Writing advice from... a lot of people

From BuzzFeed, pithy writing advice from 30 wildly successful authors: check it out!

My personal favorites are 28 and 29:

"Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughting at your own joke." —F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Laugh at your own jokes." —Neil Gaiman

Happy Friday, and thanks to Myssi for the link!

Writing advice from David Rakhoff

Speaking of rough drafts...

Recently deceased This American Life contributor David Rakoff on the dubious joys of the first draft:

Writing—I can really only speak to writing here—always, always only starts out as shit: an infant of monstrous aspect; bawling, ugly, terrible, and it stays terrible for a long, long time (sometimes forever). Unlike cooking, for example, where largely edible, if raw, ingredients are assembled, cut, heated, and otherwise manipulated into something both digestible and palatable, writing is closer to having to reverse-engineer a meal out of rotten food.

(From his latest book Half Empty, which I have just requested from the library.)

Week Seven: Rough draft completed!

You heard it here first.

For me, squeezing out that first rough draft is an ongoing struggle wherein I promise myself over and over that I'll go back and revise all the suck out of it, if I can just please oh please relax and write the damn thing.

And then, later, I'll find that I don't have anything too major to revise, because the rough draft wasn't actually so horrible after all.

Is it that the writerly skills I've honed over the years are all in my arsenal even when I'm giving myself permission to write poo (and so the poo does not stink quite so much as it might have, say, ten years ago), or it is more that the words on the page have a permanence or inevitability to them now that they're real, and to throw them out feels like wanton destruction?

Maybe both? Discuss.

That moment you realize what your ending will be

For Week 7's challenge I've been writing piecemeal, 15–20 minutes every morning before work. It's not the fastest way ever to write, but it's nice knowing that I showed up and did at least some of the work each day. Not writing has a way of gaining its own momentum over time.

So anyway, I realized what my ending will be this morning. Knowing for certain how the story will end is always a happy feeling for me (because then I can concentrate on just getting there without also having to worry about how), but there's also a lot of relief mixed in there when I've been writing to find out what I'm writing.

(I'm in an italics kind of mood today.)

That's all—just a quick update. It'll be up soon, and then onward to Week 8...!

Stories are controlling your brain

An unusually perceptive article from Cracked.com about how we use stories to inform our worldview:

Thousands of years ago, when your ancestors were living in tribes and hunting gazelles for food, nobody knew how to read. Even if they could, paper wasn't a thing, parchment was rare and precious. They had no written historical records, they had no educational system that could devote years to teaching history to the kids.

This was a problem. Once humans started forming civilizations, the guys in charge didn't just need the next generation of children to know how to fish and hunt, they needed citizens who would fall in line and fight for the tribe. That meant the kids needed to understand the big picture: why preserving the tribe is important, why we hate the tribe across the river, why our tribe is better than that tribe, why it's important to go off and fight in the next war no matter how scared you are.

Now, to do this, they could either A) bore the kids to death with a years-long recounting of the history of the tribe, which nobody has probably written down anyway or B) tell them a cool story. They could tell the thrilling tale of Kolgor the Valiant who, when the evil neighboring tribe came to slay all of the women and children, stood alone and fought bravely through the night, with four arrows in his chest, until the enemy retreated in terror. You want to be like Kolgor, don't you, little one? Otherwise, he will have died in vain.

Read the rest here!

There's a very interesting bit in there too about the small choices a writer can make to trigger a certain unconscious response in the reader or viewer. I'm ashamed to admit that I never gave any thought to the fact that Spider-Man, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter are all orphans...

Procrastination is poor impulse control

Some insight into procrastination from You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney:

Procrastination is an impulse; it's buying candy at the checkout. [...] You must be adept at thinking about thinking to defeat yourself at procrastination. You must realize that there is the you who sits there now reading this, and there is the you some time in the future who will be influenced by a different set of ideas and desires[...].

The now-you may see the costs and rewards at stake when it comes time to choose studying for the test instead of going to the club, eating the salad instead of the cupcake, writing the article instead of playing the video game. The trick is to accept that the now-you will not be the person facing these choices, it will be the future-you—a person who can't be trusted. Future-you will give in, and then you'll go back to being now-you and feel weak and ashamed. Now-you must trick future-you into doing what is right for both parties.

I found this to be mind-altering. I've been a long-time sufferer of procrastination and never once thought of it as an impulse control problem, but it absolutely is.

It's a very interesting book so far—I highly recommend it if you're the sort of person who loves to derail group conversation with musings on why people tend to do this or that.

Week Seven: By and by it comes...

Just a quick update: I'm still plugging away at Week Seven's challenge. I'm exploring the interview thing—the most difficult part is making it a short play with funny moments rather than a comedy sketch. Giving both characters equal moments to shine rather than just crazy person + normal person = hilarity.

(I guess I could just write a comedy sketch...)

Anyway, I've been writing a little bit each morning before work and it feels good.

And lastly, I know everyone's been waiting for this: I deleted my first spam comment earlier today! It's a real blog now!

A room of one's own in the middle of everything

From Megan Stielstra:

Until recently, I never much understood the whole room of one’s own thing. Love me some To The Lighthouse, but I didn’t need my own space. I could write anywhere: library, coffee shop, the bar before starting a shift. In part, I preferred writing in public—the people, the action, the whitenoise—but mostly this nomadic office was determined by necessity. I lived in the city. Space is expensive, and a second bedroom was a luxury I couldn’t afford. Also, like many freelance artists/teachers/servers/twenty-somethings, I had three jobs; no time to spend in a second bedroom even if I had one. Also, I moved around a lot, apartment to apartment, neighborhood to neighborhood, relationship to relationship, so I learned to write whenever and wherever I could.

Aren’t you supposed to build your writing process around your life?

Or—wait. Is it the other way around?

Read the rest at The Rumpus!

I crave a gorgeous book-crammed study with soft lighting and a leather reading chair, but my writing usually happens more like this—between things. How about you?

Writing advice from Rainer Maria Rilke

Courtesy of Letters of Note, the first from a series of letters from Rainer Maria Rilke that would later be collected into Letters to a Young Poet:

You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple, "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.

Link to the rest here.

Steal like a writer

Austin Kleon's 10 rules for stealing like a writer:

1. Writing is collage.

2. Read, read, read.

3. Keep a swipe file.

4. Carry a notebook + pen.

5. Step away from the screen.

6. Don't wait until you know what you think to get started.

7. Keep a daily routine.

8. Write something you would want to read.

9. Tell (Oprah) stories.

10. Practice in public.

You can also find a video presentation and a slideshow of the rules here.

I actually do a lot of these: reading a lot, of course; I carry writing inplements almost everywhere; often the only way I can begin writing is longhand; and I am getting better (though it's never comfortable) at writing before I know what it is I'm writing.

I would love to keep a daily routine, but that's easier said. I have no idea what a swipe file is, but it sounds intriguing. And I'll have to watch the video to see if the stories I tell are Oprah stories. (I kind of doubt it, but you never do know...)

How about you? Agree? Disagree? Any you would add?