Advice I Would Give Myself as a Beginning Writer

“Write only for yourself” versus “Write to please the crowd” is a false dilemma. Write for an audience of like-minded space chimps that share your weirdness.

The prime directive is this: get better. Shun that which doesn’t make you a better writer and lurch toward that which does, however clumsily.

Read everything. Novels, memoirs, essays, psychology, hard science, graffiti, humor books. Read the labels on soup cans.

Take walks. I hate how this advice sounds like something a preposterous old geezer would say while smoking a pipe, but, sorry, it’s true.

Don’t worship page views, marketing, vitality, “fame,” trends, and other BS. Don’t even worship other writers. Worship the craft.

When you have a good idea, write it down immediately. No exceptions. Likewise when you hear some interesting conversation. Your first job isn’t to summon angels like some fantasy liege who sits on a throne of inspiration. Your first job is to listen.

Try writing for 2 hours a day. If you don’t have 2 hours, try 3.

Writers who think they are above feedback will spend their lives in a special hell. This hell has many names but I call it ‘Twitter.’

When you write something new, think of it as testing an idea. When it doesn’t work, that’s fine. You learned something, and you’re closer to finding a different idea that does work… The key point is “learned something” — not “fetishized failure.”

Should you call yourself a ‘writer’? Should you? Should you? Oh my god, who cares. Just write ya freakin’ dingus and stop bothering me with this question.

Try this: Track your daily writing output. Record in your journal how much time you wrote that day. If it’s consistently more than 3 hours per day, holy crap, I’m impressed. If it’s more than 5, what kind of drugs are you taking, and can I have some?

After a month, look at your output track record. Then ask: “Which daily choices made more or less writing happen? Did my decision to start the day with an 80-minute YouTube video of a husky Norwegian man building a log cabin hurt or help?”

How should you market yourself as a writer? By getting better and writing good things. The better you get, the more people will share your work. Every other answer is someone selling their marketing class.

Okay, fine. When it comes to marketing, do this: Start an email list. Tell your mom.

Okay, ugh. Last marketing tip: When writing an article, give it a great headline that tells the reader why the article is interesting or worthwhile. Then add a catchy picture from Unsplash — like maybe some random woman in a hat looking at a bunch of hot air balloons.

Find one writer who’s better than you, one writer who’s at your level, and one writer who’s less experienced. Get mentoring and coaching from the first, trade notes with the second, and use the third as a cautionary reminder of all the boneheaded mistakes you are transcending.

Making money as a writer is good. You can use the money to buy cheap coffee, or expensive coffee, or to buy a mansion with a big statue of Virginia Woolf — depending on how successful you are.

Take a writing class with a peer feedback component. Give great feedback. When the class ends, email the 3 or 4 students from the class who gave the best feedback and ask them to join your new writing group. If anyone else asks to join the group, say, “Ahhh… what group?”

When you have a new writing idea, you may hear a little voice that says, “No. You are not that kind of writer. Stick to what you know.” This little voice is called Gremlin Man. Some people call him Terrible Tony, or Billy The Hateful Piss-ant. But I call him Gremlin Man and boy does he suck. What do you call him? Are you prepared to ignore him?

When you are stuck on some piece of writing, put it aside for a day or a month and come back to it later. If you are repeatedly sick of looking at it, throw it in a “graveyard” folder and forget it. Time is finite, and it’s amazing how much time you can waste stubbornly stuck on something that brings you nothing. You’re a creative, not a WWII German dictator invading Russia in the winter.

Here’s the thing: Writing is hard. When I said that, did you believe it? Ha.

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