Our Authors’ Best Advice
While experience is often the ultimate teacher, there are usually words of wisdom that guide an author through the process of writing. What words might those be? This Fairy Godmother asked:
What is the best advice about writing that you’ve received/read AND put to use?
What follows are several of our authors’ responses:
Alicia Bessette (Simply from Scratch coming in August 2010):
“Write what you write, and don’t compare your writing to others’.”
Judy Merrill Larsen (All the Numbers):
“Wow, lots of advice. Don’t give up. There’s no such thing as writer’s block (I mean, do plumber’s have plumber’s block? Lawyers have lawyer’s block? No. I’m a writer, so I write.). You can’t fix a blank page. Give yourself permission to write crap. It’ll get better upon revision. Write from the heart. And, Of course it’s not always easy. If it was, everyone would do it. And few things that really matter are easy. But it’s who I am, so I write.”
Maud Carol Markson (When We Get Home, Looking After Pigeon)
“The best advice I ever received was to keep writing, and to write the kind of work that I myself would want to read. So I continue to write for the reader who is like me.”
Sarah Pekkanen (The Opposite of Me, coming March 9, 2010):
“Keep on writing, no matter what. Don’t stop. Aim for 1,000 words a day, at least. Never give up!”
Ivy Pochoda (The Art of Disappearing)
“Write fearlessly. Avoid adverbs.”
Trish Ryan (He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: A Memoir of Finding Faith, Love, and Happily Ever After, A Maze of Grace: A Memoir of Second Chances coming June 22, 2010):
“Stephen King: ‘“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”’ One of the last things I do before submitting to my editor is run a search for all words ending in LY. Typically cuts my word count WAY down, and I don’t miss the deleted words.”
Wendy Tokunaga (Midori By Moonlight, Love in Translation):
“Read your work aloud. This is so helpful in figuring out what works and what doesn’t in terms of word selection, dialogue, the rhythm of the prose, etc.”
Announcements: The two winners of Shana Mahaffey’s debut novel, Sounds Like Crazy, are Rebecca and Steve. Congratulations!
AND
The winner of Carleen Brice’s two novels, Orange Mint and Honey, Children of the Waters, is Wendy. Congratulations to you too!
Now, if you will all please send your mailing addresses to: diviningwand (at) gmail (dot) com, I’ll get these books out to you as promptly as possible. And my thanks to everyone who entered.
My anti-spam word also sounds like a good piece of writing advice, it is: ‘begin’.
That’s all we need to do each day.
1I think I might need to write my own post about this! Great topic.
I heard this first from my creative writing teacher last year – but have since seen it in quite a few articles (most notably in Malcolm Gladwell’s Late Bloomers article in the New Yorker). She said, whenever I am struggling or am unhappy with a scene or ending or whatever, I need to just write more. That most people who want to write – and even those that do – often just don’t write enough.
And yay! So stoked I won a copy of the book!
2Congrats Wendy!
3