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Wednesday, June 16, 2010

8 Great Writing Tips

These tips just landed in my inbox and they're so wonderful, I'm going to "borrow" them so I can share with you.  **I take no credit for these.  They are totally the brain child of Neil Gaiman, author of Coraline, The Graveyard Book, and The Sandman series and were sent to me via Gotham Writer's Workshop**

8 Good Writing Practices
  1. Write.
  2. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
  3. Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
  4. Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
  5. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
  6. Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
  7. Laugh at your own jokes.
  8. The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

5 comments:

Ezmirelda said...

Thanks for the blog award! I like the points the person who wrote this made. Thanks for sharing it with us. :)

Larissa said...

I LOVE these, Jessie! I need to print this and put it on my wall. Great advice. Thanks for sharing!

Christina Lee said...

Hi there, YOU!
My favorite: Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

LTM said...

cool meeting you on yalitchat. You've got some great stuff here! Thanks for sharing~ :o)

Jessie Harrell said...

thanks for stopping by everyone!
Christina - that was my favorite piece of advice too. I'll have to remember it when I'm the crit giver too.

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