#some of the simile the author uses makes me roll my eyes its very over the top but i respect the relentless gothic horniness

[amygdalae]

So far i think this book is Stupid but the main character smokes vampire blood and gets a throbbing erection within the first 15 pages so. I keep reading

[mjmnorwood]

[I.D. A header image of two pencils on a yellow background, with title reading ‘Authorial Voice’. End I.D.]

Authorial voice is incredibly hard to define. It’s different to character voice and it’s different to style (both of which can change between an author’s works). I think of it is a fingerprint; the particular feel of the text that clues you in as to who the writer is. In this post I’ll give three examples of authors who I think have distinctive voices, then look at some of the elements that make up authorial voice. Fingers crossed it will be helpful for developing your own!

Example 1: Terry Pratchett

      It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are—who knows?       Best not to speculate.       Thunder rolled...       It rolled a six.

- Guards! Guards!

Pratchett is one of my favourite authors and it’s no surprise he made this list because he has an incredibly distinctive voice. No matter what book of his you pick up, you instantly know you’re reading Pratchett. His voice is gloriously witty, making use of wordplay and puns. It can also be dramatic and evocative (and these dramatic and evocative passages often lead to yet more wordplay). He always writes with an undercurrent of anger at injustices. I think Pratchett is a great author to read if you’re looking to see how an author’s voice develops. His early works like The Carpet People, even the first couple of Discworld books, have inklings of his distinctive voice, but it shines through so much more strongly in later books, as he writes with more and more confidence.

Example 2: Lois McMaster Bujold

      “Well, let me...” His hand stroked her hair gently, then desperately wrapped itself in a shimmering coil; they kissed again.       “Uh, sir?” Lieutenant Illyan, coming up the path, cleared his throat noisily. “Had you forgotten the staff conference?”       Vorkosigan put her from him with a sigh. “No, Lieutenant. I haven’t forgotten.”       “May I congratulate you, sir?” He smiled.       “No, Lieutenant.”       He unsmiled. “I—don’t understand, sir.”       “That’s quite all right, Lieutenant.”

- Shards of Honour

Some context for the exchange above: Cordelia, the MC, and Vorkosigan are in love, but after a long discussion they have decided they can’t be together due to irreconcilable differences between their home planets. Illyan mistakes their parting kiss for Cordelia accepting a marriage proposal.

Bujold is another favourite of mine, and her voice is completely different to Pratchett. Whereas Pratchett will often digress to add details or make jokes, Bujold is very to-the-point. Her writing is incredibly easy to read. It tells you exactly what you need to know and no more (if she waxes lyrical about something, you can be sure there’s a very good reason). I think the use of ‘unsmiled’ in the example above shows off her voice very well. Technically, it’s not a real word, but it perfectly conveys the abrupt change of expression that comes with Illyan’s confusion. She could have written something like ‘his smile fell away’, but it just wouldn’t pack the same punch.

Example 3: Susanna Clarke

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.       They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed any one by magic—nor ever done any one the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course or changed a single hair upon any one’s head. But, with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentlemen in Yorkshire.

- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Every time I pick up JS&MN (or its companion short story collection, The Ladies of Grace Adieu) I know I’m in for a treat, voice-wise. The long, rambling sentences, the archaic word choice, even sometimes deliberate misspellings of words, all combine to create a very unique voice. There’s a quiet, reserved sort of wit about it, never out-and-out jokes, but small things that make you smile. Clarke’s writing is also a good example of how the line between voice and style can blur. Since she hasn’t published anything that isn’t set in the JS&MN universe, it can be hard to tell what is her voice and what are stylistic choices to capture the milieu of the setting. The stories in The Ladies of Grace Adieu show a lot of variation in style, though (for example one is written as a diary, one like a fairytale), and her voice stays consistent through all of them—the word choice, tendency to long sentences, and that quiet wit are all the same.

Some elements of authorial voice

Vocabulary and word choice. Do you favour simple or complex language?

Sentence length and structure. Do your sentences tend toward the extended, or are they more short and snappy? (Note: varying sentences is important for flow and pacing, it’s just the overall trend towards long or short that I mean here).

The balance of dialogue and description. What occurs more in your writing, beautiful word-pictures or interesting conversations?

Use of literary devices. Do metaphors, similes and the like crop up a lot in your work, or is the narrative more sparse?

Paragraph use. Long and rambly or lots of breaks?

Story focus. Character? Plot? Worldbuilding? A mixture?

+ a whole host of other factors it’s difficult to summarise neatly (tone, stylistic choices etc...)

When it comes to developing your own voice, I honestly can’t say much more than write. Write a lot. You can’t really force voice; it doesn’t have shortcuts, you just have to see where your writing takes you. My one tip is that after you’ve written a lot, look over your work with a critical eye for some of the things mentioned above, and you’ll start to spot parts of your voice. Even though my voice is still very much in development, I’ve started to spot some patterns. I tend to use more dialogue than description, and have short paragraphs. I compared some of my work to a friend’s and noticed how different they looked on the page. Mine was broken up, whereas theirs had long paragraphs of description. I also tend not to use very advanced vocab, so when I do use a fancy word, you notice. Spotting elements of voice in your writing can help you decide what you like, and what you want to put more work into developing.

One final thing: if you don’t have a very distinctive voice, don’t stress about it! It will develop over time, and anyway, there are plenty of writers out there who don’t have very unique voices, but still write amazing, successful stories.

Like this post? Follow for more writerly content! It’ll be lovely to have you along :D

[imrezbalint]

Importance of "Show, don't tell" and Big Update

I'm quite overdue for a post! I've been keeping wonderfully busy with my novel, which has now surpassed fifty thousand words. Chapters twenty-five and twenty-six are in the works currently. That puts me roughly at about the mid-point. Woohoo! I also took some some shots for my Making Professional Longboards book, so that one is inching very close to completion now.

So that's your quick update from me, but I also wanted to add some additional value to this post. For those of you who are also budding authors like myself, there's a buzz phrase that's quite important to follow: Show, don't tell. If fact, I gave up on a sci-fi novel recently because it did exactly the opposite of this mantra. It told me the story. Now I'll be nice and I won't say which novel or author, but here's an idea of what went wrong, and then I'll give you an idea of how this problem can be corrected.

The scene in this particular novel was that of a mugger cornering a woman in an alley (this too didn't help the novel; several scenes were quite cliche). To give you some context, I've come up with my own version of a mugger attacking someone, but I'm going to first "tell" you story, instead of showing it to you:

-----

The mugger walked on the sidewalk and saw the woman on the other side of the street. He crossed the road as the woman approached. She noticed him and became afraid, turning down an alley between two apartment buildings. No one was around, as it was just past midnight. The mugger started running after the woman. She started running too, but lost her footing and fell. Catching up to her quickly, the mugger stood near her."Give me your money, pretty girl," he said.The woman yelled for help several times but nobody seemed to notice.The mugger took out his folding pocket knife and opened it, pointing it toward the woman."You don't need to get hurt, but I will if I need to. Now give me your money!"

-----

I'm stopping there, because this is painful to write. Aside from all the telling in the novel, the dialogue wasn't that great either and I recall wincing at the poorly detailed fight that took place between the mugger and the vigilante that mysteriously showed up at the perfect moment. Anyway, ask yourself this: How hard did your imagination work?

Now let's take a look at how this scene should be shown, and I'm also going to drop a few pointers at the end on how this scene was setup (something else done poorly in the novel I gave up on):

-----

Only a few of the brightest stars dared pierce the dark sheet of the midnight sky, and the air had a skin crawling chill to it. A slight breeze susurrating through the early autumn leaves urged a crumpled coffee cup along the deserted street. The neighborhood was one of the poorest in the city, framed with dilapidated three to five story apartment buildings, boarded up echoes of once flourishing businesses, and sidewalks with cracks like wrinkles of old age that could tell a hundred stories of those who have walked its pitted surface.

Tonight, the sidewalks would recall the uneven footsteps of a middle-aged man that trudged along them, hobbling ever so slightly on a tender right leg. A ragged faded baseball cap with the team logo long worn off did its best to restrain long graying hairs peering out from beneath. The man’s face was torn by years of drug use and a life unkind. His hollow blue eyes sat deep, bloodshot from an overindulgence of cheap liquor, which sullied his already rotting breath. His dark jacket was as scruffy as his facial hair, unzipped and flapping gently in the breeze. A tattered sweater and faded blue jeans held up by a belt older then the man completed his ensemble, along with a soil infused pair of sneakers to which the soles barely clung.

The man’s eyes flinched up and peered out from under his cap, catching a hint of activity coming toward him on the sidewalk across the narrow two-way street. Jezebel had just finished her late night shift at the local pub and strode quickly toward her apartment about a block and a half away. Her makeup, still in good standing after a quiet night, was lit by the glow of her smart phone, her eyes scanning repeatedly across the screen and thumbs prodding away busily. The gentle wind tossed her golden locks about as they danced to her quick bobbing pace.

The girl figured she wouldn’t need her jacket tonight, but elbows packed tightly against her exposed midriff spoke of her regret, her pink sleeveless shirt and black push-up bra offering little environmental resistance. Her matching pink pantyhose, yawning with holes that deliberately exposed her smooth flawless skin, and short denim skirt didn’t fare any better in keeping her warm. Bright red t-straps that clopped on the concrete completed her look, along with a small teal baguette slung over her left shoulder.

The gruff man licked his lips and altered course to intercept the girl, mumbling softly to himself, a mischievous grin creeping across his mug. Jezebel peered up to check her path, then did a double take. She observed the man hobbling across the road. Her eyes with their long dark eyelashes bulged and twitched around, trying to find a safe location to avoid the menace headed her way. Only two choices crossed her mind as she let her arms dangle, left hand tightly clamped around her phone. She could turn around and head back the way she came, or head into an alley that cut across to another street. She bolted right.

Less than a dozen feet into the alley, a heel snapped off Jezebel’s right shoe, sending her stumbling into the dimly lit gravel alleyway. She let out a wail and her phone flew across the air, landing with a few clunks several feet away from her. The impact almost left her breathless, her pink shirt and denim skirt etched with moist sandy particulates. Jezebel winced as the gravel heartlessly gouged into the palms of her hands and thighs. She rolled over to face the aggressor, only to find him few feet away from her.

“Give me your money little girl and I won’t need to hurt ya!” spat the man in a hoarse voice.

Jezebel cried out for help, but her voice seemed get lost in the breeze.

“Well, if ya like it rough…” The man reached into his back pocket with his right hand and retrieved a folding knife. With a flick of his thumb, the shiny metal blade spun open with a satisfying click, the glow of the surrounding streetlights glimmering off its edges.

-----

Much better, if I do say so myself (and I also kid you not, the first example actually demonstrates quite closely how poorly that novel was written). Here are some key points:

The first paragraph quickly sets up the environment. Where are we? It also helps set the ambiance of the scene. Notice that I don't necessarily spell things out. I let your imagination fill in the details and sounds, like the breeze shuffling the leaves and simile of the sidewalk's poor state of being.

The second introduces our antagonist and gives us a good feel for the type of character he is. Notice I didn't say he walked with a limp. Instead, I showed you how he walks unevenly, minding his right leg.

As we continue, we get a good feel for the girl. Works in a pub, attire is a bit slinky, probably does it for tips.

I could have simply said something like, "She was cold," but that would not be terribly interesting. Instead, I showed you how she held her arms / elbows tightly against her body; she's also in a rush to get home.

The man starts to approach the girl, so we show you how he feels by licking his lips and mumbling to himself. He's probably a perv.

A whole paragraph goes into the agony of her fall. I like to use this to build a bit of suspense. C'mon! What's gonna happen to her already?

In the novel I stopped reading, the mugger took out his knife. Period. Great. Here, a little more effort goes into describing this moment that would be quite terrifying for a young lady.

Speaking of mugger, did you notice I didn't use that word? Why? Let the reader figure it out!

Now in a real novel, a lot more would go into providing a better context for this scene and would likely need a stronger point of view, but I believe you get my point (plus I'd add a bit more detail overall). Nonetheless, I hope this helps those venturing into this incredibly fun realm. Take care and I'll surely try to be more timely for my next post!

[7r0773r]

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. People in trains, who lay their newspaper aside, fold their silly arms, and immediately, with an offensive familiarity of demeanor, start snorting, amaze me as much as the uninhibited chap who cozily defecates in the presence of a chatty tubber, or participates in huge demonstrations, or joins some union in order to dissolve in it. Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing. The strain and drain of composition often force me, alas, to swallow a strong pill that gives me an hour or two of frightful  nightmares or even to accept the comic relief of a midday snooze, the way a senile rake might totter to the nearest euthanasium; but I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me. I loathe Somnus, that black-masked headsman binding me to the block; and if in the course of years, with the approach of a far more thorough and still more risible disintegration, which nowanights, I confess, detracts much from the routine terrors of sleep, I have grown so accustomed to my bedtime ordeal as almost to swagger while the familiar ax is coming out of its great velvet-lined double-bass case, initially I had no such comfort or defense: I had nothing—except one token light in the potentially refulgent chandelier of Mademoiselle’s bedroom, whose door, by our family doctor’s decree (I salute you, Dr. Sokolov!), remained slightly ajar. Its vertical line of lambency (which a child’s tears could transform into dazzling rays of compassion) was something I could cling to, since in absolute darkness my head would swim and my mind melt in a travesty of the death struggle. (pp. 450-51)

***

I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness—in a landscape selected at random—is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern—to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal. (p. 479)

***

And behind it all there was yet a very special emotional abyss that I was desperately trying to skirt, lest I burst into a tempest of tears, and this was the tender friendship underlying my respect for my father; the charm of our perfect accord; the Wimbledon matches we followed in the London papers; the chess problems we solved; the Pushkin iambics that rolled off his tongue so triumphantly whenever I mentioned some minor poet of the day. Our relationship was marked by that habitual exchange of homespun nonsense, comically garbled words, proposed imitations of supposed intonations, and all those private jokes which are the secret code of happy families. With all that he was extremely strict in matters of conduct and given to biting remarks when cross with a child or a servant, but his inherent humanity was too great to allow his rebuke to Osip for laying out the wrong shirt to be really offensive, just as a first-hand knowledge of a boy’s pride tempered the harshness of reproval and resulted in sudden forgiveness. Thus I was more puzzled than pleased one day when upon learning that I had deliberately slashed my leg just above the knee with a razor (I still bear the scar) in order to avoid a recitation in class for which I was unprepared, he seemed unable to work up any real wrath; and his subsequent admission of a parallel transgression in his own boyhood rewarded me for not withholding the truth. (pp. 522-23)

***

In the avid heat of the early afternoon, benches, bridges and boles (all things, in fact, save the tennis court) were drying with incredible rapidity, and soon little remained of my initial inspiration. Although the bright fissure had closed, I doggedly went on composing. My medium happened to be Russian but could have been just as well Ukrainian, or Basic English, or Volapük. The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a phenomenon of orientation rather than of art, thus comparable to stripes of paint on a roadside rock or to a pillared heap of stones marking a mountain trail. 

But then, in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one’s position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members. Vivian Bloodmark, a philosophical friend of mine, in later years, used to say that while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time. Lost in thought, he taps his knee with his wand-like pencil, and at the same instant a car (New York license plate) passes along the road, a child bangs the screen door of a neighboring porch, an old man yawns in a misty Turkestan orchard, a granule of cinder-gray sand is rolled by the wind on Venus, a Docteur Jacques Hirsch in Grenoble puts on his reading glasses, and trillions of other such trifles occur—all forming an instantaneous and transparent organism of events, of which the poet (sitting in a lawn chair, at Ithaca, N.Y.) is the nucleus. 

That summer I was still far too young to evolve any wealth of “cosmic synchronization” (to quote my philosopher again). But I did discover, at least, that a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time. In the course of the languid rambles that accompanied the making of my first poem, I ran into the village schoolmaster, an ardent Socialist, a good man, intensely devoted to my father (I welcome this image again), always with a tight posy of wild flowers, always smiling, always per-spiring. While politely discussing with him my father’s sudden journey to town, I registered simultaneously and with equal clarity not only his wilting flowers, his flowing tic and the blackheads on the fleshy volutes of his nostrils, but also the dull little voice of a cuckoo coming from afar, and the flash of a Queen of Spain settling on the road, and the remembered impression of the pictures (enlarged agricultural pests and bearded Russian writers) in the well-aerated classrooms of the village school which I had once or twice visited; and—to continue a tabulation that hardly does justice to the ethereal simplicity of the whole process—the throb of some utterly irrelevant recollection (a pedometer I had lost) was released from a neighboring brain cell, and the savor of the grass stalk I was chewing mingled with the cuckoo’s note and the fritillary’s takeoff, and all the while I was richly, serenely aware of my own manifold awareness. 

He beamed and he bowed (in the effusive manner of a Russian radical), and took a couple of steps backward, and turned, and jauntily went on his way, and I picked up the thread of my poem. During the short time I had been otherwise engaged, something seemed to have happened to such words as I had already strung together: they did not look quite as lustrous as they had before the interruption. Some suspicion crossed my mind that I might be dealing in dummies. Fortunately, this cold twinkle of critical perception did not last. The fervor I had been trying to render took over again and brought its medium back to an illusory life. The ranks of words I reviewed were again so glowing, with their puffed-out little chests and trim uniforms, that I put down to mere fancy the sagging I had noticed out of the corner of my eye. (pp. 543-47)

***

But the author that interested me most was naturally Sirin. He belonged to my generation. Among the young writers produced in exile he was the loneliest and most arrogant one. Beginning with the appearance of his first novel in 1925 and throughout the next fifteen years, until he vanished as strangely as he had come, his work kept provoking an acute and rather morbid interest on the part of critics. Just as Marxist publicists of the eighties in old Russia would have denounced his lack of concern with the economic structure of society, so the mystagogues of émigré letters deplored his lack of religious insight and of moral preoccupation. Everything about him was bound to offend Russian conventions and especially that Russian sense of decorum which, for example, an American offends so dangerously today, when in the presence of Soviet military men of distinction he happens to lounge with both hands in his trouser pockets. Conversely, Sirin’s admirers made much, perhaps too much, of his unusual style, brilliant precision, functional imagery and that sort of thing. Russian readers who had been raised on the sturdy straightforwardness of Russian realism and had called the bluff of decadent cheats, were impressed by the mirror-like angles of his clear but weirdly misleading sentences and by the fact that the real life of his books flowed in his figures of speech, which one critic has compared to “windows giving upon a contiguous world . . . a rolling corollary, the shadow of a train of thought.” Across the dark sky of exile, Sirin passed, to use a simile of a more conservative nature, like a meteor, and disappeared, leaving nothing much else behind him than a vague sense of uneasiness. (pp. 607-08)

[dear-mrs-otome]

Can I just say that I was completely enamored with your writing for Pretty Woman you write sooo beautifully . I was just wondering if you have any tips for becoming a better writer. Because honestly, I can only dream of being able to write the way you do.

Hi @therosettewolf! Thank you so much for the lovely sentiment, I’m very humbled - both that you liked my writing enough to comment, and that you’d ask me for tips on this wonderful, wretched craft of ours. I’m happy to share some of the advice that I personally have found works for me over the years.

For the sake of brevity, we’re going to skip past the elementary stuff I’m assuming you know, such as the importance of grammar and proper punctuation, and dive right into the trappings we hang on that frame.

1) Voice - active vs passive. hint: passive = bad. Except when it doesn’t. More to follow ;)

At its most basic textbook definition, writing with a passive voice means that you are making the object of an action into the subject of a sentence, usually in conjunction with a ‘to be’ verb (is, are, am , was, were, has been, have been, had been, will be, will have been, being, etc.) and in the past tense. In simpler terms, you are using your sentence to tell the reader what happened to something, instead of what something was doing. For example:

Her hair was tousled by the breeze, or When the toaster caught on fire, all of his breakfast plans were ruined.

These aren’t bad sentences. Bonus points for using a strong verb in the first one, but…let’s compare them to other versions:

The breeze tousled her hair, and Fire consumed the toaster, ruining all of his breakfast plans.

Now, there is nothing wrong with the first batch of sentences, either grammatically or stylistically - when used sparingly. But it is hard to deny that there is a sense of immediacy the second sentences offer by eliminating that ‘to be’ verb that puts the reader closer to the action, makes us feel just a little bit less like an outside observer. If you write an entire story in the passive voice, it will be harder for your reader to feel as engaged - but all the same, don’t excise it completely. Learn to use it. Do you want to slow things down, and purposely make your audience feel detached? Is the character themselves experiencing a sense of apathy? Wield your sentence structure as another tool to give us insight into their point of view.

2) Eliminate ‘thought’ verbs!

This was something brought to my attention by one of my creative writing professors who was a fan of Chuck Palahniuk. Don’t use ‘think’. Or remembers, imagines, wants, knows, realizes, understands, etc etc etc. Loves. Hates. Desires. All of these are lazy writing, and insulting to a reader. This is an extended form of the whole ‘show, don’t tell’, but one of the best things you can do as a writer is give your reader an active role in your writing. Instead of saying “Rose thought that John was stupid.”, give your reader detail(s) and let them draw that conclusion themselves! Trust in them!

Rose rolled her eyes whenever John spoke - sounds so much better, doesn’t it?

3) Vary your sentence structure and length, and use it to your advantage.

Do your reader a favor. Don’t make every sentence alike. Writing this way is tiring. It is also boring to read.

Instead, you should embrace the comma and the sentence fragment. Offer your reader a short break. When the pace of your story is meant to be slow, don’t be afraid to let your sentence ramble a bit as long as it doesn’t become a run-on. If you’re describing action, keep those sentences short. Sweet. Get us right to the point. Let the structure reflect the subject….which leads to #4.

4) Dialogue tags

This can be a hotly contested area. Some writers will tell you to use ‘said’ at nearly all costs. Others will come up with long, researched lists of alternate words to use that sound like a raid on a thesaurus warehouse. I think there is a degree of room for personal style here, but like most everything else the key is variety. Choosing a word other than ‘said’ will bring attention to your verb. Use this to your advantage! But if you want your dialogue to be flowing smoothly, do not be afraid of ‘said’. It is unobtrusive - our brains skip right over it, practically.

Or, you can do as I tend to, which is to avoid a dialogue tag altogether. Structure the action around your words, and a reader will be able to glean the exact same knowledge without you having to hold their hands and spell it out for them - and I am always, always a big fan of trusting your reader to pull their own weight. 

5) Read your work out loud

I don’t care if you feel silly. I don’t care if you’re barely mumbling it under your breath. Read your writing aloud. It’s the best way to get a feel for the pace and the flow, and how to catch yourself if you’re sounding stilted.

6) Metaphors vs Similes

A simile is when you compare two things using ‘as’ or ‘like’. Her smile was warm like the sun. A metaphor is a comparison in which you drop those buffers. Her smile was sunshine, warm and essential. Both of these are useful. But in the grand scheme of things, people tend to shy away from metaphors, and that is a shame because they can be very powerful. I suspect a part of it is a lack of confidence - it can seem easy to fall flat on your face when you are making such a bold comparison, or come across as too intense or awkward. But don’t be afraid! If you think that two things are alike, own it!

7) Don’t obsess, and don’t fear editing.

This was the hardest thing for me to learn as a writer. Let go of the image of Jack Kerouac, writing On the Road on a single roll of typewriter paper. It’s false anyways, and nobody ever produces their best work on the first try. All that you will do is find yourself fixating on finding just The Right Word, Just The Right Phrase. What is often more important is simply getting words onto a page - it is easy to come back later and nudge and nip and trim it all into something more like an order you want. Doing so doesn’t make you a worse writer, any more than shaping a topiary makes a gardener a failure. You have to have the overgrowth to find the final image you want.

Last, but not least…

8) Read. And write. As much as possible.

Everyone gives this advice, and it’s for a good reason. Read other authors. Take notes of what they do that you like. Take notes of what you don’t. Make sure you read a variety of subjects, because it will expose you to more styles. Write as often as you can, even when you don’t feel like it. Even if it is only a few words at a time. The old saying about your brain being a muscle isn’t too far off, after all. Give it some exercise, and I promise it will reward you eventually.

I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert, but these are the things I try to keep in mind when writing. I hope they can be of some use to you as well. And at the end of the day, don’t forget to just have fun - because if you aren’t, your reader certainly won’t be.

Good luck!