A Bit of Writing Advice

Pay Attention, Dear Reader

Read that title again, because chances are, if you're starting out on the long road to be a serious writer, you're currently too poor to pay anything else.

So, without further ado, let me jump right into it.

Quite honestly, my experiences tell me that there are two major things you can do to help your writing. I'm not claiming they're the only two major ways to improve your literary art, but these are the two that not only taught me how to write, but gave me a decent dose of passion for writing.

 The first thing is common advice, and it's to read. You'll often hear to read as much variety and content as you can, but I say you can stick to the stuff you enjoy and want to write. I was lucky to enjoy Terry Pratchett's work, so I had in excess of thirty books or so to read when I started, and now there are over fifty.

 The second thing is to write every day, or as close to every day as possible. If you just sit down for half an hour and get five hundred words out every day, you'd have a novel in four months. Not feeling up to a novel yet? Write some short stories, or essays, or a review. Write a poem, write lyrics, write articles, write whatever you please, just write what you want to. Follow those and you will see your writing start to improve.

 Other than that, here's a couple of little hints that I find help me, in no particular order:

 Have a book nearby that you can consult for punctuation in dialogue, or commas or anything really. Write without worrying about errors.

 You can go back and fix them later, but fixing them while writing slows you down and mucks up your rhythm.

 Unsure of a word you're using? Consult the great interwebs of power! The internet has helped me immensely, but practise caution. Use willpower to finish your half hour or hour of writing and not get lost online.

 IMPORTANT! Write what you enjoy! Stories that author's dislike don't get finished. They wither, they embarrass, they hang over your head like a storm cloud, and then they die. They die, reader, they die. Then you waste time trying to resurrect them after a short while, when you should only return to them after a good chunk of time.