The trick to writing? Understanding there isn’t one

Want to write a book?

It all boils down to going into the room, Carl Hiaasen tells people.

“When they ask, ‘OK, how do you write a book?’ I tell them, ‘It’s easy. You take 400 blank pieces of paper, you go into a room and you fill them up. And then you come out with a book.’

“That’s it.”

Not.

Writing a book, Mr. Hiaasen says, is really one of the hardest things to do in the world. “But everyone wants to think there’s a formula, a method for it. And there is none. The only method is hard work.”

Wanna-be writers who are looking for a shortcut aren’t going to find one, he stresses. “The point is, there’s no easy and quick way to get from A to B, except to do it, and beat yourself up and do it again and again until you get it right.”

And it doesn’t get any easier as you go along, he says. “It gets harder, if you care about the craft and you want to get better.

“If you want to jump through the same hoop and write the same book 10 times, with different characters in it, and you’ve got your little formula and your Joe Detective guy, that’s great,” he concedes. “But not many people can do that.” 