Best writing advice

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What is the best writing advice you can give or best you have heard

A good writer is always re-writing. Once you've finished writing something, put it aside of a day or two, and come back to it. This gives you a fresh perspective on your own work, and you have a better understanding of what to foreshadow, what parts to take out, what parts need something added, etc. One go at it is never enough.

Either think for as long as you want, even hours if needed, until you get the best ideas to progress the writing. Or, if you are naturally talented (Not meaning to brag but, like me) Don't think at all. Just write without stopping, and see how well you can keep the creativity flowing. Only do this if you are really good though, or else you are going to obviously write really crappy stuff that no one wants to read.

Keep everything. Whether you use it as future reference, or just as a record of what you once did, keep it all.

There's a lot of old writing classes on the archive. I've been going through the beatnik's. Ginsberg was a pretty great teacher.

https://archive.org/details/Allen_Ginsb ... 981_81P127

When you look at you work and can only see it as crap, don't get too down because your probably doing it right.
No matter how good your understanding and use of the written word you will never be able to fully translate the
vision in your head to paper and will always see your work as bad.
In a way this is kind of a good thing because your will always expect the worst from critics of your work and be
more pleased when something nice is said of your work.

Its when you finish a piece of writing and think 'yeah, that's perfect' you will know you have a problem.

Listen to music! It sets the mood and if it fits your character or genre it can really help you visualize and feel the emotion running through the character and feel what they are up against.

I have found...the most discouraging thing is to read the works of genious's
....how could my silly thoughts ever compare to the resounding notes that they strike down
without a thought?

Yeah, write everyday. Now if only I could live by my own advice.

Okay Bill I will follow your advice. Here I go:


"everyday"


There! I did it! Now what?


This was a joke about how aspies tend to take things literally, or is it?

I used to participate in a writing forum where many of the writers continually said, write crap if you write anything at all. I tried to convince people to actually write about all the intricacies and details they could about poop.

Seriously, I don't put anything past us Aspies when it comes to out literal understanding (or lack of understanding) of things.

These were for writing music, but they still apply:

1. Write everyday.

2. Everything you write at first, and for quite a while, will be pretty s**t.

3. Don't take yourself too seriously.

Having the habit of writing everyday is useful because after a while it becomes so automatic that you get into the mental state you need to be in very quickly. If you write sporadically each time you sit down to write, may require a large percentage of your time just to get your mind into your work.

Some writers need to write a rough draft, put it aside for days or even months and then rewrite it later. Others do a great deal of thinking ahead of time and require little rewriting after the fact. Only with time will you find which styles work for you.

Writing is one of the hardest crafts to learn. Don't expect to be wonderful right from the start. Expect to take years to get good and realize that a writer hones her craft for her entire life.

Listen to what writers say works for them. But also recognize that NOBODY has the perfect answer. You will ultimately have to find your own voice and your own subjects.

Keep an open curiosity about everything. It may take years of being alive just to acquire the experience necessary to have something interesting to say. But also, don't think you don't have something useful to say now. It's just as you get older, your depth of understanding will grow and you will be able to write with greater understanding of life.

Be willing to throw away everything you've written on a piece and start over. Sometimes you have to write something that never makes it into the final draft because it helps you get your thoughts in order. Never leave something that doesn't work in a story just because it's a neat bit or because you worked really hard on it. Who was it who said "kill your darlings?" Anyway the only thing that should stay in a piece of writing is that which supports the whole story.

There is plenty more, but that will do for now.

I've heard somewhere that some of the best writers write how they think or feel just for the sake of writing. They are not got to censor or edit themselves because they simply do not care what others think. I don't think John Steinbeck lost too much sleep worrying what others may think of him when he wrote the Grapes of Wrath.

Read a lot of different types of stories. Read non-fiction. Take a writing class. Try writing about your special interest.

While in Uni, I took a creative writing class where we had to turn in a page of writing for each class. I wrote a science fiction story where all the characters were hallucinating. Whenever I got stuck for plot, the characters would hallucinate until I got to the bottom of that page.