If You Had to Decide...

[queenoftheskies]

On ONE most important thing you've learned/discovered about writing, what would it be?

Comments

easier to learn than to apply...

[reannon.livejournal.com]

Finish the damn thing and fix it later.

Re: easier to learn than to apply...

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, I like that one. It fits with my EVERYTHING CAN BE FIXED LATER mantra that I chant. :)

Re: easier to learn than to apply...

[reannon.livejournal.com]

Now, if you figure out how to listen to it, let me know...

Re: easier to learn than to apply...

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, when I'm really on a roll, I do good with it.

However, other times, like now, I'm sniffling "Everyone else can fix what they write, but I suck and have no talent and I'll never be able to fix what I write." Sniffle.

There has to be a way to commit the mantra to heart ALL the time...doesn't there???

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

Trust my instincts, they're sometimes smarter than I think.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

VERY good one. I firmly believe our back brain/writing instincts know a lot more than we think they know. :)

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

My backbrain amazes me, often. It comes up with things and problem solves in ways that I swear I wasn't thinking of or capable of thinking up. It is so COOL! :-)

[navicat.livejournal.com]

To do it everyday. Even...no...ESPECIALLY if I don't want to.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Very IMPORTANT. Otherwise, we end up convincing ourselves we can't do it, don't we?

[navicat.livejournal.com]

Indeed! And, strangely enough, I find that if I force myself to write I actually end up enjoying it! ;) who would have thought?

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Me, too! Sometimes, it's not that I don't want to write, but that real life has me down, and when I make myself write, everything else seems kinda okay after that. :)

[navicat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, real life can really suck that way :(

[(Anonymous)]

You can't wait around for the muse to show up. If writers only wrote when they were inspired, we'd have plenty of bookshelf space available.

[ckocher.livejournal.com]

That was me!

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

And it's an exceptional point!

We'll never get anywhere as writers if we don't write, will we?

[pabba.livejournal.com]

Never give up on a story after one rejection. Opinions differ, magazine standards differ, and in the end, personal tastes differ. Keep pushin' it.

[cathellisen.livejournal.com]

I can fix almost everything later.

[frigg.livejournal.com]

Writing is a craft.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Stop using that damned passive voice, and talk in the active, for heaven's sake, CUT CUT CUT!

[darkfluidity.livejournal.com]

Connectivity.

Tying it all together. The big and the small. Into and out of real life. With and without and within other stories, my own and classics.

It's all connected.

[evilmissbecky.livejournal.com]

Shitty First Drafts are your best friend.

Get it down. That's what I've learned. It doesn't matter how crappy I think it is. Just write it down. If it really does suck, I can always delete it. But more often than not, it's not as bad as I thought, or I can salvage at least part of it. The hardest part is just overcoming my own doubt/fear/insecurity, and getting it down on paper.

[tamlyn.livejournal.com]

write a story for an audience of one: myself.

No matter of what happens with a story later, I have written something I as a person would love to read. From this follow a whole lot of other "rules" like I can write shitty first drafts, because I know I can please the reader in me by fixing it after finishing the story, I can write every day, because I wanna know where the story goes next etc.

[storytellersjem.livejournal.com]

You must break away from the herd mentality to become a thriving writer or the tribe will hold you back and make you do something "realitic".

[ryan-howse.livejournal.com]

There is only one rule worth following, and it comes via the wondrous and disturbingly prolific Scott Lynch:

Thou Shalt Not Bore Thy Reader, Not At All, Not Ever.

Corollary number one: If you're bored, you're boring.

Corollary number two: Play to your strengths, stupid.

[cricketshay.livejournal.com]

What POV means. I know that sounds silly, but when I began writing seriously, I didn't have a clue.

[batdog03.livejournal.com]

That no matter how many starts and how few finishes ENJOY THE DAMN WRITING!

[nugatorytm.livejournal.com]

Go back and read what you have written previously. Do this many times over the course of writing the story. I have caught many an error or bad sentence structure by doing this.

[kryselis.livejournal.com]

Write what you love, no matter how "out-of-fashion" or "unsalable" it might be. The marketplace is cyclical. It'll come around. And if you write what you truly love, you'll be writing with passion and intensity and you could end up starting a new trend rather than following an old one.

Am glad to see you posting again. Hope you are un-broken. :)

[jediknightmuse.livejournal.com]

Don't let people's criticism get to you if it's not really praising the work. That's easier said than done for me, but I'm slowly learning. People who think the writing is crap are the people who'll be surprised one day when it's sitting on a bookstore shelf getting sold.

[ryan-howse.livejournal.com]

Please explain further?

[jediknightmuse.livejournal.com]

Basically, just don't let the criticism of others who say "this sucks, you need to work on characterization, lack of cliche," blah, blah blah, get to you. Don't let it frustrate you and make you say "hey, maybe I really am I sucky writer, I give up," and give up on whatever you're working on. I'm not saying completely ignore the criticism, just don't let it get to you if it seems like pretty much everyone is telling you it sucks. Don't let the negative thoughts of others get to you and make you think it's not worth writing anything, because it is worth it. I've been working on the same story for almost a year now, and that's probably a record for me, and I haven't let an ounce of bad/negative criticism get to me badly enough to give up on it. I also have a lot of determination when it comes to finishing the first draft finally.

[ryan-howse.livejournal.com]

Ah.

You get better by writing. And by reading better work. And by being told in heated vitriol why you're useless and insipid as a writer, and that those thousand monkeys excrete more interesting stories, and you're retreading the exact same ground as *insert author here*, except you suck in every conceivable way.

To me, that's a slap in the face to do better and show those bastards up.

You gots ta go all kung-fu on them; use the way they attack to make your own attacks more lethal. And by lethal...I mean *awesome*.

[jediknightmuse.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. If you're picking up on the same things that other authors have done but place a different twist to them, that's what makes yours different from theirs and it's what makes them original. It shows that you have actually done your research by reading what other author's do.

I don't think I've ever been so determined to finish a story, despite what people say about the cliche and all that. It's fantasy, so it's really hard to avoid that. Despite being readers of fantasy, the people who've read it don't seem to understand that.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Doesn't matter; carry on.

[peartreealley.livejournal.com]

It's not hard to write [a novel].

What I mean by that is the simple act of placing your butt in the chair on a regular basis and writing the first draft. I'm not talking about quality here. I used to think it would take me years of planning and years of writing just to create even the most fluffiest novel. Noveling was this Herculean task that only the few chosen could accomplish. Not an Average Jane like me.

Once I wrote that first, completely awful first draft, I knew I could do this. Everything else has just been refining the craft. First I had to know I could do it.

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

That being part of a writing group really helps with the quality of my writing, and with my critical abilities.

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

Unless someone else agrees, it's not as bad as you think.

[kklasha.livejournal.com]

Don't argue with the story. It knows what it's doing, even when I don't. And let the characters speak for themselves and don't argue with them, even when they go in radically different directions...

Oh, and finish now, fix later. Reannon is dead on with that.

[icepicklobotomy.livejournal.com]

That inspiration is overrated.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

The worst day writing is still much more fun than the best day working for the government.

(This also serves as a blanket metaphor for all sorts of of other things I've learned and discovered about writing.)

[dracschick.livejournal.com]

I can't write in the morning.