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lkh_lashouts2015-10-15 08:58 pm
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Blogflog - My Three Best Pieces of Writing Advice
Link: My Three Best Pieces of Writing Advice
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.
My best advice about writing is – write. Writers write. The more you write the better you’ll get at it. Writing is a skill and like any other skill from basketball to knitting, the more you practice the actual skill the better you get at the game, at making sweaters, or at writing stories. People treat writing as if it doesn’t require as much practice and dedication to craft as other things; why? I believe it’s because anyone can write. Anyone can sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and write. Anyone can sit down at a computer and type. The physicality of it is available to everyone who is literate and can read. If you know how to read, you can write something. It may not be a great piece of literature, but it’s words on paper and they’re right there in front of you. See – anyone can write, but not everyone can write well. That takes practice, dedication, and a lot of perseverance.
The above is the primary piece of how to be a writer, without it nothing else matters. But I’m about to give a second piece of advice that I’ve never put in a writing blog before because I didn’t realize how big a problem it was until recently. What is this new piece of advice? Stay off the internet. Yes, you read that right, stay off the internet. It’s a great tool for building a social network and promoting your work, and can be a good jumping off point for research. Never use other people’s websites as your only source for research, because most sites have no one policing them for veracity. Start on websites if you must, but don’t end there. That’s lazy research, which leads to lazy writing. It’s obvious that too much social media is like talking to your friends on the phone or having too many “business” lunches. It may all be helpful, even talking to friends can refresh you so you go back to writing with renewed vision, but if you do too much social anything it can hurt your productivity. Most writers can avoid picking up the phone and making a call, or going out the door to see people in person, but online socialization is harder to resist. It’s so easy to tell yourself, well I’ll just get on line for a few minutes; half an hour later and you’re still on line. I’ve done it myself. I’ve found that Pinterest and YouTube are especially time consuming for me. Twitter is easier, because there is a limit of 140 characters and then I’m done, or that’s how I felt at first. Now, I’m not so sure, because it’s also easy for me to think Twitter isn’t that big a time use, because of the individual messages being so short, but if I do too many short messages in a row, then it can add up to a lot of time. But what about promoting yourself and using social media as a business tool? It can be a very effective business tool, but not if you’re so busy trying to promote yourself and gain a larger online presence that you don’t get time to actually write. FaceBook was such a problem for me that I hired a media minion to post there, because I felt FB was too important to ignore, but it was also a huge time use that took away from my actual writing. I still do my own Twitter, but I’m trying to police myself better, because if I think its also taking too much time and attention, I may have to stop posting personally, which would be a shame since I enjoy Twitter.
I said time and attention above, and that second part is the other danger of the internet. I have found myself thinking, this, or that, would make a great tweet, or that would be a good blog. Now that’s all well and good, but if I find myself thinking about how to tweet, or Facebook, or blog, etc . . . and not about writing my novels, then something has gone wrong. The online media is supposed to support and promote my writing, not be more important than the writing, and if my first thought is what I’m going to tweet, Facebook, or blog, and not the novel I’m writing, then the social promotion is taking too much of my subconscious, and that part of my brain needs to be concentrated on writing my book. One of the most important tools for any writer is their subconscious. I know I’m in the zone for a novel when the book wakes me up early loud in my head with notes and the first few lines of the day. If I wake up thinking about any of my social media instead, then it hurts my ability to immerse myself in my novel, and immersion is what I need to be productive and make my deadlines. This leads me to the third piece of writing advice: Protect your prime writing time.
It will take some trial and error to figure out what your prime writing time is, and bear in mind it may change as you get older, or even with different books. Most writers have a time of day, or night, that they work best, once you find it, treat it like gold, because it is the time when your muse is talking the loudest to you. I work best first thing in the morning, let me add I wasn’t a morning person when I started writing like this, but over the years I’ve become one. I need to wake up and just go straight to my desk, if at all possible. I’m one of those writers that needs to not have anyone talk to me, or distract me in any way before I sit down at my desk in the morning. Anything more than tea before the first pages hurts my page count for the morning. The smallest interruption can disrupt me, and hurt, or even ruin, my morning writing session. I knew to avoid actual, in person people. I even wait to feed the dogs until after I’ve got a few pages for the day because if I take the time to take the dogs out, feed them, and then wait to take them out again, then I’m derailed. It’s the difference between sitting down at my desk ready to set the keyboard on fire, and sitting down at my desk with some of my energy spent, wasted on mundane things that could have waited for a few minutes. The dogs get a treat in my office while they wait for actual breakfast, and the dogs think that the office treat drawer is awesome. I’ve found that most of the mundane things that distract me from my desk first thing in the morning are all happy to wait until later; after I get my morning pages done.
So, in a nutshell: Writers write. Stay off the internet. Don’t let mundane things interfere with your prime writing time. Now, stop reading this blog and go write stories that only you can write.
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.
My best advice about writing is – write. Writers write. The more you write the better you’ll get at it. Writing is a skill and like any other skill from basketball to knitting, the more you practice the actual skill the better you get at the game, at making sweaters, or at writing stories. People treat writing as if it doesn’t require as much practice and dedication to craft as other things; why? I believe it’s because anyone can write. Anyone can sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and write. Anyone can sit down at a computer and type. The physicality of it is available to everyone who is literate and can read. If you know how to read, you can write something. It may not be a great piece of literature, but it’s words on paper and they’re right there in front of you. See – anyone can write, but not everyone can write well. That takes practice, dedication, and a lot of perseverance.
The above is the primary piece of how to be a writer, without it nothing else matters. But I’m about to give a second piece of advice that I’ve never put in a writing blog before because I didn’t realize how big a problem it was until recently. What is this new piece of advice? Stay off the internet. Yes, you read that right, stay off the internet. It’s a great tool for building a social network and promoting your work, and can be a good jumping off point for research. Never use other people’s websites as your only source for research, because most sites have no one policing them for veracity. Start on websites if you must, but don’t end there. That’s lazy research, which leads to lazy writing. It’s obvious that too much social media is like talking to your friends on the phone or having too many “business” lunches. It may all be helpful, even talking to friends can refresh you so you go back to writing with renewed vision, but if you do too much social anything it can hurt your productivity. Most writers can avoid picking up the phone and making a call, or going out the door to see people in person, but online socialization is harder to resist. It’s so easy to tell yourself, well I’ll just get on line for a few minutes; half an hour later and you’re still on line. I’ve done it myself. I’ve found that Pinterest and YouTube are especially time consuming for me. Twitter is easier, because there is a limit of 140 characters and then I’m done, or that’s how I felt at first. Now, I’m not so sure, because it’s also easy for me to think Twitter isn’t that big a time use, because of the individual messages being so short, but if I do too many short messages in a row, then it can add up to a lot of time. But what about promoting yourself and using social media as a business tool? It can be a very effective business tool, but not if you’re so busy trying to promote yourself and gain a larger online presence that you don’t get time to actually write. FaceBook was such a problem for me that I hired a media minion to post there, because I felt FB was too important to ignore, but it was also a huge time use that took away from my actual writing. I still do my own Twitter, but I’m trying to police myself better, because if I think its also taking too much time and attention, I may have to stop posting personally, which would be a shame since I enjoy Twitter.
I said time and attention above, and that second part is the other danger of the internet. I have found myself thinking, this, or that, would make a great tweet, or that would be a good blog. Now that’s all well and good, but if I find myself thinking about how to tweet, or Facebook, or blog, etc . . . and not about writing my novels, then something has gone wrong. The online media is supposed to support and promote my writing, not be more important than the writing, and if my first thought is what I’m going to tweet, Facebook, or blog, and not the novel I’m writing, then the social promotion is taking too much of my subconscious, and that part of my brain needs to be concentrated on writing my book. One of the most important tools for any writer is their subconscious. I know I’m in the zone for a novel when the book wakes me up early loud in my head with notes and the first few lines of the day. If I wake up thinking about any of my social media instead, then it hurts my ability to immerse myself in my novel, and immersion is what I need to be productive and make my deadlines. This leads me to the third piece of writing advice: Protect your prime writing time.
It will take some trial and error to figure out what your prime writing time is, and bear in mind it may change as you get older, or even with different books. Most writers have a time of day, or night, that they work best, once you find it, treat it like gold, because it is the time when your muse is talking the loudest to you. I work best first thing in the morning, let me add I wasn’t a morning person when I started writing like this, but over the years I’ve become one. I need to wake up and just go straight to my desk, if at all possible. I’m one of those writers that needs to not have anyone talk to me, or distract me in any way before I sit down at my desk in the morning. Anything more than tea before the first pages hurts my page count for the morning. The smallest interruption can disrupt me, and hurt, or even ruin, my morning writing session. I knew to avoid actual, in person people. I even wait to feed the dogs until after I’ve got a few pages for the day because if I take the time to take the dogs out, feed them, and then wait to take them out again, then I’m derailed. It’s the difference between sitting down at my desk ready to set the keyboard on fire, and sitting down at my desk with some of my energy spent, wasted on mundane things that could have waited for a few minutes. The dogs get a treat in my office while they wait for actual breakfast, and the dogs think that the office treat drawer is awesome. I’ve found that most of the mundane things that distract me from my desk first thing in the morning are all happy to wait until later; after I get my morning pages done.
So, in a nutshell: Writers write. Stay off the internet. Don’t let mundane things interfere with your prime writing time. Now, stop reading this blog and go write stories that only you can write.
no subject
I didnt read this. I decided on writing the top three things she does most in her writing and thus should be her REAL advice instead.
Aka heres me writing this post HONESTLY as LKH. Ahemhem.
---
1.) Sex fixes everything but remember this isnt porn so the plot matters. Sex scenes shold be as long as possible and appear at least twice per chapter. If they seem pointless, filled with useless huge descriptions and bondage for no reasons in places that dont make sense, great! Dont forget to injure every womans cervix but dont talk about real consequences. Nobody likes a downer! The more the merrier when it comes to characters involved, basically saying hi once is enough. Double points if your character removes the option for consent, including with chars who are minors in all the states except the one youre in and become your slaves after. Triple points if the one instigating at most times is a jealous mostly homophobic prude who requires sex to live and or the sex causes her amnesia!
2.) Your characters are real. They live in your head BUT they decide their origin stories, personalities, looks, preffered way of dressing, what they do, what they say, what they think and all other details about how they behave in all your novels they decide to appear in. They will talk to and argue with you. This is normal and anyone who says otherwise will never publish over 38 books or *insert a few brags from most posts here* like I did because I am the best writer on earth.
3.) Plot, plot, plot. I cannot possibly stress this enough reader. *Sips wine* Since your characters will tell you the plot, develop it themselves and advance it themselves all thats left for you to do is the important bit: introduce it at the beginning, make sure the big baf remembers to wait until the last 7% of the book to appear, and wrap up any and all extra details and loose ends.
THAT, intrepid reader, is what made me who I am today.
---
i need brain bleach for that but hope you all got a giggle!
no subject
1) Write. That's good advice, although expressed somewhat pretentiously. It sounds obvious, but it really is key to becoming a good writer. Every writing advice source I've seen says something similar, so it's hardly earthshattering.
2) Avoid the Internet. I think that what she's trying to say is not to let yourself become distracted, because the Internet can become a massive timesink. True enough, but really badly expressed. I managed to say in two sentences what took her two paragraphs.
3) Protect your 'prime writing time'. Wow. Her only job is being a writer, so maybe she doesn't understand what it's like to have to fit your writing around your life? And it doesn't sound like it would apply to everyone. I don't have a 'prime writing time' when my 'muse is talking the loudest'. I write when I have an idea that strikes me. Does she ignore her 'muse' if it talks to her at any time other than the morning?
I was told that routine helps you study, because after a while your brain get into the habit, and as soon as you sit down at that time, you're ready to study. It's like getting up at the same time every day - after a while your body and brain adjust and it becomes automatic. It sounds like that's what happened to her, and she's treating it like some grand revelation.
no subject
Secondly, this all sounds like what Neil Gaiman says on his blog a LOT. Just he says it better and more succinctly. Not that no one but Gaiman could ever think of something like "just write" or "get off the Internet" because those are hardly esoteric concepts, but given that she seems to sort of follow and fangirl him and try to seem more associated with him than she actually is, I feel like she might be parroting him. Especially since I swear her previous posts about her ~process~ are all about depending on the muse instead of just "writing because that's your damn job so write"
And of course, what he says in a few sentences, she turns into lengthy inane paragraphs.
no subject
First: none of this advice is especially groundbreaking. I've heard similar stuff elsewhere, and a lot less condescendingly, not to mention succinctly. LKH isn't sharing revelations from on high, she's just parroting every other writer.
Second: her comment about avoiding the internet reads a bit forced. Like, either someone higher up (like her agent/publisher) is keeping a close eye on her internet activity, and she's trying to convince herself that it's really her idea, or that she's trying to prove to said higher up that she's realized her mistake, and she's niggling for some more freedom. (Also, her comment about about research is all kinds of ironic).
Third: all her talk about "prime writing time" wreaks of her justifying avoiding any responsibilities. I understand setting up a routine, but saying that if she does anything before writing, it'll ruin everything? And even if that's so, she lives in a house with three other adults - can none of them take care of the dogs in the morning? Or would telling one of them to do that count as interacting with someone, and thus distract her, ruining her "prime writing time"?
no subject
Oh im betting telling them would take away writing time AND end up qualifying as a sex act aka distracting her - two rule breaks at once *-=@__@=-*
no subject
It makes her sound very spoiled and difficult. And if it's true, then man, she's crippled herself as a writer. But I think we all knew that.
no subject
I didn't notice this when I saw it on the amazon boards:
People treat writing as if it doesn’t require as much practice and dedication to craft as other things
They do? Who are these people? I've never met them. I've seen people say ridiculous things about how you have to dedicate your whole life to writing and a writer is a different kind of person than other human beings and etc. LKH particularly loves that myth. I can't recall ever seeing anyone say you don't need to practice writing as much as you do knitting!
Btw, I love the internet for short breaks while I'm writing. If I sit down with something off the internet, I'm much more likely to get caught up in it. It's easier to read/look at something on the internet for 10-15 minutes than it is stuff in meatspace.
no subject
As for the "writing is easy" thing, she might (and that's a big 'might') mean people who think that all you need is free time - the kind of person who says they'll write that novel "when they retire" or whatever. I doubt there are many people who still think writing is easy, but LKH isn't really tuned-in to the popular consensus.
no subject