A note to newbie writers….

Don’t listen to us.  I know, it’s tempting. Such and such a person has an agent, has several novels published, has a blog, talks about writing- OMG!  There, they talk about writing and give advice!  There is the mana from the heavens, the key to publication the….

Yeah, don’t listen to us.  Writers love giving advice.  We love talking about the craft.  But if you start listening to all of it, writing it all down, trying to figure it all out- well, damnit, you’re going to start getting conflicting information.  And hell, you’ll probably get some bogus information that could damage your career and your personal narrative voice.

You are at a wonderful time in your writing career.  Get over your desperate need for attention and to be published and just write goddamnit. You can do that right now, and not have to worry about marketability or whatever.   Because you know what?  Your fiction isn’t marketable.  It’s not good. It sucks.

Hey now, don’t look offended!  It’s true.  And you know all those people who tell you to follow some loose rules of writing? (Don’t head jump!  Don’t have a man with a silly hat!  Don’t start off with a conversation!  Don’t end with a character eating fried chips!)  Ignore it.  Really, I mean it.  They tell you that you need to learn the rules of writing before you break them- but that’s bullshit.  You’re writing is going to suck, even if you follow all of these rules down to the letter. Your characters will be flaccid, your plot pedestrian, your cliche’s cliche,  your grammar substandard and all that stuff.  You can follow all these writing rules to the letter and you will still suck.

Trust me, it takes time to get decent. Some people, well, it takes 15-20 some odd years. It happens.  And when you get decent you’ll still have stuff that is raw, broken, spinning out of control. Ce’st la vie.  So instead of driving yourself nuts and following every single rule they give you, I present you another, more important task.

Find every writing rule you can. Find every little Don’t do this you can get your greedy little hands on, and then write exactly the opposite. Piss off your critique group by doing exactly the opposite of all the advice they give you.  But don’t be lazy about it.  Try and take these rules and break them to your advantage.  That’s how you learn how writing works, how language works. Experiment.  Break the mold.  Try something new.  Go outside of your danger zone.

If it doesn’t work- so what?  Your writing sucks anyway.  You might as well do something interesting and unique with it.