Lousy Tips for Writing

1) Trim your nails. Those little clumps of dead cells and protein are evil. This varies for every person, but as an avid pianist and amateur violinist, it’s always good to keep your most important tools sharp—or in this case—flat. Having long fingernails reduces accuracy and confidence in placing your fingers on the keys. One false move, and it’s a slip! You might even end up with a typo. I have a nasty knack of going back and correcting a misspelled word (when I find one), but that throws me off balance forcing me to restart my writing momentum.

2) Unplug your headphones. Music is evil. Music without words is also evil. Often, I find myself thinking of other things when I listen to music. I tend to stop typing and start daydreaming. Those daydreaming ideas become really distracting towards what I’m supposed to write. It’s like a filter that bars off my intended thoughts. I can’t have that! I have to focus on what I’m really supposed to be writing about.

3) Open your mind. You’d be surprised at where I find the inspirations for some of my personal favorite stories: a signboard on the highway, a tiny plant in the kitchen, a funny moment from your family and/or friends…the list goes on. Don’t just look for something that will capture your attention right off the bat. Think! Work with it. Try to see if you can twist the concept around and make it interesting. You might just end up really proud of what you finish with.

4) Have fun. Enjoy what you write. I’ve found that if I bog myself down with expectations and standards I must follow, then the entire experience becomes so miserable. This might be one of the reasons I dislike doing requests with specific rules attached to them. I don’t really like having to work for others. I’ve spent too much time being tied down by prompts and rules. It wasn’t until I was free from all of that when my mind was suddenly bursting with all sorts of ideas and writing venues.

5) Make the writing for you. Readers, fans, and various other bodies come second to yourself. Why make your life miserable if you don’t even like what you’re doing? It’s the same as your job. It might pay the bills and get you attention, but are you really happy? I often find myself battling with satisfying the readers and decking out a story to my own personal preference, and in these times, I have to stop and think. Sometimes there’s a way to compromise both the writer and the readers. Sometimes, you have to act like your own editor.

6) Be hungry. Give yourself some sort of incentive to keep going. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m only able to keep writing my telling myself, “If I don’t make this story interesting, I don’t get to eat.” In a way, being hungry can both mean to have a lack of food in your stomach or desiring some brilliant outlet for inspiration. Don’t forget to look for it in those odd places.

7) Use proper language, grammar, spelling, spacing, and all that good stuff. I shouldn’t have to talk about this too much because if you don’t know how to structure a story correctly, you might as well not begin writing in the first place. It might sound harsh, but all those famous published authors didn’t just be published because they had good ideas. They needed to know how to master their language, too.