, Bobby meets Sarah for the first time… dialogue between Bobby and Sarah… Description of the car accident… dialogue of police officer and Sarah. This is where you will start to see gaps and connections.

10. Now, look at the wall with all this stuff in order and write an outline and a chronology of the story (these are two separate things). The outline may include what you have on the wall, and it will also have scenes to be written. The chronology will keep this all straight when you move to a first draft. (A chronology is a timeline of the whole story and will include things that are occurring “off-stage”; such as: 15 October 2009; 11:59 PM; Cole rushes to post-office to mail taxes as six-month extension expires.)

11. Now, take the bits you have on the wall, and the notes for what you need to have in between the bits and place these in the correct chronological order and make notes in the document of where you need to write a new scene or a connector between scenes.

12. Do any additional research or free writing to get down what needs to be written in the missing parts. It is okay at this point to re-imagine dialogue or description, but don’t try and do finished prose. What you have now created is what mystery writer Elizabeth George calls a “Full-Outline”.

13. Print this full-outline out.

14. Go drink a margarita and have a spa day.

15. Sit down.

16. Open a new document. Yes, I said a new document.

17. Pin the first five or six pages of the full-outline on the wall in front of you and have the proposed chronology within arms reach. (The chronology will help when you have to recall where your characters are and what they are doing at any given time.)

18. In the new document start writing your draft from start to finish using the full-outline and the chronology as a guide. DO NOT REWRITE. Just write from start to finish with the full-outline as a guide, incorporating your previously written best stuff in the draft.

19. When you finish this draft you will be about at third draft stage.

20. Refine this, publish it, become famous, and mention me in the credits.

About the Author:

Rocky Cole is a professional counselor and freelance writer. More information on freelance and creative writing can be found at http://www.ColeWriting.com.

After stumbling around without a consistent technique early on like most novice writers, I eventually developed a method of writing that has never failed me. It’s made my creative life easier, less stressful, and kept writer’s block completely at bay. Of course, every writer has a different creative approach, but once I developed this particular process, my writing experience became so much more fun and exhilarating. I should state that most of my writing is non-fiction (instruction and text books with a lot of interviews) although I’ve used the method for fictional writing like scripts and screenplays as well. The method also works well for other creative endeavors that I do, like writing music, and audio and video editing. So here’s the method that works for me.

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Perfection Not Required

First of all, I believe that the biggest problem for a writer (or any kind of creator for that matter) is trying to be too perfect too soon. It’s human nature to want the very first things out of your mind to be stellar, but creating generally doesn’t work that way, at least not for me. Creating with my method is a multi-step process, requiring enough time to adequately undertake each step. There are no short-cuts, but that’s also what makes it so liberating. There is no need to be perfect, and therefore you don’t expect it right away. The day I realized that I didn’t have to write something close to the final product when I first sat down was the best day of my creative life. The pressure was off and the creative juices flowed from that point on!

So if you don’t expect a document worthy of a Pulitzer right off the bat, just when do you expect it? In my method, I need at least 3 completely separate passes, preferably on different days, on any particular piece of work. The portion that I work on is manageable, which means essay, article or chapter length.

Brain Dump

On the first day, I write strictly stream of consciousness, not worrying too much about punctuation, spelling, formatting, extraneous details, or precision of the idea. All I’m interested in is getting as much of that idea (or ideas) down as I can. If I can’t think of a word or phrase, I’ll just mark it with an “xxx” so I can come back later and search for the perfect fit at that time. If there’s research material that has to be inserted, I spend as much time getting it in the document as I can at this point (which may get quite tedious), because the whole idea is to just get as much down on the page as possible regardless of the form. As a friend of mine so eloquently puts it, I “talk to the page”. Over the years, I’ve actually gotten better at making this first pass a readable document, but I still wouldn’t dream of showing it to anyone in it’s first-day manifestation.

By the way, I don’t consider this first pass complete until it covers the entire article, essay or chapter, so this pass might take several writing sessions over the course of several days, although I try to finish it the first time I work on it.

Refinement

The second pass (almost always on a completely separate day) is for document refinement. This is where the ideas, formatting, spelling and punctuation are all put in place. This pass usually requires a fair amount of rewriting, since the stream of consciousness writing of the Brain Dump can be just words around a seed of an idea. Now the seed has to flower, so much of the creative work happens here as the ideas are expanded into something interesting and readable. There’s usually also a fair amount of cutting and pasting as compatible ideas are grouped together to tell the story.

Polishing

The third pass (also on a separate day) is for polishing. Usually I find myself adding descriptive adjectives, turning a phrase differently, making everything as understandable as possible, and providing the piece with a hard ending. Sometimes I also find myself completing a task that I procrastinate on, which is writing the intro to either the article or a chapter. I personally find writing intros difficult, but I’ve discovered that if I leave it to the end they sometimes (but not always) write themselves, perhaps pushed along by the now completely formulated idea in the rest of the piece.

Fine-Tuning

If the third pass requires a rewrite due to inclusion of new information or addition of an intro, I’ll probably take a 4rth pass as well, and rarely maybe a 5th, but by this point the changes are very small (a word here, a phrase there). Although it’s possible to fine-tune endlessly, I usually declare the piece complete at this point and await any corrections from an editor.

As I stated earlier, this method has done me well and has completely eliminated any pressure from writing, provided I have enough time. I’ve also found that I write best and stay the most focused in the morning. My writing is a little on the foggy side at night, so unless I’m under the gun, I try to make sure that I complete what I intended before the day gets long.

Maybe this 3 day method of brain dump, refinement and polishing won’t be your cup of tea and that’s okay, since everyone eventually discovers their own best way of writing. Regardless of the method you find works best, as long as you remember that perfection only comes with time and work and is not a product of your first pass, you’ll be way ahead of most other writers and on your way to doing your best work.

2. Finish the project. One finished book is worth more than 20 just started ones. Make an effort to finish the project this year, whether it is a book, an article, a story for the kids. Complete the project and then sit back and be proud of what you have accomplished.

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3. Create an online presence as an author. You have to have a presence on the internet now so that people can find you and your work. You can have a static one page website, or a daily blog, or an author page on Amazon, or a Squidoo lens. The list is endless, but you need something. Learn how you can do this and get it done.

4. Take a course and improve your writing. Kaizen is continuous improvement and this is as important in your writing as it is in the rest of your life. Learning the craft never stops, so take time out to improve your writing skills. Take a course, read a book, or get a mentor.

5. Get out of your comfort zone and try a different form of writing. Have you been cruising along in your genre for too long? If you are a fiction writer, try writing a “How To” article. If you write technical non-fiction, try poetry or dialogue. Do something that scares you in a literary sense. You never know what you’ll find!

6. Use your book to create multiple streams of income. A print book is not the way to become a millionaire. Take the time this year to create other streams of income from your book. Record it as an audio and sell it as mp3 files for the iPod. Create a PDF and sell it as an ebook online. Submit it to Kindle and sell as an ebook on Oprah’s favourite ebook reader. Break it down into chunks and sell it as an eclass, or as a workbook. Create a spin off book and upsell people so they buy 2 products. Present it as a course and record it on video so you can sell it as a DVD.

7. Connect with other authors and find your community. Web 2.0 is all about social networking and there are multiple sites where you can find people to network with, as well as market to. Try the biggest sites like Facebook and mySpace first, and then branch out into GoodReads, Authors Den, LibraryThing and Squidoo. There are also lots of smaller networking sites at ning.com.

8. Learn about Publishing 2.0 new technologies and expand your education about writing. If you don’t read blogs about writing and you don’t use RSS, you need to educate yourself. The internet is packed with information that can help you develop your skills and sell more books, but you need to stay up to speed. Learn how to use Google Reader and start subscribing to interesting blogs.

9. Market your books and yourself as an author. Web 2.0 sites and an internet presence is one way to get started, but you need a continued effort to market your books and yourself as an author. Make a marketing plan early on and stick to it. Include goals such as: Submit an article a month to EzineArticles, Post comments on the top blog in my genre with linkbacks to my website, Spend 1 hour per week surfing blogs and the internet for information about my genre.

10. Enjoy the journey, not just the end result. Remember that writing never stops, neither does marketing nor sales. Don’t get carried away with being focussed on making X amount of sales. Remember to look out the window, go for a walk, hug your partner and read trashy fiction for fun in the hammock on a Sunday afternoon. The journey is why we do it, not the end result.