My Favorite Writing Tips
I haven't done a piece on writing recently, so I figured it was time to end the trend.
One thing every young writer that I've known has in common is that, for about the first five to ten years of the writing lives, they spend a good deal amount of time trying to figure out how to do this very odd job. Not only that, they suffer frequently from "Freud Syndrome," that feeling that, even though you fully believe in the identity you've settled on for yourself, you're missing that x-factor that makes you the real thing. This comes out of the enormous amount of self-doubt and fear that, in those earliest writing days, you're doing something wrong. Why is this? Because writing, to quote Anne Rice, "is the most individual of all the arts."
The closest thing to a writing apprenticeship we have is all the years we work on our craft before we publish our first pieces of work professionally. And that period can be anywhere from 7-20 years. Everyone works at a different pace. Some of us take time to set up Plan-B's before beginning our real work in earnest. Some of us change careers in our thirties. Some of us go do MFAs. Some of us work as journalists. Some of us start writing, then stop for a period of time, only to take it up again years later. Whatever it is, every writer's experience is as different as our personalities.
During my time when I was suffering from the worst bouts of self-doubt (I say worst bouts because I still have those feeling every so often, but not nearly as much now), I looked for wisdom from my superiors. In the course of doing so, not only did I manage to find models for the kind of writing I wanted to do, but I found mentors and teachers who could impart such wisdom to young schmucks like me who decided that the written word would be our lots in life.
So, for this post, I'd like to share my favorite writing tips from other writers. Not only will I share the tips, but I'll even commentate on what these tips mean to me and why I think they're worth sharing with others. So, let's begin.
1. Develop actual work habits. ~ John Updike
Writing is a job. Jobs--which can sometimes be fun, and sometimes suck--involve work. Writing is no different. A lot of people--mainly those who don't look on writing as a potential profession--don't seem to realize this. Updike, who was a professional writer basically from the age of 21, did though. Every day of his life, he spent at least three hours a day on his writing and aimed at getting three pages of finished, typed (on a typewriter) copy done every day. And look at the legacy he left behind.
I think it's of paramount importance that if you want to be a writer, or any kind of professionally artistic person, you need to have the discipline to "show up for work." The ability to make yourself sit down and do the work, even when you don't feel like it, is what get's books, plays, poems, stories, or screenplays written.
2. Writing is the art of applying the ass to the chair. ~ Dorothy Parker
(Mrs. Parker certainly could turn a phrase, couldn't she? Equal parts insightful, amusing, and vulgar--gotta love a woman like that.)
I think of this one as a continuation of the first. For someone like Dorothy Parker, who suffered from chronic writer's block later in her life, to always have remained aware of this is excellent. She knew--even in her most flippant of moods--that there was only one way to get things done: to do them. Despite her own dower opinion of her work and place in the literary world--which were both contributing factors to her reticence to write--Parker produced some of those most indelible writing of the 1920s. Her poems are memorable, her short stories, fantastically written, and her essays, hilarious. And she produced it all despite her own self-doubt.
Once you've developed your work habits, or rather, figured out how you work best, putting it into practice and sticking to it is the best way to get things done.
Now, for different people, this discipline manifests differently. For some, a daily word count (the way I work), is how they do it. For others, it's sitting down, one day out of the week, and mad-dashing a five-digit marathon of words all in one go. Everyone has their method, and so long as it produces good results, that's all that matters. The point is to keep in mind the idea that there is no writer's equivalent of the "Elves and the Shoemaker." If you want to get that piece completed, you have to complete it.
One thing every young writer that I've known has in common is that, for about the first five to ten years of the writing lives, they spend a good deal amount of time trying to figure out how to do this very odd job. Not only that, they suffer frequently from "Freud Syndrome," that feeling that, even though you fully believe in the identity you've settled on for yourself, you're missing that x-factor that makes you the real thing. This comes out of the enormous amount of self-doubt and fear that, in those earliest writing days, you're doing something wrong. Why is this? Because writing, to quote Anne Rice, "is the most individual of all the arts."
The closest thing to a writing apprenticeship we have is all the years we work on our craft before we publish our first pieces of work professionally. And that period can be anywhere from 7-20 years. Everyone works at a different pace. Some of us take time to set up Plan-B's before beginning our real work in earnest. Some of us change careers in our thirties. Some of us go do MFAs. Some of us work as journalists. Some of us start writing, then stop for a period of time, only to take it up again years later. Whatever it is, every writer's experience is as different as our personalities.
During my time when I was suffering from the worst bouts of self-doubt (I say worst bouts because I still have those feeling every so often, but not nearly as much now), I looked for wisdom from my superiors. In the course of doing so, not only did I manage to find models for the kind of writing I wanted to do, but I found mentors and teachers who could impart such wisdom to young schmucks like me who decided that the written word would be our lots in life.
So, for this post, I'd like to share my favorite writing tips from other writers. Not only will I share the tips, but I'll even commentate on what these tips mean to me and why I think they're worth sharing with others. So, let's begin.
1. Develop actual work habits. ~ John Updike
Writing is a job. Jobs--which can sometimes be fun, and sometimes suck--involve work. Writing is no different. A lot of people--mainly those who don't look on writing as a potential profession--don't seem to realize this. Updike, who was a professional writer basically from the age of 21, did though. Every day of his life, he spent at least three hours a day on his writing and aimed at getting three pages of finished, typed (on a typewriter) copy done every day. And look at the legacy he left behind.
I think it's of paramount importance that if you want to be a writer, or any kind of professionally artistic person, you need to have the discipline to "show up for work." The ability to make yourself sit down and do the work, even when you don't feel like it, is what get's books, plays, poems, stories, or screenplays written.
2. Writing is the art of applying the ass to the chair. ~ Dorothy Parker
(Mrs. Parker certainly could turn a phrase, couldn't she? Equal parts insightful, amusing, and vulgar--gotta love a woman like that.)
I think of this one as a continuation of the first. For someone like Dorothy Parker, who suffered from chronic writer's block later in her life, to always have remained aware of this is excellent. She knew--even in her most flippant of moods--that there was only one way to get things done: to do them. Despite her own dower opinion of her work and place in the literary world--which were both contributing factors to her reticence to write--Parker produced some of those most indelible writing of the 1920s. Her poems are memorable, her short stories, fantastically written, and her essays, hilarious. And she produced it all despite her own self-doubt.
Once you've developed your work habits, or rather, figured out how you work best, putting it into practice and sticking to it is the best way to get things done.
Now, for different people, this discipline manifests differently. For some, a daily word count (the way I work), is how they do it. For others, it's sitting down, one day out of the week, and mad-dashing a five-digit marathon of words all in one go. Everyone has their method, and so long as it produces good results, that's all that matters. The point is to keep in mind the idea that there is no writer's equivalent of the "Elves and the Shoemaker." If you want to get that piece completed, you have to complete it.
3. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. ~ John Steinbeck
This one comes from Steinbeck's personal "Six Writing Tips." And keep in mind that this is the same man who wrote one of the most phenomenal pieces of American literature in 100 days (that's The Grapes of Wrath, for those of you who are guessing), while concurrently keeping a progress diary of his daily efforts.
The whole quote in fact finishes up as this: "Rewrite is usually found to be an excuse for not going on."
There are very few pieces of writing advice that I take as "scripture," but this for me is one of them. I am a chronic procrastinator (I've always meant to stop procrastinating, but I've kept putting it off). No where is this truer than when it comes to my writing. If I obsessed over every sentence, every word, every goddamn comma--as many of my creative writing professors said I should have, just like the great Modernists--I'd never get anything done. I'd have never been able to complete my Degree. And I certainly could never finish a book of my own (which I intend to in the next few months).
I also have a daily battle--as many writers do--with high anxiety. So the idea of not making progress on something, and instead simply retracing my steps until a portion of the path is worn smooth, seems like a great way to intensify the ever-present tension of incompletion. Thus, I keep with Steinbeck's words and get it all down before the rewrite begins.
(Number three I think nicely slides to this one.)
One of the things many young writers chronically suffer from is "Shiny New Idea Syndrome." That's where you're in the middle of a piece and all of a sudden, a new "perfect" idea for a different story pops into your head. And you all at once become so infatuated with this new idea that you decide to ditch you're present work-in-progress to shack up with the new story. Rinse and repeat.
And why did this happen? Because the young writer succumbed to the Siren's call of the shiny new idea--partly. Really, it's a sign of one of two things. One, the author got into a slump in a part of the story where they didn't know what was going to happen and believed that was a sign the story was a dud. Or--door number two--the author had become so familiar with their story-at-hand that they got bored. They knew what was coming, so they moved on to something new.
Either way, in the end, all this young writer ends up with is a pile of half-finished manuscripts, which are only good for one thing: lining the bottom of either their trunk.
Neil Gaiman, as almost everyone knows, has a long bibliography with a number of books, comics, stories, and screenplays (among other things), that are modern classics. And he is a firm believer in the idea that if you want to be a writer, the first thing you have to do is write (again see Mrs. Parker's "applying the ass to the chair" point). However, starting to write only gets you part of the way there because at about that point, the Shiny New Ideas rear their Siren heads.
Thus, the second half of the equation is to finish what you write. Even if you end up hating the current project, finishing it is better than stopping half way through. Again, you can fix any problems with rewriting, but you can't fix what's unfinished. When you don't have the whole thing before you, when you can't see it's complete shape, no amount of tweaking will get you closer to a complete story. You have to complete a draft of it before you can truly complete a story.
5. Write with the door closed. Rewrite with the door open. ~ Stephen King
(King might've have meant something different from how I always interpret this bit of advice to mean, but it's my blog.)
I've always read this piece of advice, which comes from King's wonderful memoir/book-on-writing, aptly titled On Writing, as a good way to think of the difference between the writing and the rewriting stages of the creative process.
When writing, you should only write for yourself. To quote Terry Pratchett, "The first draft is just you telling yourself the story." You're trying to get that first, sloppy, or at least unpolished, version of the story down, like laying the foundation of a great skyscraper you're soon to erect. However, once that skeleton is there, once that foundation is down--and once you fixed the most glaring obvious flaws, like typos--then its time to seek feedback.
Authors are always too close to their work to objectively judge it (even if we take a cooling off period to start something else). We cannot see the problems because we always know more than readers. That's why we need reader feedback: so we can adjust accordingly. Without that, we could be sending a piece out into the world that has serious issues and not even know it.
So once the piece is finished, open the door and let some fresh air--and some fresh eyes--in on the secret.
6. Do what you love, and love what you do. ~Ray Bradbury
(Anyone who knows me well saw this one coming.)
Much of Ray Bradbury's best writing advice is in his book Zen in the Art of Writing, and for the most part, it has less to do with practical motivation and more to do with inspiration. Bradbury was a firm believer in the intuitive side of the human mind. Creatively speaking, doing what felt right was more important to him than doing what might've been intellectually or culturally savvy. Impulse and action were more crucial than reflection.
No where is this more important than in regard to the kinds of stories he wrote. The true is that he wrote in every known genre of fiction, though he's best remembered today (going on seven years after his passing), as a writer of science fiction. He never saw himself as a "Sci-Fi writer." The world called him a science fiction writer (and it stuck), but he saw himself as a writer who wrote what he wanted, what he felt like writing, what possessed him so much that he had no choice but to put it down on the page.
This, for me, is the ideal way every author should operate: devoid of self-censorship. The world has enough (maybe too many) censors as it is. So there's no reason to act as your own. Writing the kind of story that you're most passionate about is all that should matter to you. It doesn't matter if its fashionable. It doesn't matter if it's trendy. It doesn't matter if its "new" (whatever the hell that means), and does things no story before it has ever done.
What matters is that you care enough about it to put your ass in the chair, write it, and finish it because you have to see this thing into the world so other people can share your joy for it with you. Once its out there in the world, its audience will find it and find you. They'll see the passion and they'll follow you wherever you go.
(Again, this one I think compliments its predecessor.)
Anne Rice is a writer known best for her gothic fiction, notably her Vampire Chronicles series. These are books that frequently explore the darkest parts of human existence and tackle some of the most difficult existential questions--none of which neither Philosophers nor Physicists have been able to yet answer. And while Rice hasn't been able to answer them either, she hasn't shied away from raising and pondering them in her fiction--all of which extends from her own dark thoughts and fears.
Like Bradbury, who poured his passion into his stories, Rice pours her darkest thoughts and her deepest loves into her fiction--as writers and other creatives should.
You should not be afraid to explore the things you wish to explore in your work, I believe. No matter the subject or the degree of exploration, the comfort of other people shouldn't be a concern of yours.
How far into Fight Club would Chuck Palahniuk have gotten if he cared that the book would disturb some people? Would D.H. Lawrence have finished Lady Chatterley's Lover if he'd taken stock of his neighbor's opinions on talking about sex? Would Nabokov have finished scribbling out his index cards for Lolita had he known the uproar it would've cause?
(Well, maybe.) There's a possibility they wouldn't have for the sake of good taste or saving face.
At the same time, you should also enjoy what you're doing. Your art shouldn't (always, until it get to those slog days) feel like homework. It should feel like fun a good deal of the time. The things that bring you joy and interest you should seep into your work and fuel it, no matter how strange they may seem.
In fact, the more personal you make your work, the more interested other people will be in it. (Just look at V.E. Schwab's recent work, and you'll see what I mean.)
8. Be a Sadist. ~ Kurt Vonnegut
So the whole quote actually goes, "Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your characters are, make awful things happen to them in order that the reader may see what they are made of." It's one of Vonnegut's personal rules of "How to Write a Good Story." This one has to do with two particular elements of writing: characterization and conflict.
Fiction can only exist where there is conflict. Stories are not stories without them; they're mere anecdotes. The only way to create a story properly is to create conflict, and this entails being a total dick to your characters.
For a lot of writers--myself included--this was a hard thing to learn (oddly). I was a very conflict-avoidant personality growing up. I hated fighting. I rarely got into actual physical confrontations. And I don't like violence (I can't stand slasher movies for this reason--that and the characters being flatter than paper). However, if you want to be a good fiction writer, you have to learn to be mean to your creations, even when you don't want to be.
Putting your characters through the ringer, hurting them as badly as you possibly can without murdering them (too soon, in some cases), is part of being the little god of your stories. In fact, its probably the most crucial part. If you've done your job correctly though, and created characters that readers will care about, all the conflict will be worth it once you get them to the end of the story.
Conflict creates compassion and investment in your story in the reader. Learning to be able to do it, without feeling guilty about it, is an important skill in fiction writing.
9. Read (Relax, and Take Inspiration) ~ Every Writer Ever
(Okay. I'm cheating a little. Again though, my blog.)
Besides writing a lot, the other half of the writer's apprenticeship is reading, which is as close as writers get to "learning from the masters." Looking at other writer's works is the best way to see how it can be done. Depending on what you want to write, there are dozens to hundreds of authors who can serve as examples--examples of what you can do and what you might choose to avoid.
It isn't only people who write in your preferred field who can inspire you though. Dipping into other people's areas can give you insight and inspiration into your own work as well. Do you want to write fantasy? Read some literary fiction to learn about character and style. Do you want to write science fiction? Read some history for fun plot ideas. What if you want to write plays or screenplays? Consider reading some poetry so you can learn about crafting elegant and lyrical language.
However, not all inspiration for writing comes from other writing. It can come from visual storytelling, like good films and television. It can come from the music you find more soothing or haunting. It can come from games, both table-top and video, that you regularly play. It can come from anywhere--a memory, a snippet of overheard conversation, a barroom anecdote.
The creative well needs refilling after you've done a decent amount of work. Relaxing and diving into a good book or a decent binge of TV is one way of refilling it. But it isn't the only way out there.
10. Everybody Does It Differently, So Find and Do What Works for You. ~ Me
To wind things up--and be unsurprisingly arrogant at the same time--I thought I'd conclude with the one absolute that, in all my time of looking up and into writing advice, still stands up.
To echo the first Anne Rice quote I rattled off, "Writing is the most individual of all the arts." Not only is every professional author's story to publication different, but so is their own method for getting their work done. All of these quotes are ones I personally find true of my own process, but they might not work for you or a young writer you know.
And that's fine.
Some writers religiously fulfill a set word or page count every day of their lives. Some have a set time limit to how long they work on their stuff before calling it quits for the day. Some writers, however, don't have any of that stuff. They just take the day they have off from their day job and crank out as many words as they possibly can in that day and content themselves with that.
And that's the day-to-day writing stuff.
When it comes to planning or not planning, the field is even more erratic. Some authors intricately plan out their books months before they begin writing them. Other writers simply being with seed of an idea and allow it to grow as they write. Then other writers hybridize the two extremes and plan out certain things, but leave others to the moment of the writing.
Some writers use computers. Some use notebooks and pens. And some, even in the 21st century, use manual typewriters (Harlan Ellison did to his dying day). Then there are other things, like motivation, taking/handling feedback, and dealing with deadlines--but that's a whole other story.
The point is that there is no one way to be a writer. There is no one way to get the job done. The defining characteristic of a writer is someone, by whatever method works best for them, who gets a piece of written work to a good enough state that someone else might actually want to read it. The rest is just detail, unique to the individual.
Everybody does it differently. Find out what works best for you and do that.
This one comes from Steinbeck's personal "Six Writing Tips." And keep in mind that this is the same man who wrote one of the most phenomenal pieces of American literature in 100 days (that's The Grapes of Wrath, for those of you who are guessing), while concurrently keeping a progress diary of his daily efforts.
The whole quote in fact finishes up as this: "Rewrite is usually found to be an excuse for not going on."
There are very few pieces of writing advice that I take as "scripture," but this for me is one of them. I am a chronic procrastinator (I've always meant to stop procrastinating, but I've kept putting it off). No where is this truer than when it comes to my writing. If I obsessed over every sentence, every word, every goddamn comma--as many of my creative writing professors said I should have, just like the great Modernists--I'd never get anything done. I'd have never been able to complete my Degree. And I certainly could never finish a book of my own (which I intend to in the next few months).
I also have a daily battle--as many writers do--with high anxiety. So the idea of not making progress on something, and instead simply retracing my steps until a portion of the path is worn smooth, seems like a great way to intensify the ever-present tension of incompletion. Thus, I keep with Steinbeck's words and get it all down before the rewrite begins.
4. Finish Things. ~Neil Gaiman
(Number three I think nicely slides to this one.)
One of the things many young writers chronically suffer from is "Shiny New Idea Syndrome." That's where you're in the middle of a piece and all of a sudden, a new "perfect" idea for a different story pops into your head. And you all at once become so infatuated with this new idea that you decide to ditch you're present work-in-progress to shack up with the new story. Rinse and repeat.
And why did this happen? Because the young writer succumbed to the Siren's call of the shiny new idea--partly. Really, it's a sign of one of two things. One, the author got into a slump in a part of the story where they didn't know what was going to happen and believed that was a sign the story was a dud. Or--door number two--the author had become so familiar with their story-at-hand that they got bored. They knew what was coming, so they moved on to something new.
Either way, in the end, all this young writer ends up with is a pile of half-finished manuscripts, which are only good for one thing: lining the bottom of either their trunk.
Neil Gaiman, as almost everyone knows, has a long bibliography with a number of books, comics, stories, and screenplays (among other things), that are modern classics. And he is a firm believer in the idea that if you want to be a writer, the first thing you have to do is write (again see Mrs. Parker's "applying the ass to the chair" point). However, starting to write only gets you part of the way there because at about that point, the Shiny New Ideas rear their Siren heads.
Thus, the second half of the equation is to finish what you write. Even if you end up hating the current project, finishing it is better than stopping half way through. Again, you can fix any problems with rewriting, but you can't fix what's unfinished. When you don't have the whole thing before you, when you can't see it's complete shape, no amount of tweaking will get you closer to a complete story. You have to complete a draft of it before you can truly complete a story.
5. Write with the door closed. Rewrite with the door open. ~ Stephen King
(King might've have meant something different from how I always interpret this bit of advice to mean, but it's my blog.)
I've always read this piece of advice, which comes from King's wonderful memoir/book-on-writing, aptly titled On Writing, as a good way to think of the difference between the writing and the rewriting stages of the creative process.
When writing, you should only write for yourself. To quote Terry Pratchett, "The first draft is just you telling yourself the story." You're trying to get that first, sloppy, or at least unpolished, version of the story down, like laying the foundation of a great skyscraper you're soon to erect. However, once that skeleton is there, once that foundation is down--and once you fixed the most glaring obvious flaws, like typos--then its time to seek feedback.
Authors are always too close to their work to objectively judge it (even if we take a cooling off period to start something else). We cannot see the problems because we always know more than readers. That's why we need reader feedback: so we can adjust accordingly. Without that, we could be sending a piece out into the world that has serious issues and not even know it.
So once the piece is finished, open the door and let some fresh air--and some fresh eyes--in on the secret.
(Anyone who knows me well saw this one coming.)
Much of Ray Bradbury's best writing advice is in his book Zen in the Art of Writing, and for the most part, it has less to do with practical motivation and more to do with inspiration. Bradbury was a firm believer in the intuitive side of the human mind. Creatively speaking, doing what felt right was more important to him than doing what might've been intellectually or culturally savvy. Impulse and action were more crucial than reflection.
No where is this more important than in regard to the kinds of stories he wrote. The true is that he wrote in every known genre of fiction, though he's best remembered today (going on seven years after his passing), as a writer of science fiction. He never saw himself as a "Sci-Fi writer." The world called him a science fiction writer (and it stuck), but he saw himself as a writer who wrote what he wanted, what he felt like writing, what possessed him so much that he had no choice but to put it down on the page.
This, for me, is the ideal way every author should operate: devoid of self-censorship. The world has enough (maybe too many) censors as it is. So there's no reason to act as your own. Writing the kind of story that you're most passionate about is all that should matter to you. It doesn't matter if its fashionable. It doesn't matter if it's trendy. It doesn't matter if its "new" (whatever the hell that means), and does things no story before it has ever done.
What matters is that you care enough about it to put your ass in the chair, write it, and finish it because you have to see this thing into the world so other people can share your joy for it with you. Once its out there in the world, its audience will find it and find you. They'll see the passion and they'll follow you wherever you go.
7. Go where the pain is; go where the pleasure is. ~ Anne Rice
(Again, this one I think compliments its predecessor.)
Anne Rice is a writer known best for her gothic fiction, notably her Vampire Chronicles series. These are books that frequently explore the darkest parts of human existence and tackle some of the most difficult existential questions--none of which neither Philosophers nor Physicists have been able to yet answer. And while Rice hasn't been able to answer them either, she hasn't shied away from raising and pondering them in her fiction--all of which extends from her own dark thoughts and fears.
Like Bradbury, who poured his passion into his stories, Rice pours her darkest thoughts and her deepest loves into her fiction--as writers and other creatives should.
You should not be afraid to explore the things you wish to explore in your work, I believe. No matter the subject or the degree of exploration, the comfort of other people shouldn't be a concern of yours.
How far into Fight Club would Chuck Palahniuk have gotten if he cared that the book would disturb some people? Would D.H. Lawrence have finished Lady Chatterley's Lover if he'd taken stock of his neighbor's opinions on talking about sex? Would Nabokov have finished scribbling out his index cards for Lolita had he known the uproar it would've cause?
(Well, maybe.) There's a possibility they wouldn't have for the sake of good taste or saving face.
At the same time, you should also enjoy what you're doing. Your art shouldn't (always, until it get to those slog days) feel like homework. It should feel like fun a good deal of the time. The things that bring you joy and interest you should seep into your work and fuel it, no matter how strange they may seem.
In fact, the more personal you make your work, the more interested other people will be in it. (Just look at V.E. Schwab's recent work, and you'll see what I mean.)
8. Be a Sadist. ~ Kurt Vonnegut
So the whole quote actually goes, "Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your characters are, make awful things happen to them in order that the reader may see what they are made of." It's one of Vonnegut's personal rules of "How to Write a Good Story." This one has to do with two particular elements of writing: characterization and conflict.
Fiction can only exist where there is conflict. Stories are not stories without them; they're mere anecdotes. The only way to create a story properly is to create conflict, and this entails being a total dick to your characters.
For a lot of writers--myself included--this was a hard thing to learn (oddly). I was a very conflict-avoidant personality growing up. I hated fighting. I rarely got into actual physical confrontations. And I don't like violence (I can't stand slasher movies for this reason--that and the characters being flatter than paper). However, if you want to be a good fiction writer, you have to learn to be mean to your creations, even when you don't want to be.
Putting your characters through the ringer, hurting them as badly as you possibly can without murdering them (too soon, in some cases), is part of being the little god of your stories. In fact, its probably the most crucial part. If you've done your job correctly though, and created characters that readers will care about, all the conflict will be worth it once you get them to the end of the story.
Conflict creates compassion and investment in your story in the reader. Learning to be able to do it, without feeling guilty about it, is an important skill in fiction writing.
9. Read (Relax, and Take Inspiration) ~ Every Writer Ever
(Okay. I'm cheating a little. Again though, my blog.)
Besides writing a lot, the other half of the writer's apprenticeship is reading, which is as close as writers get to "learning from the masters." Looking at other writer's works is the best way to see how it can be done. Depending on what you want to write, there are dozens to hundreds of authors who can serve as examples--examples of what you can do and what you might choose to avoid.
It isn't only people who write in your preferred field who can inspire you though. Dipping into other people's areas can give you insight and inspiration into your own work as well. Do you want to write fantasy? Read some literary fiction to learn about character and style. Do you want to write science fiction? Read some history for fun plot ideas. What if you want to write plays or screenplays? Consider reading some poetry so you can learn about crafting elegant and lyrical language.
However, not all inspiration for writing comes from other writing. It can come from visual storytelling, like good films and television. It can come from the music you find more soothing or haunting. It can come from games, both table-top and video, that you regularly play. It can come from anywhere--a memory, a snippet of overheard conversation, a barroom anecdote.
The creative well needs refilling after you've done a decent amount of work. Relaxing and diving into a good book or a decent binge of TV is one way of refilling it. But it isn't the only way out there.
10. Everybody Does It Differently, So Find and Do What Works for You. ~ Me
To wind things up--and be unsurprisingly arrogant at the same time--I thought I'd conclude with the one absolute that, in all my time of looking up and into writing advice, still stands up.
To echo the first Anne Rice quote I rattled off, "Writing is the most individual of all the arts." Not only is every professional author's story to publication different, but so is their own method for getting their work done. All of these quotes are ones I personally find true of my own process, but they might not work for you or a young writer you know.
And that's fine.
Some writers religiously fulfill a set word or page count every day of their lives. Some have a set time limit to how long they work on their stuff before calling it quits for the day. Some writers, however, don't have any of that stuff. They just take the day they have off from their day job and crank out as many words as they possibly can in that day and content themselves with that.
And that's the day-to-day writing stuff.
When it comes to planning or not planning, the field is even more erratic. Some authors intricately plan out their books months before they begin writing them. Other writers simply being with seed of an idea and allow it to grow as they write. Then other writers hybridize the two extremes and plan out certain things, but leave others to the moment of the writing.
Some writers use computers. Some use notebooks and pens. And some, even in the 21st century, use manual typewriters (Harlan Ellison did to his dying day). Then there are other things, like motivation, taking/handling feedback, and dealing with deadlines--but that's a whole other story.
The point is that there is no one way to be a writer. There is no one way to get the job done. The defining characteristic of a writer is someone, by whatever method works best for them, who gets a piece of written work to a good enough state that someone else might actually want to read it. The rest is just detail, unique to the individual.
Everybody does it differently. Find out what works best for you and do that.
