The Best Advice Ever!

The best advice I've ever recieved is from an unknown author. I don't remember the exact quotation but it went something like this:

"Know when to end"

I like it.
It's simple.
It's straight forward.
It's all a writer needs to know.

No, I'm not joking.

Think about it. We all, I'm sure, have read books that seem to drone on. Is the end of this chapter ever going to happen? Heck, is the end of this BOOK ever going to happen?
Here's the thing. There may have been other reasons for why we asked ourselves those questions when we read those books, but really, it all comes down to one thing. The author didn't know when to end...
...with discription
...with gore
...with the book
...with the series
...with a character (kill him already!)
The list could go one forever. The thing is, as writers we're are creating our own world and sometimes we get lost in it. We see all the details sometimes and get lost in them when we should be thinking about the "real" story. The real story isn't in the flower you just wrote four paragraphs of description on (most likely) it's with your characters and the plot.

Sometimes I can be a little long-winded, you're shocked I can tell. Every time I consider adding just a bit more, know when to end comes to mind. Do I really need that? Is it going to add to the story? Can they get the idea without it? It reminds me that sometimes less is more, regardless of what my word count and the rest of the world says. In the end, it's a story and it ends where it ends. Figuring that part out can be a bit of a challenge, but we're writers right? No one said it would be easy.

So do you know when to end? and somewhat more importantly....who went to see Harry Potter 7 Part 1 last night?!

Best Advice

Surprise! Tuesday here! I was too tired to post on my normal day, so, here I am! So when I found out we would be blogging about the best writing advice we've ever gotten, I had to think a while. I've come across a ton of great writing advice and my first idea was to find a collection of writing quotes from different authors and then I thought, well why I don't I just use the advice that I read every time I go on to my other blog, The Blogger Girlz? It's advice that rings very true and something I work hard at trying to follow everyday. In fact, I think this advice is so important that, so I wouldn't forget it, I decided to include it at the top of The Blogger Girlz blog so that I'll always be reminded of it:

"Don't get it right, get it written." - Mandy Hubbard

See? It's simple, yet also very important, advice. My whole life, I've been guilty of being a total perfectionist, especially when it comes to my writing. I hate it when I know what I've written is total crap and so I spend tons of time editing and rewriting my prose-even if it's just one sentence-until it shines (or as shiny as I'm capable of making it, anyway). Unfortunately, while it makes for polished writing, it's not a very productive way to spend my time, especially when I'm trying to crank out a first draft. Take NaNoWriMo for instance, the idea of this event is quantity over quality and locking away your inner editor in order to crank out a 50,000 word novel in a month. Well, I can't so no to a challenge, especially one that involves writing, so for the last three years I've competed in NaNo-and lost every year. Because, like clock work, as soon as I'm ready to start writing and am ready to bring to life the stories that only exist in my head, my inner editor kicks into overdrive, ripping apart every single word that I write (sometimes even before I set pen to paper) until I'm so crippled with fear and doubt that I stop writing and move onto to something else that I'd rather/should be doing like sleeping/homework.

This year's NaNo has been no different: I've started and stopped on up to 6 different stories because of boredom/fear/doubt, you name it. Mostly though I think I'm just reluctant to keep going on any story because I know that the story I write down won't match the vision of the story that I have in my head, not without some work anyway. So that's why it's been so hard to lock away my inner editor and just write, perfection be damned. Locking away my inner editor and my perfection at the same time and allowing myself to write utter poo? Yikes, it's been like pulling teeth. I want so much for the vision that I have in my head to spill out exactly as I see it onto the page, that my writing (and my word count) has been stop and go for weeks.

But I know that at some point if I want to have a shot in Hell at ever getting from "aspiring" to "published" I've got to let my writing insecurities go and just write and not be so concerned about getting it right the first time around. (I think for that to work, at least entirely, I'll have to tattoo Mandy's quote onto my forehead. :P)

So, tell me: Do you have a problem with perfection/doubt/fear/boredom when writing? Any tips on how to get past it and just write? I'd love to know!

~Ella

The Only Way Out...

The best advice that I ever got from another writer was from John Green, quoting Robert Frost, and it was “the only way out is through.”

In the context he was using the quote in I think that he intended it to mean that the only way to get out of writing a book was to finish the book. Once you get started on a book it’s going to be there for the rest of time regardless of whether you finish it or not. If you don’t finish it then it’s always going to be there taunting you saying, “you couldn’t finish me. You aren’t the writer you claim to be. You failed and I won!” It you do finish it then you’re done. You send it out into the world for other people to deal with. It’s no longer your problem.

However, at the time I read his quote I was having a bad week, so I saw it more as life advise. When everything’s flying at you all at once and it looks like there’s no way out all you can do is put your head down and plow through it. Even though you feel horrible at the time it’ll end up like every other situation. You’ll get through it and you’ll move on to the next chapter in your life.

-Aaron