Thanks to Kim for stopping by with a guest post for CLP’s For Writers section! Please visit her tour page at CLP Blog Tours for more information and a giveaway!
When Samantha suggested I write my guest blog on writing advice, I thought Sure! No problem! But now that I’m here, staring at the blank page, I’m kinda like, really? Me? Maybe it’s just my ubiquitous writerly angst, but my second thought on dispensing writing advice was, Who am I to dispense writing advice?
I’ve published two novels and have been writing a blog for nearly seven years. I was a journalism major with an English minor and worked in radio news for five years. But still. I feel unworthy to dispense advice on writing. It’s probably because I feel like no one out there has ever heard of me. Even so I, of course, have no shortage of opinions on what makes writing good and/or successful, but I must qualify any advice I give here by saying I will guarantee the opinions expressed by Kim Strickland may be worth exactly what you’re paying for them. 😉
So here’s my advice: screw writing advice. Just write. (Wait. Isn’t that advice?)
The creative process is such a personal thing, as individual as each and every writer, and I think we all would prefer it to stay that way. So whenever I hear folks trotting out “the rules” or advice on writing, it sorta makes me cringe. What works for you may not work for me and, obviously, vice versa.
When I hear, “Write what you know,“ I think, I’d rather write the book I want to read. I’m already bored with what I know. My first book, Wish Club, was about a book club that started practicing witchcraft. I knew nothing about witchcraft when I got the idea for it, and while we had a lot of great times in my old book club, let me just say if I’d written about what I knew about book clubs, Zzzzzzz.
“Write every day.” Well if that isn’t the impossible dream around here. I have a job and three kids, and two cats and one dog. I write when I can. Sometimes I’ll go for weeks without writing fiction. Sometimes, I do write every day. As long as I keep putting my butt in the chair, or keep intending to put my butt in it, that’s what works for me.
Write every day. Write what you know. Outline. Free-form. No backstory in the first fifty pages. No prologues. Fewer adjectives. No adverbs. More dialogue. Less dialogue. No exclamation points! Absolutely no dialogue tags. All the conflicting advice can be confusing, especially because it’s possible to point to successful novels that have broken every single one of these rules. Yet it is important to know what the rules are, so you can choose to break them, or not. Personally, I agree with many of them. Especially the one about no backstory in the first fifty pages. And, “I absolutely abhor the over-use of dialogue tags,” Kim murmured.
Writing is the best way to learn how to write. And so is reading copious amounts of books. And there it is. My humbly delivered writing advice. Agree, disagree, whatever works for you is what matters most. Besides, either way, you always reserve the right to ask for your money back.
Giveaway!
Kim Strickland lives in Chicago with her husband, three children, two cats and one dog. She also blogs as A City Mom at ChicagoNow. Down at the Golden Coin is her second novel. When she’s not being a mom or a writer, she flies jets for a major airline, which means, every once in a while, she gets to eat an entire meal sitting down.
Connect with Kim!
My blog: http://www.ChicagoNow.com/acitymom
