How to Have Awesome Writing
Friday, January 22, 2010
Well! Lots of times people ask us for writing advices. Honestly, we haven't got any. Our Process: stare out window, check email 34,564 times, look at fashion blogs, plan out how we will spend our first Advance, whine to Support Team re: staggering lack of Rejectionist talent/complete failure as human being/general hideousness of visage, write one sentence, feed cat, repeat. This patented system proves effective about 50% of the time; the other 50% we give up and have a whisky. You can certainly give our method a try, but we don't necessarily recommend it.
So! why don't you try asking someone a little more, um, functional. LIKE YOURSELVES. Relentlessly clever Author-friend/fiancée CKHB has a fabulous mini-series of posts on writing. You should probably wallpaper your home with INTERN 's supremely excellent NaNoReVisMo series. Here is Author-friend Lydia Sharp's take on rules of fiction and why it's okay to break them. Here is a very nice post on criticism from Author-friend Ink, to whom we may or may not have also proposed marriage, we cannot actually remember, and you know you are getting a little ahead of yourself when you cannot even keep TRACK of your fiancé/es, but really being married to us would be, like, WAY MORE than a full-time job, just ask our poor long-suffering Support Team who is not even so unfortunate as to be contractually bound to our person, so it seems only fair to divide the labor, and anyway that hasn't got anything to do with writing, does it. Whooooeeee.
Finally, here is an entry on ehow.com titled How to Have Awesome Writing ("Learn to have awesome writing and be the writer that you dream you can be." Difficulty: Moderate). We hope you find this item as delightful as we did.
What about you, little moppets? What's YOUR favorite writing advices?
Posts
Don't expect miracles.
Writing is hard work with an intense and incredibly long internship. If you don't want to pay, don't play.
And certainly don't whine. It's a waste of time and talent.
Just write. Put your ass in the chair. Just write. Your process (staring/surfing/cat-feeding/whatever) is perfect. Just write. No excuses. Just write.
This jacket(?) is ridiculous. Really, it's called a jacket and not scraps of leather? Do they detach for blowing one's nose in like fancy tissue? Beside which they will get caught in your bike chain.
Sorry, my advice is to write a horror story about the jacket.
Okay-- that ehow article just made me wonder why I've been banging my head against the wall... If only we could just follow those six relatively easy steps, and voila! Aweseme Writing!
My advice? Become a part of several writing communities--it doesn't matter which ones, but have more than one, so that you always have one to fall back on.
For example--blogosphere, forums (Verla Kay's, Absolute Write, Nathan's), in-person crit groups,on-line crit groups, a group with conferences like SCBWI, and of course, connect with one person that you can always cry to. Spread the support. You never know what piece of advice will get you to the next level of writing. You just can't do it alone.
I'm glad eHow was able to summarize the difficult task of crafting an award-winning novel into 7 easy steps. You should expect to see my book on the NY Times bestseller list in a few weeks.
For starters, one can’t go wrong with Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing.
Or Mark Twain’s own rules, which Dan Simmons includes in this great intro to learning to write.
Simmons also put together this amazing interview between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway.
And finally, one resource I just recently found (thanks to writtenwyrdd) is Alicia Rasley’s articles. She’s got a Master’s in English, taught at universities, and written many novels and WD’s book on point of view. Even without all that, her articles are clear, insightful, and entertaining. Here’s a sampler, and the full archive.
In the end, though, the best writing advice I ever got was this from Bob Dylan:
Let’s face it, you’re either serious about what you’re doing or you’re not serious about what you’re doing. And you can’t mix the two. And life is short.
Don't talk about your story so much that it satisfies the need to get it out of your system. Save it for the page.
Le R. has linked to me and made our engagement official!!!!!!
SWOON.
moppet. haha.
Now write. Write now.
My favourite bit of writing advices is something I read in Murakami's biog, "What I Think About When I Think About Running". He suggests that you always stop writing at a point where you feel like you could keep going, in the middle of when you don't feel like stopping. He suggests that if you stop writing when you get stuck, it'll be way harder to start again the next time you approach the work. Ace advice that makes a lot of sense.
Write.
Write the same story until it's finished.
Write down ideas for new stories so you don't forget them. Put them somewhere you can easily find but do not see. See above.
Don't revise anything older than three chapters until the entire story is finished.
Read.
Don't read for enjoyment. Read as a professional. If you're a speed reader, stop. Why did the author decide to write that chapter, that scene, that sentence, that word? Dissect your reading until you understand it.
Don't write like the author you're reading. Writing like yourself.
And as mentioned in Dawn Simon's post, don't talk about your story so much you satisfy your need to write it.
Don't write by committee. Yes, it's great to get advice form folks reading your stuff, but you can't please everyone. If you compromise your gut for this person or that person, pretty soon you have nothing but vanilla mush that satisfies a bunch of "rules" of writing, yet is only good to line the bird cage with.
And -- if you write funny, make yourself laugh.
Thanks for the link! :) Joe thanks you, too. This one's on US.
Happy writing!
I all ready has the most bestest righting.
Some fine advice here. I like Lucy's best: don't write by committee. Also, don't write to markets. By the time you've got the zombies eating David Copperfield's brains, the fad will be over and you will have grossed yourself out for nothing.
Write only for your muse. And of course, the Tralfamadorians. For more on that subject, check out my guest blogpost at Nathan Bransford's blog today. http://blog.nathanbransford.com
But I agree with The R: much staring out of windows is always required.
Things that help my writing process: *inordinate* amounts of coffee, administered via IV drip is fine, pajamas, The Ugly Slippers, being far, far away from my computer when inspiration rears her pretty face (this is a no-fail with me...if I have finally decided to chuck it all and take a break to go to Costco because I've had writer's block for, oh, say, EVER, then I am damn well guaranteed to be scribbling out a chapter of something bloody brilliant on the side of a box of bananas. Dig it), did I mention drinking and drafting is sometimes fun?, and the total bliss that is 5 o'clock in the morning in my house (no one...I repeat...NO ONE is awake and that is just so nice every now and then). Does that explain the coffee, pajamas and Slippers thing (yah...they're ugly enough to be capitalized. Really)?
Even then, sometimes when all of these things are aligned, nothing happens. Sometimes when none of them are aligned, I get whacked around by the best ideas EVER. There's no formula. Nothing works, and everything works. All at once.
Helpful, no? :)
I teach yoga for my "real job", and I tell people all the time that there are only two pre-requisites in yoga, and they carry over into life (and, I suspect, writing as well). In order to practice yoga successfully, you must arrive and you must breathe. Everything else is kind of gravy for the train.
Mumble less when speaking into your micro-recorder at 3:20am.
Hee hee, marriage by shiftwork. But is their hazard pay?
And I just picked up this book a little while ago. Up your aisle, perhaps...
(Yeah, I put that in just to make you jealous)
And thanks for the link! My plan for world domi... I mean, I'm so happy to be able to contribute to such a helpful writerly discussion. Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya...
The (usually) popular: "Don't give up -- just keep writing."
I must admit I have a lil' crush on Ink myself...or is that Snoopy?...whatever.
Great links, all good advice. Words of wisdom drip from your skeletal lips..oh fearless leader.
Okay, I've recovered. Best writing advice? How to format a book manuscript. You cannot overlook the professional side of things.
Yay! I'm gonna go home right now and complete steps 1 through 7 on the eHow site, and by tomorrow my
Writing of Awesomeness should appear on the front table of Barnes and Noble.
I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
Take things one day at a time. Get as much done as you can get done that day, and let tomorrow take care of tomorrow.
E-gad, CKHB, that's an awesome page on formatting manuscripts. It never ends, but if one takes it as a college course, day by day, reading backwards from Part I, it's a wealth of info.
There's so much awesome in that posting, it's going to take me awhile to digest.
My best advice: Finish your book. Then write another one. Then make the first one better. Rinse. Repeat.
I just got back from the SCBWI FL conference and posted some of my favorite writing advices from it on my blog.
You are awesome.
1. Turn on computer
2. Scroll instantly to end of document without wasting time rereading, tearing out hair, spending 45 minutes deciding whether to move a single comma.
3. Guzzle caffeine. Preferably diet caffeinated beverage as wish to become newsworthy as talent author, not large-sized person airlifted out of house by crane and helicopter because of hugeness.
4. Begin typing. Actual words in one's primary language are best but this is a personal decision.
5. Take break to fantasize about seeing one's ACTUAL BOOK on a bookstore shelf, seeing an actual literate patron reaching for a copy with the intent of READING IT!
6. Move forward steadfastly.
1.write a sentence.
2.smoke a cig.
3.delete sentence
4.rewrite sentence plus five more.
5.surf internet for 5 minutes.
6.write 10 sentences.
7.grab a hanful of animal cookies and eat them (slowly).
8.write a few more sentences, decide they suck, delete them. Reflect in why you are writing a book in the first place.
9. grab some pretzels.
Repeat sequence for 6 hours. By the end I shoud be 20 pounds heavier and have black lungs.
In all seriousness, the best advice I have received (like everyone else) just sit down and write and try not to worry too much about it.
Susan... excellent. :)
I was going to say, "Don't try to get your first novel published until you've written one or two more," but I wasn't sure how to say it without sounding like a negativity whore. You nailed it, girl. Awesome.
Oh no, no, no, Lydia. When a person of such impeccable taste as Le R says whisky, you do not post a picture of whiskey (especially of Jack!). You find yourself a delicious highland scotch and you slide that down the bar, neat and delicious.
Dear Joseph, SCOTCH is not WHISKY. BOURBON is whisky. We appreciate your concern.
Just off the top of my head, here are a few first novels:
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Catcher In The Rye, JC Salinger
In The Woods, Tana French
The Water Is Wide, Pat Conroy
The Firm, John Grisham
The Hunt For Red October, Tom Clancy
JD Salinger
Aargh. Bad link. My favorite writing advice is "Make the clackity noise." Warning: naughty words within.
I don't have any advice, but I'm struck by the similarities between our writing processes, Le R.
1: Find a book that sucks
2: Figure out why it sucks.
3: Don't do that.
Dear Ink, you don't need hazard pay, in Canada you have health insurance.
Ha ha, Adam! HG Wells wrote an airship novel? Ooooh.
I love your blog. But I don't know about this one. The word "awesome" itself is kind of last Friday :)
Assume you don't know everything - and work your butt off to learn it.
"Ha ha, Adam! HG Wells wrote an airship novel? Ooooh."
Indeed he did.
We challenge the call on the field and head to the Wikipedia replay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky#Names_and_spellings
Though Jack still doesn't qualify, being from Tennessee, so we should still point fingers at Lydia and whisper behind our hands.
Butt In Chair has to be the best one yet.
I freaked out when I saw this label. Sadly, Buttercup and Humperdink seem to have gone AWOL. :(
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