AAAAAAAARRRRRGH.
I have strayed once more into the great wilderness of writing. You know that place, where the paths are impossible to see and you begin to believe that maybe you'd hallucinated them all in the first place. Clearly it is time to take a deep breath and remember the two best pieces of writing advice I have ever been given:
#1- Done is better than good.
#2- Write fast.
The first, from my tenth grade Humanities teacher, was said to remind us that if we never stopped stressing about making our papers perfect, we would never finish at all. Simple math tells us that any number is superior to zero. SO JUST FRICKIN DO IT AND STOP STRESSING. If we let our pursuit of perfection paralyze us, we're not just 'not-good', but 'never-even-showed-up'. So finish. Not brilliantly, not perfectly, but just FINISHED.
The second was recently said to a partially full crowd of people at the tremendous Con-Con by Dean Devlin in response to the age old convention chestnut: Any advice for aspiring writers? His point was that the more time and energy and sweat and tears you put into that first rough draft, the harder it will be to tear it apart and edit it and actually turn it into something better later. By the time the first draft is done, you will be so damn sick of the story that you won't care about making it into something good, in fulfilling its potential. And let's all be honest, everything needs editing. Nobody is awesome enough to create something brilliant in a first draft. If someone claims they can, they are either being dishonest, or they are just lazy writers with no interest in being better than they are right now (which, hey, is anyone's right, just don't couch it as something it's not). So write fast, dammit.
Done is better than good. Write fast. Done is better than good. Write fast. Done is better than good...
If I write it fifty-bazillion times more, I might remember to believe it. Lol.
What's your favorite bit of writing advice you've ever heard? Hit me. God knows I could use it. :)
#1- Done is better than good.
#2- Write fast.
The first, from my tenth grade Humanities teacher, was said to remind us that if we never stopped stressing about making our papers perfect, we would never finish at all. Simple math tells us that any number is superior to zero. SO JUST FRICKIN DO IT AND STOP STRESSING. If we let our pursuit of perfection paralyze us, we're not just 'not-good', but 'never-even-showed-up'. So finish. Not brilliantly, not perfectly, but just FINISHED.
The second was recently said to a partially full crowd of people at the tremendous Con-Con by Dean Devlin in response to the age old convention chestnut: Any advice for aspiring writers? His point was that the more time and energy and sweat and tears you put into that first rough draft, the harder it will be to tear it apart and edit it and actually turn it into something better later. By the time the first draft is done, you will be so damn sick of the story that you won't care about making it into something good, in fulfilling its potential. And let's all be honest, everything needs editing. Nobody is awesome enough to create something brilliant in a first draft. If someone claims they can, they are either being dishonest, or they are just lazy writers with no interest in being better than they are right now (which, hey, is anyone's right, just don't couch it as something it's not). So write fast, dammit.
Done is better than good. Write fast. Done is better than good. Write fast. Done is better than good...
If I write it fifty-bazillion times more, I might remember to believe it. Lol.
What's your favorite bit of writing advice you've ever heard? Hit me. God knows I could use it. :)