Book Divas

17 Rules for Aspiring Writers...

1. Read
2. Just in case you skipped #1, here it is again: read.
3. You cannot write well what you do not care about. So write what you love, what you care about, what excites you, whether that’s historical romance, urban fantasy, a quiet, realistic story about a family, or a zombie haiku.
4. No one knows what will sell. No one. So don’t worry about it. Please refer to #3.
5. Write every day.
6. The more you write, the better you will get.
7. Don’t worry about what sells, but DO pay attention to craft. Note the things that thrill you—beautiful language, unusual metaphor or simile, page-turning plot, fully fleshed-out characters.
8. From Shannon Hale. (I’m paraphrasing): “Wherever my mind goes first, I need to throw away. Because that’s where everybody else’s minds will go, too.” Work for the road less traveled.
9. My writing pal, Maureen Leary, once said of a novel: “I felt like it didn’t cost {the writer} anything to write it.” That’s always been my benchmark since then. I want to make sure I’m not skating across the surface. I want to make sure my vanity doesn’t keep me from probing those dark corners within.
10. All those weird, quirky things you think people probably don’t want to read about are the very things people want to read about. The specific ends up being universal most of the time.
11. I don’t have a rule for this slot, but it goes up to 11.
12. When you think you cannot do it, chocolate can help.
13. Once you’ve written a first draft, put it away and let it settle for a bit. Give it a month or so before you look at it again.
13. Pay attention to the way people talk, the lies they tell, the reasons they tell the lies. Notice when they tell them.
14. You don’t have to know where you’re going when you start. In fact, sometimes that’s better. You can start in the middle, the end, the beginning, the sort-of-beginning-but-possibly-middle-ish. Just start.
15. There’s no such thing as writer’s block. There’s only fear. Ask yourself what scares you about what you’re writing. Give yourself permission to screw it up, do it all wrong, or get it uncomfortably right. No one ever died from a misplaced modifier or clunky plot device. Unless that clunky plot device was really, really heavy and dangling overhead by a thin thread. Then you should probably move out of the way.
16. Your voice is unique and special. Find it. Share it with the world.
17. Feel free to break the rules.

If you missed it before, see more of Ginger Rue's expert advice in "Punched in the Face While Reading" Part One and Part Two.