Writing Advice

Okay, so I know I've been failing at this whole blog thing for awhile... which is why I've decided to get myself to add something at least once a week.  We'll see how that goes....


I wanted to take a moment to talk about writing advice.  Shocking huh?  This is for all those people who are curious or trying to become writers.  Let me just say this "You're in over your head!"  Okay, just kidding.  I will admit, you will have days that you feel this way.  But writing takes TIME.  If you don't have a lot of time, it doesn't mean you can't be a writer . . . it just means that it will take you a lot more time to get a finished product than others.  If you are a very busy person--estimate years and years.  If you are an insecure person (like me) and you are constantly giving up and thinking you will never aspire to anything remotely readable--estimate longer.  **this is where you laugh**


Do you need an education to be a writer?  Well obviously you need SOME, you need to know the english language enough to figure out the difference between "know" and "no."  There are so many great books you can read that help you to learn about being a writer as well as loads of blogs and websites too.  For me, I read books.  Actual novels.  I study the structure of other writers.  I don't just read the book, I think about how they introduce their characters, describe the room, at what point the climax of the story is revealed . . . that kind of thing.  Okay, so you've got options here.  Of course, college is never a bad idea.  I'm still thinking of going back just to deepen my knowledge.


The greatest thing a writer can do is write.  Huh?  WRITE people!  Books don't just magically appear.  The work doesn't improve unless you actually work on it.  But what would be most helpful is figure out what your story is first.  What's going to happen to your characters?  Who are your characters?  Are those characters part of the overall plot?  I could go into so much detail it's not even funny.  But I'll try to keep it simple today.  Any writing you do makes you better.  Let's repeat that: ANY writing you do makes you better.  No one just sat down to a computer and wrote a book and BAM it was amazing and brilliant and ready to publish.  Nope.  No way man.  This is the real world.  All those great writers out there work their butts off to get just the right sentence.  And yes, I said sentence.  Every single word is important and when you have 60,000 of them or more to make up your novel . . . it takes awhile.  So write and write and write.


And when you are finally done with your novel . . . you are going to have a sort of mid life crisis hit you when you see how much work editing is.  This could all depend on how good of a writer you are, but if you're like me you will basically re-write your entire book again and maybe ten or fifty times over again.


Now don't be discouraged.  If you have a passion for writing.  GO for it!  You should let nothing stop you!  But just know that it's going to take work.  But the goal is so rewarding.  And when you are done with writing and editing.  Then comes publication.  **bangs head against the wall**  But we'll talk about that another day . . .