Reading time: About 2 minutes
Laura Gale embraces the message “kill your darlings,” because she knows favourite phrases are often unclear or overdone…
Laura Gale started her career as a publicist at a global publishing house, promoting books by Nelson Mandela, Tina Fey, J. K. Rowling and many more. She now works with founders and consultants to write books that transform their companies. Laura has ghostwritten nearly 30 books for her clients. She has also edited and coached for dozens of other projects. And she is the bestselling author of two books of her own, Content That Converts and How To Write This Book.
I was excited to talk to Laura about how she approaches writing.
Q. Roughly how much time do you spend writing every day?
Usually two to three hours.
Q. What’s a simple activity or habit that makes you a better writer?
Working in pomodoros — 25 minutes on, five minutes off. Giving myself frequent breaks keeps distractions at bay and allows me to be really focused.
Q. What interferes with your writing?
Writing too much. If I go past about three hours, I feel drained and unmotivated for the next couple of days. It helps a lot to leave some gas in the tank.
Q. How do you persuade yourself to sit down to write on days when you really, really DON’T feel like doing it?
Tell myself: just do half an hour. Once the half hour is done, I tell myself, just half an hour more. And so on. If it doesn’t get past the first half hour, that’s fine, but I find momentum usually takes over.
Q. Is there a particular motto or saying that you’ve found helpful for writing?
“Kill your darlings”: often the words or phrases you think sound wonderful are actually unclear or overdoing it.
Q. Which stage of the writing process do you enjoy the most: researching, writing or editing/rewriting and why?
I love the research phase, interviewing clients and digging into their stories. I also really enjoy taking all that material and weaving it into a cohesive story that they wouldn’t have been able to produce on their own.
Q. What’s one of the best books you’ve read (either fiction or non-) in the last five years?
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is the best fiction I have read in many years. And I really enjoyed Taste by Stanley Tucci too.
Q. What book are you reading right now? The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon.
Q. What do you think is the biggest misperception that new writers have about the act of writing?
That you will be as good as your favourite writers straight away. It’s galling to discover that your best effort falls short of what you thought you could produce, but it’s normal to take several years to get to the level of the writers you admire.
