One of the first pieces of advice a beginner writer can get is – build your audience even before publishing your novel. That leaves most of us wondering – how in the world are you supposed to do that? The second most common advice is to write daily. Write whatever; a diary, a blog, a journal, short stories, poems, notes, braindumps, anything that keeps your juices flowing. Given these two pieces of advice, what most
Writing a novel is like running a marathon; you can’t just put your shoes on and run 42 km. It requires deliberate daily practice before you’re ready to compete in your long distance race. Don’t expect it to be easy. Running a marathon isn’t easy; you can only compete in two marathons per year. Novel writing works in a similar way. Novel writing is powered by decisiveness. You must decide that you’re going to finish
There is a trend on Twitter and other social Networks to write 6 words stories. Usually, someone posts a picture and the others are supposed to tell a story in 6 words inspired by that picture. It all began with Hemingway when he was apparently challenge to tell a story in 6 words or less. His response was : For sale: baby shoes, never worn Although this is a brilliant example, and it proves that
Some suggest that a writer should read one book on writing and just move on with her work, but I’ve found reading books about writing to be quiet addictive. This might be what Steven Pressfield calls Resistance and distraction from the actual work, but I guess there is a point in a writer’s life when she needs to learn a lot. The Abundance of Resources In the past, there weren’t many resources for writers and
You know that feeling when you just cannot write until you clean you work-space, remove every single unnecessary object from your eyesight? Of course, you do, you are a writer. Well, some people call this – procrastination, I call it – detox. It’s all nice and dandy You have probably heard that you should write every day (I, myself, am an advocate of that ), but sometimes there is a point in your story, or
I’ve once heard an author being asked: “If writers create purely for pleasure, why do they publish in the end? Why don’t they keep their work in the drawer?” “To stop editing and move to the next thing,” the author replied. Unfortunately, I’m not able to remember the who and when said that, and I haven’t been able to find that conversation ever since. However, I strongly agree with the anonymous author. The Perfectionist Sometimes,
Although some people claim that traditional publishing is laying on its deathbed, I would still prefer being traditionally published than self.