Great Writing Advice (That I Completely Ignore)
The amount of writing advice online these days could fill a library… a very contradictory, repetitive library, sure, but a library nonetheless. And I’ll be the first to admit that giving GOOD writing advice is very hard. What works for one person will be poison to someone else: different keystrokes for different folks. And while there’s a lot of genuinely BAD writing advice out there (“don’t write until you’ve lived?” I’m working on a fantasy novel, dude, I don’t need to move to California and sleep in a bungalow to tell that story), I’ve found myself coming back to the really solid writing advice that I ignore like it went straight to my spam folder. Here’s just a few.
“Write like it’s your job.” - Stephen King.
I like Stephen King. In high school, I liked his book, On Writing, despite the fact that I changed my writing 0.00% after reading it. While writing like it’s your job and making sure you make progress is good advice, King recommends writing 12,000 words a week (2,000 a day, with one day off, because he’s such a great dude.) And I truly believe that works… for Stephen King, who can finish a novel after a long nap. But I also think of Douglas Adams, writer of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novels, who wrote the last book in the series while in a bad mental state and ended up finishing the series on a downer note that no one wanted. Accountability while writing is great. But I don’t write like it’s my job, because I already have a job, and it’s stressful enough.
“Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.” -Pixar’s rules for story telling.
This is genuinely great advice that I just personally struggle with. When I get an idea in my head, even before a single word hits the page, it can be difficult to shake. Certain ideas just feel permanent, even when they’re not really working. So I give my all to that first idea, and if it’s not working, we’ll scrape it off and try the second. But my life’s too short for Plan E.
“Write drunk, edit sober.” - Ernest Hemingway.
Look, we can’t all be as rad as you, Ern. Some of us have work in the morning.
“Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.” -Henry Miller
Or, as Ron Swanson put it, “Don’t half-ass two things. Whole-ass ONE thing.” Sage advice.
But I don’t wanna! It’s a verifiable fact that the most interesting story in the world is the one you’re not currently working on. When I was writing horror, I was desperate for comedy. When I was writing comedy I would have killed for a chance to stop coming up with jokes. When I write fantasy, I want to be grounded, when I’m in the real world, I find it suffocating. Ideas pile up. But I’ve also had to abandon books that just couldn’t work no matter how hard I tried, and boy-howdy was it a relief to have stacks of fresh notes ready for something different when I did.
And I’m going to resist the urge to give anybody any writing advice here, for the aforementioned reasons. For me, though, advice is a crapshoot. If you’re writing for yourself, you’re also figuring out your own rules, breaking them, and trying something new. That’s life.