I am going to take an itty-bitty break from the Character
exercise to toss out some First Time Writer Sage Advice. Admittedly, this is prodigious advice for
anyone who taps the consoles, even if it is to stalk ex’s on Facebook, so heed
well and SHARE WITH MANY!
1.
Be
authentic. Your voice is your only thing of value. Do not try to be anything
but genuine. The best compliment I can get is when people read my work and say it
was just like I was sitting in the room with them. They hear my voice. This
should always be your goal.
2.
Thoughtful
functioning. Tell your family that you sitting in a room “thinking” is you writing,
not a trigger for them to ask for snacks, or clean undies or a blowie. You
working as a writer include as much time sitting and thinking as fingers skittering
across the keyboard.
3.
Write
every day at the same time. Like your morning constitution, compose each day at
the exact period and you will always write well. Your mind/body relationship is
hardwired, so develop habits. I write for a determined amount of time every day
and then walk away. Even if I am in the midst of the most brilliant sentence
ever written in the history of man. That way, you always look forward to coming
back.
4.
Kill the
ones you love the most. When a first draft is finished, reread it and the one
paragraph or sentences that you love the most, delete it. This practice always
makes your writing stronger. It is usually as hard as cutting of a finger, but
do it anyway.
5.
Save or
die. When do you push “Save”? Always and
often. If you so much as sit back in your chair, hit save. You cannot do it too
much. Save on your computer and in the Dropbox (www.dropbox.com)
it is free.
If you write the old
fashion way with pen and paper, then take those to Kinko’s and have them
scanned. I am serious. I once wrote an impeccable poetry book. My writing was done
at the beach on Thai paper with a German fountain pin. It was complete,
beautiful, the stuff legends were built. Then I spilled water on the cover. It
erased 80% of the book.
6.
Junk
Language. We all have little darlings we
use too much like salt or cheese. Mine
tend to be So, Just, Great, Delicious, Fine. When you finish a story, use the
“find” function (under edit) and look for instances of all these nauseating
word-goblins. Delete, erase, burn, and destroy. Don’t worry about them when writing;
we all have junk on the brain, just kill them in edit.
Today’s exercise: Your
character is stuck in a large tree and not sure how they got there. There is a
toddler on the ground sleeping and it is about to rain.
Word Count (at least 500).
Word Count (at least 500).
Please share with your aspiring writer friends and make sure you subscribe to get daily doses of writing advice and exercise.
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Please comment if you find this inviiting your fingers to tap the keyboard (or screen if you are an IPhone homo like me).