Open Thread: Oracle Hotline

[mithen]

--What advice would you give a new writer, someone just starting out?

I know each of us comes from really different places so we'd have really different kinds of advice! And all of us have been writing for quite a while at this point...

I'm a big fan of Ray Bradbury's advice to value quantity over quality, because it's through practice that you get better, and if you try to write 1000 words of perfect prose, you're just going to freeze up. Better to write tons and tons of imperfect prose, have fun doing it, and count on editing and learning over time to get more and more quality out of your writing. "The perfect is the enemy of the good" is a phrase I always try to keep in mind.

I posted a big long essay this week and am pleased with it! It was to a fairly specialized audience, so didn't get a BIG reception, but it was very positive within that target range, so that's reassuring. How about you? What advice did you need to hear when you started writing?

Comments

[me_ya_ri]

Have fun. Have FUN! Whatever sort of writing you're doing, have fun with it. Find something fun in every piece, something that makes you happy and grin and proud. Just always, always, always have fun.

Yes, absolutely, quantity is better than quality. I'll take endless piles of practice over polishing one thing to death any day.

The other piece of advice I'd give myself is to keep trying. Don't give up just because it isn't easy. When I was younger, I was very, very easy to discourage. I'd try a little and then quit because I couldn't master it. I was supposedly 'talented' and 'smart' so if I didn't get it right off, obviously I couldn't do it. If I could talk to child me, I'd say practice everything and learn to memorize things because it pays off later in life. The habit of practice will teach you almost anything and the ability to easily memorize things would have made such a difference in my life. Wow, huge one there and it extends to virtually everything we say or read or do anymore. How many new programs and skills do we have to learn every year, seriously?

Ahem! Went on a lecture there! XD

Congrats on the essay! I finally sent off the proof copy of the final novel of the Great Novel Challenge. Six novels in 6 months (just over that) ain't shabby if I do say so myself. :D

[bradygirl_12]

I would say I'd give the same advice I'm reading here, and also don't let research bog you down. If you need to research something that's essential to your plot, go ahead, but if you want to put in a song or book title or some other detail, just keep writing and go back and fill it in later. You can get sidetracked!

Almost 20,000 words written on my second original novel. Finally got some fanfic posted, too! :)

[navaan]

I've had this questions pop up in a couple of chats. In one a fanartist who want to write asked if there weren't things you could learn the craft with the way you learned to make shading and different drawing techniques work. In the end I think, it might not have seemed to them like it worked like that in writing, but in the end it is all practice.

I also would say: "Read a lot to find out what works for you." The more you read the more you can draw on when you hit the complicated spots — deciding style and tone and POV or how to go about descriptions.

"The perfect is the enemy of the good" is a phrase I always try to keep in mind.

Such good advice. We always tell people in BBs that the important thing is to get the words down first and not let yourself be caged by the idea that they need to be perfect as they are written. You can go back with a red marker and change everything AFTER. But make an imperfect draft first. Make a bad draft first if that's how it turns out! Then go back in!

Even then — there are scenes and pieces that I never get where I want them, and some stories you just need to write and let go so that they're out. Then you can learn from it an move on to the next thing and be a little better for it.

Congrats on posting the essay!