Wisdomous Wednesday: Try Everything
Jun 01, 2011 
One of my new goals moving forward is to become a more consistent blogger–I tend to let the blog grow cobwebs far too often! So as step one, I’m starting a weekly feature called (oh-so-creatively) “Wisdomous Wednesdays,” wherein I will share tidbits I’ve gleaned over the years about writing. It’s a bit cheeky, as they’d say in my other homeland of Australia, given that I barely know what I’m doing myself on any given day, but hey. If we can’t pretend to be wisdomous now and then, then why are we writers? I can only share what works for me, but if even one other writer out there finds something in here that’s useful, then I say huzzah!
There are about as many different approaches to writing as there are fish in the sea. But I’ve learned that the best way to grow as a writer is to learn from others in the same boat, and cast a wide, open-minded net for their ideas–which brings me to my first ever wisdomous tip:
Be willing to try anything.
For years I heard the advice from writers that if you want to be a professional, write every day. I always scoffed at this. I write when the inspiration strikes me, I always thought. When I’m in the mood. When the Muse visits. It wasn’t until last year that I grew desperate enough to try out that advice, and set myself a daily goal. The result was astounding–not only did I finish my first real novel, but it completely changed my approach to writing.
Jeanne Cavelos, the director and principle lecturer at the life-changing Odyssey Writing Workshop, said once in a lecture that when it comes to writing we ought to try everything once, whether we think it’s good advice or not. The worst that will happen is you’ll write something atrocious and toss it out and never look at it again. What have you lost? A few minutes or hours of your time? But what you stand to gain is so much more valuable: new tools for your arsenal, that you otherwise would never have even recognized as useful. And you’ll struggle to improve and update your craft if you’re not improving and updating your tools.
It’s always the things you never think will be helpful that end up surprising you the most. So go ahead and throw the whole kitchen sink in there. If all you get is one new way of doing things, that’s one new way you didn’t have before.
Anyone else find tips from other writers that worked better than you expected?
Some great weekly tip series: Literary Rambles’ Tip Tuesday Amie Kaufman’s Writing Three Ways
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Best piece of advice that I wasn’t sure about, tried anyway and found to be incredibly helpful: if it’s not working, change your tense or point of view. Even if you’re not intending on keeping your story in that tense, or you can’t think why you’d switch from third to first, just try anyway. It’ll give you a fresh view of what you’re doing, and things might just click into place.
Now, let me think, what clever person taught me that?
Well, see, THAT was an example of me knowing you were secretly even more awesome than you were letting on. So there.
I am so rarely the one of us that is right, I must enjoy it when I am!
The writing tip that I was most surprised to find working for me is “write first thing in the morning.” I always thought, “I’m not a morning person! It takes my brain a couple hours to get started in the morning.” But in my desperation to carve out a regular writing time, I started waking up half an hour earlier, and lo and behold…
I was surprised at how much of a difference it makes to start writing before the stress of the day has taken its toll. I was also surprised that I started delaying bedtime less often, because I knew I’d have that magical half-hour to spend with nothing but my brain and my computer (and breakfast).
Ooh, yeah. I know what you mean. I often find that my mind is clearest first thing in the morning (if I’ve been getting the right amount of sleep, that is). My brain hasn’t had time to accumulate all the clutter and debris of the day’s events, leaving it far more open to creativity.
Also, it’s just easier to get myself working when I’m still half-asleep, and unable to think of things I’d rather do. XD
“If the idea’s not ready, leave it at the backburner.”
All those unfinished short stories and novels crammed at the back of my closet taught me that. I was an impatient writer. I started to follow the advice around a couple of years ago, and it worked for me. Some ideas/concepts just need some time to flesh out.
Oooh, that’s a REALLY good one. I used to be pretty impatient, too. But sometimes you just can’t force those ideas to germinate, you know?
So true!
So, so true, this one. I’ve got to the point now where I’m actually quite enjoying letting things bubble and stew and occasionally swirl up to the surface, then down again. The anticipation’s lovely!
At the beginning I underestimated how important just reading is – inside and outside of my genre of writing. I always put writing first. But now i know how important it is to see what’s out there, support authors, and learn from published works!
Yeeees, definitely! I found it really shocking what a difference it made. When I stopped reading (during a total low point, I should say!) I stopped writing. When I started reading again, like magic, the writing started again too!
This is definitely really good advice to keep in mind.
Hi Meagan,
Thanks for a lovely post and great advice.
And thanks for visiting my blog and checking out Maisey Yates interview!
No prob! Glad you enjoyed the post. 🙂
Loving the new feature. And the name, of course. Pretty dang cool.
Great advice, too. I try to write everyday. Not always easy, but it’s almost always beneficial.
Haha, thanks! I figured I can’t get away with taking myself too seriously, so I’d better not try for a serious name if I was going to do an advice feature. 😛
Life’s been a little hectic and I’ve been somewhat lax on the writing everyday thing. To get myself back in the saddle, I’ve taken to writing exercises that I can squeeze into my day in 10 minute intervals. Writing prompts, character interviews and the like are easy to do in small chunks when I can’t get back to my WIP.
Writing exercises are one of those things I keep meaning to try out. I got turned off of them in college because I had a pretty blechy experience with writing classes then, but I think in better circumstances they might be really helpful. Good tip!
Hi Meagan. Just finished polishing your post ready for Friday Aussie time. Thanks again for giving me permission to post. I love this post. Some great tips. I’ve just been revisiting an old writing book, Dear Writer, by Carmel Bird (an Aussie bird). Not only does she say write first thing in the morning she says to do it when you’re practically still unconscious and you’ll be amazed at what your subconscious kicks out. Not tried it yet as the jangly alarm wakes me at 6am. But I do bounce out of bed and get straight onto the computer in the quiet of the day.
Thanks for visiting my ‘debut’ post.
Denise<3
I remember you mentioning that “debut” post in your email, so I definitely had to come weigh in!
Looking forward to seeing the repost! 😛 I’m going to have to look up that book. I love hearing about other writers’ tips and techniques.
Hi Meagan! Nice to meet you. Great advice here. Amie’s blog too… spent time there yesterday sifting thru old info. I love the look of your site btw. I have to chime in with your other commenters…. I treat it like a job. I write early in the morning everyday when nothing else clutters my brain… no cell phone or internet, just me and an open word doc.
Another tip I learned: Don’t save anything for the next book! Use it now. 🙂
Nice to meet you too! And thanks for the site compliments. I was lucky enough to have as a friend a really great designer who did it for me.
I have to agree that for me, the only thing that works is to treat it like a job. Doesn’t mean I can’t still love it, but it does mean it isn’t always going to be fun. There are hard parts too! But that’s what separates people who write as a hobby and people who write for a living, I think.
And that is an awesome tip. Definitely something I need to be reminded of!
Hmmm, interestingly, I allowed myself to slow down my writing pace. Sure, it takes A LOT longer to revise or draft a MS, HOWEVER, the quality is much better. I feel comfortable and confident enough to do that now. I also find plotting and outlining to be helpful…like REALLY helpful, LOL!
Nice post!
That’s so interesting, because I ended up having to learn to speed UP my writing. I used to dwell on every sentence and get bogged down, and get tired of a manuscript (or even come to hate it!) before I could finish it. I’d just lose heart.
Bizarrely, outlining was one of the things I tried once that just didn’t end up working out for me! But that’s the thing, because it works for other writers, so there was nothing to say it couldn’t have been really valuable to me.
Isn’t it funny how different writers can be? Yet another example of why I LOVE hearing from other writers about how they do things. You can’t fail to learn from them. 🙂
I read an interview with a published author a few weeks ago. She said when she was struggling, she’d pull out cookbooks and make a list of all the interesting verbs. I loved that. Sometimes it’s the simple that makes the biggest impact.
That’s so random–I totally love it! Whenever people can draw inspiration from the simplest and strangest places, it always fascinates me. I might have to try that!
This is great advice. And no, I don’t do it. But I should!
That’s the cool thing, is that it doesn’t take all that much to try stuff. A few minutes or hours. You so rarely get stuff in life that has no drawbacks!
I think I’ve stolen a bazillion tips from other writers! I read about something they have done that works for them, and I’m curious, so I give it a shot. It doesn’t always work, but it’s fun 🙂
It’s definitely cool to take a visit into the way other writers do things. It’s an endless source of fascination for me, that’s for sure.
outlining was a tip I expected not to like but I gave it a go and now I wouldn’t write a book without outlining first.
Isn’t it funny how we both ended up finding an unexpected tip so useful that it changed how we do things? I definitely think it’s the unexpected things that make the biggest differences.
Best piece of writing advice? Read the books, listen to people, but do what feels right for you.
So true! You can read all the books on craft, get all the advice from writers and agents and editors, but in the end only you can tell the story you want to tell, the way you want to tell it. 🙂
Great advice!
(I should add – that was the best piece of advice for me!) 🙂
I’m starting a new opera blog and trying a new trick to make sure I post regularly: at the beginning of the month I’m going to give Kim $25 for every Monday in the month. There will also be 2 jars: one labelled “travel” and one labeled with the name of a certain organization that I hate. If there is no new post on Monday, $25 goes in the bad jar. If there is a post, the money goes in the travel jar. We’ll see how it goes.
That is pretty much awesome. There’s nothing quite like negative consequences to make you do stuff. XD Which is the hardest thing about blogging/being self-motivated, there aren’t immediate negative consequences and stuff.
Great advice… I’ll definitely do that, like you said: what can it hurt?
The best advice I have received, and put into practice is: Finish, finish finish… don’t stop your first draft for anything, push forward and then go back and revise—polish—revise until it shines.
Ooh, that’s a good one! That’s definitely one I didn’t follow until recently. I have SO many half-finished manuscripts it’s not even funny!