Advice from Writers, to Writers
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The 'best advice' I think is in READING good writers, not seeking advice from them, for we learn best by emulating the best.  —Gay Talese

Okay, fellow travellers through time and space, got another poser for you. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to give us all handy words of wisdom from your vast storehouse of writing knowledge. That is, I'm recruiting advice. What bits of wisdom, ideas, rules of thumb do you find useful enough to pass on to the rest of us? And why aren't you sharing it? Don't you like us?

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From Laila Whiteshah
1. When you feel that first seed of inspiration should be planted and bloomed, outline it from start to finish as soon as humanly possible. An outline is rarely concrete, even characters can change the way chapters are organized, but it saves months of feeding a story that was dead before it was ever really alive. Also, outlining keeps you focused on plot, pace, and theme. If you can't outline a idea from start to finish, it was probably not a very good story idea from the start. In that case, save the idea until you can outline it complete.

2. Just as good factually accurate research for building the environment of a story is invaluable, it is more so important for your characters. Know them as you would know your own child, essentially, that is what they are, your children. Be a good parent and know the details of what your children do for a living and why, how and where they live and why, their best friends, the people, places, and things they like and dislike. Write out a character profile/a character caricature, with each ones beliefs, life history before the opening begins up to where they are at final word read. Put breathe and life into your children that you might vividly see them standing in front of you fighting for attention. Know the sound of them tones, accents, patterns of speech, phrasing common to the individual. Give each child habitual traits, and physical attributes that are both positive and negative. This will create characters that demonstrate human dimensions. No matter how minor the character give them a little profile love. Minor characters, the children that don't require so much parental guidance, can be briefly profiled at any point in your birthing a story. It is harder to kill a story if your own flesh and heart children are truly living - they will beg for life and cry out for their story to be fully told.

3. Free-write first, proof later. You can get ten to twenty pages done a day that way. Note If possible, keep your computer on once you start if you are home all day, and always, always, keep a pen and note pad on you as if they are appendages.

4. Stick to with your novel, short story, etc., until it is lived out to the place of completion. Don't be so distracted by the new babies that you abandon your older kids. At first, the new babies will look more adorable and might be more fun to play with, but in the end, if you can't keep stay committed to the children you already have, you might end up with a huge orphanage file with nothing ever fully completed. Keep those embryos frozen in a note book or on file on disk, keep them warm in a small blanket of an outline/a sketch of where you think the new kids lives will take them. Just think how comforting it will be when your present children are grown, on the page, on their way to editor and press, and there are tons of new babies just waiting for you to give birth to them.

5. You already know your children, after all, they are your original creation, they are you in parts if not whole, or people you know well. Your story is already outlined with a defined conclusion, but a tale always take on a life of its own. If blocked or if you write yourself into a corner, refer to the notion, "What would I do?", then do it on the page while keeping of mind the essence of your outlined and the souls of your people creations. If still stuck, lay down and meditate on your children, feel what they must feel; most of the time, you'll find, they do what they want to do anyway.

6. Aloud, proof sentence to sentence for punctuation, spelling, grammar relevant, and just to make sure the words link together in clarity. Read sentences to paragraph for the best possible flow in the thoughts and emotions you are trying to communicate. If you don't feel it cut it or reword it, because if you don't feel it or see the image clearly your readers certainly won't. Read paragraphs to chapter for certainty that the information there in is required for telling the story. If its not needed, save the information for another tail. Then finally, chapter to chapter for proper "time line" placement. Don't love your words so much that they have to live, now. You can always save a fancy phrase for another time. Save the old drafts, and don't be afraid of experimenting with moving large items around for better effect of paragraphs' or even chapters' flow. Hearing what you wrote, often proves readable clarity.

7. After you have proofed all you can, first show your children off to a fellow writer. Then to a friend or relative that just loves to read your stuff. Have the fellow writer read it for every aspect of error, and have the friend or relative fan of your writing, read for clarity, punctuation, and entertainment value. Note Neither reading is of any use if you are not willing to listen and take their good advice. Rule of thumb, if your writing mentor and friend have a suggestion that is like in nature, act on that advice, for sure.

8. Finally, send it to your agent/a agent that is in the market for genre that matches your story. (It's easier with an agent, for he gives you time to move on to the next group of babies, and a good one often adds helpful suggests - my opinion) When, and you can almost be sure, your editor says slice, then slice it no matter how much you bleed. Even those read so famously well to dare protest, still find that sometimes they have to suck it up and put a band aid on it to have a successful coming out party for their children.

9. In between and above almost all, read. Read and seek out everything you can from other writes that do treatment of their work in manner that you admire. PS. Like teeth and hair, brush up on your craft everyday, just write it.

From Cat Scarlett
The hardest part of writing a novel must be the writing itself. So many words, such a long haul. The trick is remembering that one word breeds another, just as one chapter breeds another, and another, and another.

Keep adding more words to your manuscript and one day the book will be finished. It's as simple as that.

It still hurts, of course, making the effort to get up every day and write. But it beats getting up to do anything else ... with one exception!

From J.T. Benjamin
1. Using an adverb means you didn't find the right verb. Using an adjective means you need a different noun. (Tony Hillerman.)

2. "Write what you know" is terrible advice. Write what moves you and entertains YOU. If you don't know it, research it or better, make it up. I write the kinds of books I would like to read, when I get tired of waiting for someone else to write them. (George Will).

3. I carry a small notebook in my back pocket wherever I go. Cheap at a buck thirty-nine. When ever I get a glimmer of an idea or a snatch of dialogue or an opening line or a plot twist or a reminder to pick up some milk on the way home, I write it in the notebook. Know how many great ideas were lost because they weren't written down? Nobody else does either, because they WEREN'T WRITTEN DOWN!!! (J.T. Benjamin)

4. In 1900 when James Joyce was eighteen or thereabouts, he had not had much luck publishing his poetry, so he started writing carefully wrought little pieces of nonpoetry, called epiphanies. There are forty of Joyce's that survive in manuscript...some of them were worked in as material for "Stephen Hero" or "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." Some are fragments of overheard conversations of strangers, some are accounts of dreams, some are brief dialogues between Joyce and persons he knew...(Rust Hills).

5. Second draft = First draft - 10% (Stephen King.)

6. How to break through Writer's Block. When Victor Hugo was having a hard time getting the words going, he removed all his clothes and had his manservant lock him in a bare empty room with only a desk, paper, and pen. Stark naked and with nothing else to do, Hugo would sit down and write. (David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace.)

7. About a third of all the "that's" in writing are completely unnecessary. If you've written, "The best that you can hope for," get rid of the "that." "The best you can hope for" is crisper, cleaner, and better. (My Aunt Donna.)

8. The best grammar book you can ever hope to find is "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White. It's the only textbook I use. (Stephanie Drucker, my college Intro To Literature instructor.)

9. Never use anything other than "said" when describing dialogue. (Ernest Hemingway).

10. I try to cut out all the hoopty-doodle. (Elmore Leonard on writing books that have a good, fast pace and are a quick read.)

11. My all-time favorite writing anecdote. I've heard it where the Great and Distinguished Writer was Hemingway, Saul Bellow, Agatha Christie, even Jackie Collins. In the oldest version I've heard, the role was played by Sinclair Lewis. The crowd was silent as they waited for the Great and Distinguished Writer to be introduced. The topic of his lecture was, "How to be a Writer," and the room was packed. The introductory speaker finished, there was a welcoming round of applause, and the Great and Distinguished Writer approached the podium. The crowd grew silent again.

"How many people here want to be writers," asked the Great and Distinguished Writer. Dozens of people raised their hands.

"Well," said the Great and Distinguished Writer. "If you all want to be writers, why are you here listening to me talk? If you want to be a writer, go home, sit down at your desk, and WRITE!" And the Great and Distinguished Writer left the stage. From Desiree The first thing to do is forget the world and write. The second thing is to remember the world. Then you need a fully reinflatable ego. Keep the bicycle pump handy. Especially when you happen to receive a rejection letter on your birthday. A copy of Strunk and White can't hurt either.

From Helena Settimana
1) READ READ READ

2) Find a mentor (or an email list *g*). Success leaves clues. Then...

3) Do what you are told. If an editor says "change it" change it and move on. IMO one of the dumbest things a writer can do is ignore the advice of a good editor out of ego. It keeps the author from moving forward and learning.

4) Don't cut corners on the facts. If you don't know it, don't make it up without checking it out with people who DO know and learn something before you put pen to paper. Otherwise you'll run the risk of looking like an ass - at least to those who know something about what you've made up. Even established popular authors have committed such faux-pas. I recently read a book which was, in part, about an artist. It had a good plot, but the author knew little about the practical aspects of being an artist and made up things that "sounded" right but were asinine. The author also tried to incorporate phrases from a foreign language without checking that it made sense. It helped to spoil the read - big-time.

5) Shop your work around. Don't be discouraged by rejection. If the rejecting editor has been good enough to offer feedback, take it in (see #3)

From Jane Noel
1. Write. Don't wait until you have 'time'. Or a place. Or a reason. Write. Then write some more. Time can be snatched. Make it a priority. Don't talk about writing. Write.

2. Read. Read vastly, read a wide variety, from genre to era. Notice what tricks your favourite writers use. Ask yourself why do they work? And when something you read is bad or bores you - ask yourself why? Read as a writer, not just as an audience. Analyse what you read. (Don't ever lose the pure pleasure of reading, though!)

3. Edit yourself ruthlessly.

4. Yes, spelling and grammar count. Punctuation is important as well.

5. And lastly - write for the joy of it. Even if your audience is only yourself - as in private journal, for example - your words matter. Respect them. But don't venerate them. (See #3.)

From Megan Murphy
Ideas and inspirations can come at the craziest and most unexpected times. So, I keep a small notebook and jot down sentences that come to me or a title that grabs me.

Always, always spell check and proof your work. Don't depend on yourself to catch everything. You're to close to it. Ask someone with a fresh eye to review it.

Make yourself write at least an hour a day. Something. Anything. This will help when you are subject to that cursed writer's block. And, speaking of writer's block, think about the cause. Is it fear of failure? Fear of success? Figure out the reason and you've almost got the cure.

Read all the books you can on the art of writing. Even if you're published, you can always learn something new.

"A title should be memorable. While no title has yet made a bad story good or a good story bad, I've been struck again by the high proportion of singularly dull 'label' titles The Dog, The Pen, The Teacher, An Autumn Afternoon, Marilyn or The Affair. These titles are flat and not terribly interesting. They don't promise much. They don't whet the appetite, and they should." - Telling Lies for Fun and Profit - A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block
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