Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Writing Tips Wednesdays: Bad Writing Advice Everyone Should Follow


One of the best writing tips I ever heard is usually considered bad advice in the writing community. This writing tip won’t win you any awards, and it certainly isn’t a way to create the best books, blog posts, or essays in the world.

What is the tip?

Just write something.

Even if you have practically nothing to say, you are still better off writing something down.

Why? Because writing is rarely about extreme talent or having something clever to say. Writing, like many things, is simply a matter of practice. The more practiced you are, the easier it will be. The best way to become practiced at something is to do it. When you pledge to write, no matter what, then you will preventwriting procrastination and get farther than you ever thought possible.  

This month, I am participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). If you are unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it is the challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month. You have to write about 1600 words a day for this to happen.  NaBloPoMo is simply committing to post something every day on your blog.

NaNoWriMo has the slogan, “No plot, no problem.” I think that is the key to finding the motivation to start writing. You don’t have to worry about content, structure, or even whether or not your idea is any good. Those things do not matter at first. It doesn’t matter if you have the best plot or most developed background universe for your story, or hundreds of ideas for a blog. If you never put words on paper, you are actually worse off than the person who has a terrible plot but actually wrote something down.

As you continue to write, you will find that clear concepts, ideas, and stories emerge from your ramblings. You will findyour writing voice, and give meaning to what you write. It doesn’t take a whole lot to sit down and write something on a page. When you do that often enough, you may find that you come up with more than you ever thought possible.

So, as we enter NaNoWriMo, even if you don’t want to commit to writing 30 blog posts this month or 50,000 words, commit with me to write something. Anything.

You won’t be sorry.


If you do participate, make sure to share your progress along the way! I’ll be posting my results on the Daily Mayo Facebook page. I look forward to seeing you there!

3 comments:

  1. I came up with an idea for NaNoWriMo, but I haven't had time to work on it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm SO trying to motivate myself into blogging more regularly. Perhaps bad advice is the key...

    ReplyDelete

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