Why have I never heard of half of the people who give writing advice?

Advice (Photo credit: mpclemens)

I always used to imagine that writing (if you do it properly) is a free and easy creative rapture, where I sit and the words effortlessly flow from every pore like some sort of wordsmith disease. I have discovered Dear Reader that anything worth doing is difficult. Now, I’m not talking brain surgery here, I am talking about effort….

I’ve also discovered a direct correlation between how difficult it is and how likely I am to complete it. Is half of this about showing up and writing stuff down? Stuff that isn’t just about how hard it is to write stuff. I’ve tried that tactic recently and I have managed to complete 3/4 of my novel.  It’s still not finished and nowhere near a publishable or ship-able format but it is 3/4 done and I’m patting myself on the back for that.

It also resulted in a six month gap in my blog writing. I love blogging due to instant gratification, I press the little publish button and voilà someone is potentially going to skim read the first few lines.  However, I have noticed how much writing blogs  and a lot of the advice being extolled,  is from people who have no more right to give advice than I do…

Have they written a bestseller, maybe but not one that I’ve ever read….

So is that what happens when your novels don’t make it? Do you just write about writing instead…..

Your thoughts are welcome friends…

P.S If you fancy a very commercial laugh. Try #danceponydance

P.S.S Do not drink any kind of liquid whilst doing this.

P.S.S.S The Findus one is genius! For all my American friends – Google recent press in the UK regarding Findus after watching. It will make perfect sense.

Related articles

• The Big Question….Okay, How About a Bunch of Little Questions (thewritersadvice.com)
• Personal Impersonal (cfrankdavis.wordpress.com)
• When Writers Take Advice From Casual Bloggers (deniseurena.com)

GRAMMAR, SPELLING AND PUNCTUATION – RANT 1

I am starting to realise that embracing my inner Grammar Nazi may be no bad thing. This goes double for spelling and punctuation.

Blogging or writing of any kind is about ideas. These are the little bits of sparkly wonderfulness that “writers” hear in our heads and then transpose to a page so that “readers” can hear them too. From which “writers” get a great deal of satisfaction, harboring hopes that perchance we are not as nuts as we thought we were.

Here comes the buggery bit.

In the sweet delightful writing process (there’s so much sarcasm in the first part of this sentence, I am surprised it has not climbed out of the computer and shaken you rather firmly shouting “she is mad”), we have to make the stuff that lives between our ears making perfect sense to us into something which is intelligible for you.

And something gets lost, meandering off to talk to other people. It all starts beautifully written prose in my head and just ends up: bleugh, bleugh, bleigh, bleugh, bloo on the page.

Damn it, it’s all about structure (significant pause while I hate myself for not paying attention to those boring books about grammar I’ve seen with catchy titles on pandas). We writer types need it, along with punctuation, spelling and a well thought out plot (destination will do, if you can’t bear a proper outline thing) . It’s how what is UP there, gets to down here on the page.

And “I” am rubbish, really, really, really, ten squillion times really bad at all three. To prove it, I have just started a sentence with and.

So I will learn and then you’ll be able to understand why I want to tell you stories and more importantly, they’ll make bloody sense!