This is the writing advice I needed long, long ago, when I was just starting as a writer. I probably wouldn’t have believed these were all mistakes (because of #1), but I wish I would have.
This writing advice would have saved me a lot of broken drafts and a lot of failed expectations.
After you read this, pick your favorite 3 or 4 points and tape them to the wall above your writing desk. Remind yourself of this writing advice often enough, and you’ll have a much better chance of success.
1. Thinking You’re Smart
Why is this a mistake? Because when you believe you’re smart, you don’t work as hard.
Realize that you’re competing with hundreds of thousands of other writers, and that on the IQ and creativity spectrum, you’re smack dab in the middle. Yeah, you’re more intelligent than the average person, but writers are not the average person.
Believing that you’re smart also hinders:
- your ability to take criticism
- your drive to read
- your ability to learn from others
As you can tell, this is probably the biggest mistake you can make as a writer.
What sets you apart as a writer is not your intelligence, but your work ethic. Develop an amazing work ethic and you will succeed as a writer, guaranteed. Keep thinking you’re smart and you’ll dribble away your writing career in half-baked ideas and slipshod work.
You are not half as smart as you think you are. Unless you tend to think of yourself as incredibly dumb, in which case I’d tell you to buck up, gain some confidence, and write the hell out of your novel.
2. Repressing Your Emotions
To be a writer you need a black belt in emotion. If you squelch your emotion, or let it slip away, it’s the biggest mistake you can make. Harness it. Make it work for you. Put it all into your stories. You will never regret spilling it all on the page.
Most writers avoid writing about the things which are hardest to write about, because they are scared of the emotions they’ll have to deal with. This is exactly wrong. You should write about the things which devastate and thrill you.
The purpose of fiction is to channel and purge reader’s emotions. If you think the purpose of fiction is something else — to educate, or to show morality — you’re wrong. Those are good things, but they are secondary things. If you write something that moves people emotionally, you will be a successful writer. If you do not, you will be a failure.
And the only way you can move others emotionally is by spreading your messy emotions all over the page.
3. Being Idealistic
This is the scourge of young writers. I say young writers rather than beginning writers (who might be older), because the young are often more idealistic about their lives.
If you have a story published, don’t regret it didn’t get published in a better magazine.
Don’t send stories only to the best magazines first, and rack up 40 rejections before you send it to an appropriate venue for your skill level.
Don’t insist on only having the best, most high profile agent.
Don’t insist on writing only the perfect novel. A novel is great not in spite of its imperfections but because of them.
Be practical. Think about your audience and write a book which will sell. Don’t write books that are narcissistic — aimed mainly at pleasuring your own sense of accomplishment.
You will be poor as a writer, so don’t dream about being rich. If you really want to be rich, choose another profession.
4. Writing for Writers instead of Readers
The majority of writers have their work read by other writers — in classrooms, in workshops, in writing groups. So they instinctively write toward pleasing those writers, whether they know it or not.
But surprise! The vast majority of readers of your books are not other writers. And what other writers want is not necessarily what the general public wants.
Don’t be writing trying to please your professors, or your fellow writers. Write to please your audience. And if you don’t know who your audience is, start a book club of exclusively non-writers. It will tell you volumes about how normal readers understand books — what they like and dislike, what they focus on (plot, characters, voice!).
5. Reading Only Good Books
Read bad books. Seriously. Bad books are so educational. I love reading a bad book, especially by a good author (Paul Auster, I’m looking at you).
I make a long list of what doesn’t work in the back, and I remind myself to avoid all those things in my writing. It’s about 10,000 times more instructive than reading a good book.
Because you read a good book seamlessly. You’re caught up in the dream and swept along and by the end you have a wonderful pleasant feeling of being in a bath of words, but you’d be hard pressed to list 5 takeaways from that book that will make you a better writer.
Remember: you don’t have to finish a bad book. Just read enough so that you learn what you need to learn from it.
6. Being a Lone Wolf
Surround yourself with other writers. As many as possible.
Remember: You are the average of your 5 best writing friends.
Write down your five best writing friends. Now, if you are the average, what are your chances for success?
The more writers you know, the more you’ll understand the industry, the more contacts you’ll have for agents and publishers and teaching positions. Go to conferences, join several writing groups, stay in contact with people, make new friends on Twitter and Facebook and exchange stories with them.
7. Lacking a Mentor
Please find someone who can guide you. If you can’t find one, pay one.
It’ll save you the heartbreak of a thousand wrong directions and false hopes.
Mentors don’t only exist to give you feedback on your manuscript — I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about giving you career coaching. I’m talking about giving you strategies for submitting to agents, guiding you on your path to self-publication, suggesting great conferences for you to attend, telling you when you’re aiming in the wrong direction.
8. Being Impatient
Endurance is the greatest virtue of the writer.
Impatience is the greatest vice.
Everyone wants to hit the bestseller list faster, to have that book published soon, to have the world wake up and recognize their genius.
Patience will get you there.
9. Being the Hare rather than the Turtle
You know the worst writing plan in the world?
“I’ll try it for a year.”
Don’t even think about success with that plan. I guarantee you will fail. Becoming a writer doesn’t take a year. It takes a decade of writing every day. Have you not written every day? Then start your decade from when you start writing every day.
Writing is such a long, long path. Don’t burn out with crazy bursts of writing energy. Go for the long haul.
Slow and steady, working every single day. It’s amazing the amount of words you can pile up when you act like a turtle.
Have a five-year writing plan, and a ten-year writing plan. Make long goals far in the future, and make small daily goals to make sure you accomplish those big plans.
Don’t overcommit yourself to unrealistic goals and burn out.
10. Sticking with the Same Genre
Don’t write the same genre your whole writing life. You’re probably in a rut.
- If you write literary works, try YA.
- If you write YA, try a screenplay.
- If you write screenplays, try a stage play.
- If you write romance, try sci-fi.
It’s called cross-training. By switching genres, you’re strengthening writing muscles that will help you when you return to your favorite genre. The novelist will get much better at dialogue after writing screenplays or plays. The YA writer will get much better at sentences by forcing themselves to write literary works.
Often it’s only by switching to a different mode of writing that you will unleash your full writing potential. And maybe you’ve been writing the wrong genre all along, and you’ll discover a talent for a new style.
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61 Comments
Always love your posts….thanks
Oh, gosh. *blushes*. How kind of you to say.
Very different than the standard column and it is really good advice!
Thanks. There’s too much boilerplate advice out there and I wanted to say something different. Please share on Facebook!
I love your writing list, advice, and most of all the unconditional love in which it is given.
Thank you
Kathy
How gracious of you. Thank you.
Just what I needed. Thank you for these words of wisdom!
And mucho gracias for your many words of wisdom to me, sir!
Any advice on where to find mentors or what to look for in one?
Oh, that would be a whole other post. It should probably be someone writing in your same genre, or an editor for your genre, and you want someone who cares about your career and about what you’re writing and is willing to help you avoid the mistakes they made.
My God, you have given advice like an EXPERT. Thanks..it made me realize how lousy I am.
Don’t focus on how lousy you are! Take heart that everyone makes these mistakes (including me) and feel confident that you’re better equipped to navigate the writing life!
Thanks you are wonderful 🙂
I am hoping to write a good book now
Do it!
I use the Habitbull Tracking app on my phone to track my goals, for everything, but writing especially. Since I have started writing daily my productivity has increased exponentially! Even though I only require “one sentence a day” I usually do much more than that, but it also allows me to have some “off” days where I still work on my manuscript in some way. I would highly recommend the app because it relies on not breaking the chain which is super motivating!
Good reminder right when I needed it most
Love all of these! Thank you so much!
I just joined the website recently and I have learnt alot. Good advices and I love your posts
This is amazing. Thank you so much for the advice.
Love the advice it helps me out a lot thank you so much!!!!!!!!!(;
Thank you. The information was thought provoking and eye- opening. I loved the fifty questions . They were unique an I am sure a seasoned author would certainly love the questions which made them ponder about
about how to answer these questions. It would be a great learning experience.
Thank you for sharing timely advice! I really needed to read that today.
This is the first time I am humble enough to read an article like this. The first tip caught me. Thank you
I concur with all of the above. At first I had a few doubts but after reading the reasons why my eyes have been opened.
Thank you John for this insight.
Great observations to ponder on. I thank you for redirecting me back to the eye of the storm. Being a writer can be a lonely life, especially here in Africa, but being as humble as I can, helps me stay focused and your advice helps me return to ‘the purpose’.
Thanks, as always, for more advice. It does take a while to get down a strong writing ethic. It took me more than a year to perfect my first self-published book (still not perfect as far as I’m concerned) and it took a lot of patience, observing what others have done, and paying a lot of attention to details in my work and in work by other writers that I was reading. I enjoyed myself, but it was no walk in the park and in my humble opinion, I’m just getting started (still learning too). Often, it takes creating something and then sometimes scrapping everything you’ve come up with in a day’s time and it is definitely a lonely life no matter where you live.
I disagree with the fact that writers don’t make money. There are many examples to prove the contrary. However I will agree that it depends on what kind of writer you are. If you are reading this don’t get discouraged. If you wanna be a writer and make money you work hard and you make it happen. Don’t stop till your dreams come true and that exactly what I plan to do myself.
Over 38 years of writing and I still hope to make money at it. I have had to augment writing with other career opportunities just to keep writing. I often tell people, I work so I can write. One day I still hope to only write for work. Thanks for your encouragement.
Thank you. I only just came across this advice and I needed the eye-openers in here.
Loved the Hare & The Turtle-absolutely true…..
Wonderful advice Mr. Fox!! Thank you for sharing!
Do you have advice for new authors who are old (almost 70)? We probably don’t have decades left. Please don’t say write your memoirs. Hang me first.
Sam Savage published his first book when he was 66 — Firmin — and it went on to be a huge bestseller. Don’t write yourself off because of age and don’t let others write you off.
Thank you so much . I’m 14 and I’m just hoping people like you would be around to keep us youngsters on track . These advises are worth half our career.
Hi there BookFox, It took me over twenty years to finish my first novel, which is now published, along with a sequel. Thanks for all your advise, it makes me cringe to realize all the mistakes I made over the years. I also have two unpublished sequels to my series, but the cost of promoting one’s book when self-publishing is enormous. I am 73, living on my pensions. I try to write every day. Sometimes it is difficult so I push myself to write longer the next day. I am presently working on a manuscript that takes place during the Klondike Gold Rush. I live right in the middle of this history, so there is an awful lot of stories that I need to pay attention to.
Thanks again for your advice, I will reread it over and over again.
Love your story. Congrats on finishing the first novel, and good luck with publishing. Your dedication is admirable.
I enjoyed your blog
dear sir; I died and was allowed go catch a small glimps of heaven. god asked me a question, he said “ANY REGRETS” since I make stone tomahawks I said to him “yes I wanted to see how far I could have gone with them” at that point the death process reversed itself much faster than it had taken place. three weeks later god revealed to me the mathematical equation for the energy that is created by life itself and told me to write a book and to tell the whole world. I had never even read a book cover to cover in my whole life, but I wrote his book, I called it SOUL SURVIVOR. two publishers have accepted it for publication, but I have no money for such an endeavor. Do you have any advice that could be useful to me . thank you for your time E = ( In x O^2 ) ! The life energy equation.
Checking myself! This is very insightful.
Thank you for these useful insights. As a novice writer, I am these days like a sponge, absorbing as much information as possible; never a word wasted on me when supplied by those with the experience I’ve still yet to learn. Keep them coming.
Best regards from the UK.
This is fantastic advice! I really wasn’t expecting such great info, but your post was delightfully well written and actionable. Great work, really!
Number seven is very true. I found the right mentor and went up two levels in my writing within a year. I got an agent the year after we met because of the improvements he guided me to make.
Thanks for your wonderful advice, this will go a long way in helping me, as l want to set goals for myself.
Hi JoHn!
Question: Where would a writer find a mentor? The mentor would have to be much better than the writer, correct? Do we look up “writing mentors” in the yellow pages? Do we call up writers whom we admire, and say, “Will you be my mentor?” (I doubt that.) In any case, I’d love to know.
Thanks!
Hi Andrea,
This is tough. The best place would be to go to writing conferences and retreats and develop friendships with no alternative motives. And mentorships should be born out of those friendships.
Excellent advice and as I plod along in my impoverished condition, you made me laugh! But mirth is good! All the best from a sea turtle…
Thank you for such wonderful advice!
Thank you for writing the stuff that writers really need to hear. I agree with all of it!
Awesome advice! Thanks John!
This article opens up a lot in me, now that I consider myself a writer. I wish to be able to stick to the guidelines here. This should be like the ten commandments of writers!
Now this is exactly what people need (or just me and a few, I don’t know), a slap of reality that greatness needs training. Thank you for this wonderful article.
I embraced all ten points. Twenty years ago, I completed two creepy novels(fiction renditions of my nightmares). The trouble was getting anything read. I had written to a publisher and received an answer that he would be delighted to read the manuscript. I followed submission instructions and sent it off to New York with an SASE. I live in east central Florida. My manuscript came back to me in five days. No way could it have been read. Now, I’m 76 years old. I went through a series of extreme life changing experiences that I ‘m still recovering from and the only interest I’ve had was if I could self publish. Fat chance. I really don’t know what to do next.
Wow! This is amazing. Simple and precise. I relate to everything. Especially thinking I’m smart. I know I don’t know half the stuff I want to know and I still think I’m smart. My first book (historical fiction) was intended to revolutionize my readers thinking about race. I’ve heard it is a good read yet I don’t think it managed to enlighten folks or change opinions of anyone who didn’t already think openly about the abilities of Negroes during the reconstruction era. The thing about writing from your emotions is really the take-away for me. I will definitely explore that. I tend to come from my head. You know, I’m smart. Thanks loads. Keep sending me your stuff, I love it.
thanks much. got alot to ponder. i will be back to your site,needed a re-fresh & this is it !
Awesome, eye-opening advice!
I have been working on three books simultaneously. Whenever I feel brain freeze on one, I switch to another one. Then, when the ideas start flooding my brain again for the one I left, I return to it. This weekend I will be putting the finishing touches on one that I began writing a few years ago. I expect to finish another one within the next month or two. The third one still needs a bit of work. I only want to submit one at a time. I do not know how to go about finding a trustworthy agent, and publisher.
Help!!!
I found your site about a month ago, and honestly, I feel I’ve learned so much already. I thoroughly enjoy reading each new post and they never fail to get me thinking and changing my own writing practices. This particular post was an eerily timely reminder for me on a number of different points, and I’m taking your advice and taping up that list over my desk.
I’ve just downloaded your book, too, and I’m looking forward to reading it. Thank you for sharing your advice with us!
Thanks for all those kind words! I hope you enjoy the book.
Thank you so much for these tips!
I’m only thirteen, and I really enjoy writing, and I think this has helped me get a grip on not just basic steps, but really grasp the reality of good writing.
Thanks again!
These are realistic advises and I could relate several of them, specially the ‘the perfection is the stagnation’. It really is. Trying to perfect the book you are writing will not only deny its delivery on time and to the rightful reader but also rob you of the motivation to ever completing it.
“Don’t insist on writing only the perfect novel. A novel is great not in spite of its imperfections but because of them.”
I think this is the best advice! Especially for someone like me who is a little timid about writing my first book!