Write Honestly, but Avoid "ly" Adverbs - And More Paradoxes to Help Your Writing

Write all the time, even when you're not writing. If you're anything like me, you always get your greatest ideas in bed, just before you're about to drift off to sleep, and there's no pen, paper or keyboard in reach. What do you do? Well first of all, any writer worth his/her salt would have a pen, paper or keyboard within reach. But for the rest of us, there's a simple solution: Write it in your head. Scribble it on the inner walls of your skull, close to the area of the brain that controls memory. Get on the thought train and see where it takes you. It just might lead you to your writing space.

Sometimes you do your best writing when you're not writing. This paradoxiom. (I just made up a word!) both contradicts, and reinforces the above...but you expected that, right? The point is, even when you're doing nothing, you should be writing. Quite often, when you're not writing the writing is better than when you are writing, because as long as it's in your head, you avoid the agony of ever having to see its flaws. So write on! Be still, and let your character talk your ears off from the inside out.

When you write, you're not really writing. In those inspired moments when the words are pouring forth like Victoria Falls, I like to think that every sentence, paragraph and page is handed down from the gods, the muses, or some great hereafter (or herebefore) that is simply using me as a vessel. When it gets really good to me, I can barely keep up. So in a sense, I'm not really writing, I'm just dictating. When you're just the messenger, it kind of takes the pressure off a little bit.

If, after your second draft, you believe that your work was handed down by the gods, muses (or the great hereafter) in a state of utter perfection and you wouldn't change a single word if your life depended on it, then your story probably sucks. Put it away for a long, long time. Let the euphoria die down. In fact, let some serious self-doubt and self-hatred creep in. Pull it back out when you're in a slump. If you still love it, then it probably still sucks. But then again, you might be on to something.