Marching is the technique of starting on page one and then writing your first draft from beginning to end, all in chronological order. Like someone marching along, you keep putting one foot in front of the other, forcing yourself on until the job is done.
Again and again in Steinbeck’s journals and letters, determination and doubt arise as topics. These, it seems, are the core of his writing experience and the main monsters he had to wrestle.
Martin Amis has led a long and successful career and, as his students at the University of Manchester would surely attest, he has a lot to teach the up-and-coming writer.
If there’s one writer who’s (thankfully) incapable of shutting up about the writing process, it’s beloved American horror icon Stephen King. In his fantastic and much-quoted On Writing, he says, The first draft of a book – even a long one – should take no more than three months, the length of a season. –
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