I recently finished writing a novel and, as promised, here are the 5 realest tipsI picked up from this experience.
Make sure to reblog / share with your writing friends!
First off, let’s demystify what writing a book is actually like by showing you what my writing calendar actually looked like for this novel:
What do the colors mean?
Yellow= Brainstorming and outlining. That’s right, I only spent 3 days planning before jumping in. More on that later.
Red= Writing. One chapter a day, shooting for 2.5K words (though it often was more or less, and that’s okay!)
Gray= Other work, days life got in the way or I couldn’t write.
Pink= Days off / resting days.
⭐ TIP #1 - It’s Okay to Miss a Day (or Many)
We writing-types tend to have unrealistic expectations. Daily writing is one of them. You don’t have to write every day, and it’s okay if something gets in the way and you miss days or even weeks.
It doesn’t matter how many days you miss, as long as you always get back to writing.
⭐ TIP #2 - You Don’t Have to Outline Your Whole Book
I understand that first-time writers combat their fear of the blank page by outlining / planning well in advance, and that’s okay, but here are some real-ass truths:
If you’re like me, you think about your book several times every day. Trust me, books take a while to write and you are going to have plenty of chances to find ideas.
Instead of outlining the whole book, scene by scene, I just get myself enough of a framework to get started, and then I use a bit of my secret sauce:
Each night, as I’m winding down before bed, I take a journal and write down what I think will happen in tomorrow’s chapter. It takes a few minutes, and those notes are pretty much all I need to get me through a writing session.
⭐ TIP #3 - Writing Is Not ThatImportant
Writing a book is more than just the writing part, it’s also about the living part too. You’re a human being with responsibilities and sometimes things get in the way. And this is okay!
So what if life got in the way of writing?
Roll with the punches and try tomorrow. That’s all we can do~
Now, let’s build on the last point by adding even more context to the calendar, because writing a book is more than just the writing part—it is also about navigating through the chaos that is life.
What do the icons mean?
(Spoons) = Days I was tired, sick, or out of spoons / Action Points
(PCs) = Computer issues! Thank you, Microsoft!!
(Distressed Face) = Stressful or unexpected life events! Can you believe I got surprise visits by my inlaws twice while writing this book? I wish I was kidding!
(Pill) = After a life-long struggle with anxiety and depression, I finally started taking medication. Good news: I feel better. Bad news: the transitory period is rough.
⭐ TIP #4 - Every Day is Different
It’s easy to think that every day is the same and that you should be able to do the same things consistently—but that’s a fantasy! If you’re like me, some days you have more energy than others, and some days the writing is easier than others! It’s a crapshoot, but there’s little we can do about it.
It’s best to be kind to yourself, and take the L, than push yourself when you’re already running out of steam and end up burning out. Take it from me.
⭐ TIP #5 - Life is a Sitcom (No, Really)
Looking at the experience of writing this book, there is so much more I couldn’t just fit into two images—but there’s a point I want to drive home.
I have the tamest, most peaceful life, and I still get on average 2.5 plots going on every week (like it’s a sitcom up on here). Every week something breaks, something bad happens, something unexpected (good or bad) gets in the way.
And I’m basically a hermit! I can only imagine what it’s like to be a person with an interestinglife.
All of this to say that, you gotta lower your expectations a little. You’re not going to write that book in one weekend. You’re going to go over estimate. Something is going to get in the way. Between the prologue and the epilogue you’re probably going to have to survive through a whole season of sitcom disasters.
In theory, writing a book is simple:
You sit down and write.
In reality, every day feels like a miracle.
This book took me ~6 weeks to write and in that span the best streak I ever got was 5 days in a row. Out of all those weeks, I spent a total of 15 whole days doing stuff other than writing.
The key isn’t in being a perfect human being who never makes mistakes… but in being willing to get up, no matter how many times life knocks you down.
Thought I’d post my old writing advice guides onto this blog since I deleted my old one. I hope it’s helpful!
::
Listen. I respect the hell out of teachers. The vast majority of them work crazy hard and most of the time, including the times they give you well-meaning ‘writing rules,’ only want to instill good and helpful habits into you.
That doesn’t change the fact that many of these rules are stupid.
Here are my top five ‘writing rule’ pet peeves, and five rules that should be followed.
✗ Don’t write ‘said.’
Okay, I know this is common knowledge by now, but it’s so important. The concept that you can never write ‘ so-and-so said’ is hurting novice writers’ narratives. Said is invisible. Said is powerful. Said is transformable. If every quote ends in a strong synonym, it is distracting. Sometimes, in an established repartee, quotes don’t need to be tagged at all. Or an adverb following ‘said’ might be better for the narrative than any single verb.
Eg. // “I hate the rain,” grumbled David.
“I love it,” Claire announced.
“You love everything,” he muttered.
“Including you!” she giggled.
versus.
“I hate the rain,” grumbled David.
“I love it,” said Claire.
“You love everything,” he said impatiently.
“Including you!”
✓ Don’t write ‘something.’
Cold hard truth, baby. ‘Something’ is a draft word. It’s what you write when you want to think of a replacement. I cringe when I see it in a sentence that would have been improved tenfold by a specific noun or descriptive phrase in its place. There are times when ‘something’ works or is the only option, but experiment by replacing that word with more description before deciding it’s necessary to keep.
Eg. //He pulled something shiny from his pocket. She craned her neck to see what it was. A metal flask.versus.A flash of light caught the metal he pulled from his pocket. She craned her neck to see what it was. A drinking flask.
Here’s a dictionary for all the roleplay terms you will most probably come across. If I am missing a term then please do feel free to let me know so that I may add it here.
Like this if it helps and reblog. Do not repost. Thanks!
This guide is going to be interesting, considering I am so bad at flirting, and anything close to it. So, I hope this is easy for you to understand. I also heard you wanna be sexy, well.
Okay so basically the idea of it is that I’m writing a short book/guide/thing for my school library about how to get started writing novels or other long-form fiction, right. Topics like how to make the process less daunting, how to find a place in the writing community where you can talk to other writers, where to find good writing advice/what to listen to and what not to listen to/when certain writing advice is useful, that kind of thing.
What I wished I knew when I was a baby writer tm and didn’t yet have connections to other writers, or even a great sense of what questions to ask.
When it is completed, a free PDF will be available for general readership
So what kind of help is most needed?
PLEASE REBLOG THIS AND SPREAD THIS AROUND
But mainly, I wanna hear what pieces of advice you would give your past self when you were first getting started? What pieces of knowledge could have made a noticeable difference in how you approached the journey? If you started writing already surrounded by writer friends, what were some things they told you that you think were instrumental in how you’re doing now? If you didn’t start in a writing community but feel pretty connected now, how did you get there? What was your path?
Below is a handy-dandy google form below to write in responses (including an opportunity to boost your current wips!)
“We read to know that we are not alone.” - C.S. Lewis
As a writer, I want to capture the hearts and emotions of my characters. They bleed red like the rest of us. Their feelings–positive or negative–are sometimes too deep for words. People crave connections with others who are like them. They want to relate. They want to know they are not alone.
These two books have made a world of difference in my writing. They have allowed me to turn ideas into people with heartbeats. People who are as human as you and me.
♔ ELLIOTOFRPS does a —— masterlist of phobias / fears ♔
As requested, i made a masterlist of exactly 194 phobias with their meanings, and in alphabetical order. You’ll find the most common and least common phobias and you can message me if you have any questions, if you want to learn more, if you have other phobias i should add, etc. Warning: Includes phobias related with sexual content, death, toxics, alcohol, nudity, injuries, pain, etc. This took forever, so a like or reblog would be nice.
I feel like there needs to be some kind of post for MCU fans on How To Write About Africa because I feel like there’s a lot of people out there who want to write about Wakanda and T'Challa but are worried about being problematic and that makes me sad because there’s SO MUCH GREAT meta to be had about T'Challa and Wakanda but at the same time there’s a lot of legitimate concerns about perpetuating racist stereotypes and yeah.
T'Challa and Wakanda could be such a great way to introduce people to amazing sci-fi concepts that people should know
This is SO needed.
It’s so easy to be like ‘just try it!’ but the problem with this website is that people don’t think its okay for people to make mistakes. I’ve gotten messages from people who want to write about T’Challa/Wakanda but are nervous about how their work will be perceived and its sosad.
We really need to gather some people who’d be interested in writing a nice little info post!
