Advice on Writing Advice
When scrolling through the tweets tagged #amwriting on Twitter, you can't help noticing that every other tweet seems to be about writing advice, with a link to an article, and a headline that usually mentions some sort of list: "Avoid these 3 writing mistakes", "The 10 best ways to overcome writer's block", "25 grammar rules you need to know", and so on. If you are thinking about starting to write and you see all these lists, it's probably going to scare you away. You may think "I'll never remember all of these things!" It sounds like too much work and that it'll take all the fun out of writing, so you're tempted to give up before you've even started.
Don't. Ignore these articles. They're mostly bullshit. And the ones that aren't bullshit aren't relevant to you yet.
You don't have to listen to me. I've published two non-fiction ebooks, I'm only dabbling in fiction, and I don't claim to have a huge knowledge about writing. But for me, I've come to the conclusion that you can safely ignore these articles with their clickbait headlines. I'm convinced that there's only three "rules" (and I use the term loosely) that you really need to stick to at first if you want to become a writer, be it fiction or non-fiction.
One. Write something regularly.
We all know that person who has that great idea for a book that they want to write one day "when they have the time". When you ask them what they've written so far - anything, not necessarily for said book - they usually come up blank. That book will never be written.
If you want to be a writer you need to learn to write. That doesn't mean that you have to read and understand all those aforementioned articles. It means that you need to sit down and put one word after another until you have a sentence that makes sense. And then you write more sentences to have a paragraph. Then a page. And so on.
If you haven't experienced how to explain something (for a non-fiction text) or describe something (for fiction), then you need to start doing that. And the only way to learn is to sit down and write. It's that simple (and that hard, to quote Neil Gaiman). You know the language you're speaking well enough to write something, anything. Don't worry about grammar mistakes, punctuation, all the formalities. These things can be learned or you can pay someone to fix them for you. The most important thing is to learn how to phrase sentences, paragraphs, pages of text that explain or describe something.
A popular tip is to "write every day". I think that's a good idea but I also understand that it simply isn't possible in some situations. But at least write regularly and more than once per week. Do that for a while and you'll get a feel for how to describe or explain something; and whether or not writing is truly for you. It's also how you develop your own style of writing. Plus, I'm convinced that if you make it a habit to write regularly, you'll never really suffer from the dreaded writer's block (which, most of the time, is something entirely different than people think it is, but let's leave that for another article).
Two. Don't look back.
Once you've started writing a text - be it fiction or non-fiction - write as far as you can. When you run out of steam, take a break and come back to it later, or the next day. Continue where you left off. Sure, you can read through your previous words and even fix the obvious typos. But resist the urge to rewrite it. Continue with your story or explanation until you reach the end. Then you can go back - after taking yet another break, to get some distance - and make substantial changes (if you feel them to be necessary). This would be your second draft. At that point, you've thought everything through - your story or your line of arguments - and have a better understanding of where you are heading.
In other words, finish that first draft without worrying about having hit the right tone, using the right words, having plot holes or wrong facts in there. These can be fixed later. I think Terry Pratchett said it best: "The first draft is just you telling yourself the story."
The first draft is for yourself. Don't show your text to anyone else yet; wait at least until you're done with the second draft.
Three. Have an end in mind.
This is something that I learned to be an important difference between fiction and non-fiction texts. When you write non-fiction, you are an expert on the topic already (or so I would hope). When you sit down to write about a topic, you know where you are heading. That is not usually the case with fiction.
For fiction, make sure you have an end towards which you will be writing. It doesn't have to be fixed, but you have to have a general idea as to what the situation at the end of the story will be. Will your characters be dead or married? Is the city in ruins or thriving? Whatever your story is about, know the outcome.
I remember seeing an interview with J. K. Rowling at the time when only three or four of the Harry Potter books were out. She held a thin binder into the camera. This, she explained, was the end of the last Harry Potter book. She had already written it, so she knew what to write towards. On a side note, I'd be interested to know if she actually used that end as-is or if she ended up changing something. I'll bet she had to make changes.
You can write the end out like J. K. Rowling or just take some notes. Also, you don't have to stick to it; stories sometimes change as you're writing them. In that case, think up a new end and write towards that. Having an end in mind absolutely helps taking the story forward. Without an end, you'll be going nowhere.
These are the three “rules” I think you need to get started. Everything else you can look up and learn later, when you have a first draft. When you're thinking about showing your work to someone else, that's the point where you should be checking the basics, e.g. how to properly use punctuation in dialog. By then, you've created something that you will rightly be proud of and you will want it to look good. That's the motivation you'll need to help you get through the occasional boring article about grammar or punctuation.
Congrats, you are a writer now.
"Advice on Writing Advice" by Dirk Haun is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.Keyboard photo by jodacame (CC0), via Pixabay.
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