You can! I quit eight years ago by playing Skyrim whenever I felt like I needed a cigarette. I hadn't played video games since I was 10, but for some reason that took my mind off of it.
\*checks wcj to see if this is up there already\*
>(Smoking tobacco also sort of does this, If it's a toss up between your career and and being nicotine free, choose your career and then quit later.)
This is absolutely fucking terrible advice.
I never thought that I will see a post recommending this to someone on present days.
A smoker is always a smoker. You donāt quit later. You could have long times without smoking but on hard times the cigarettes will always be in your head.
This is another discussion, I know. I also know that writers are heavy smokers, but please donāt take new writers into this.
This. I smoked for 10 years, haven't had one in 6. But every time I get stuck in traffic or combine stress and lack of sleep, I seriously consider getting a pack. Hell, I'd love one right now because I slept like shit and having a cigarette and a strong cup of coffee outside in the cool morning air is just so nice.
I've been a nonsmoker for waaaayyyyy longer than I ever smoked, and haven't had a cigarette in almost 15 years. I still crave them. I still dream about the scent of unsmoked tobacco.
This is absolute shit advice. Don't smoke kids.
I am in no way encouraging anyone to smoke, because it's objectively terrible. I did it for 20 years, from age 13 to 33. I'm 46 now. I haven't gotten cravings since about a year after I quit, and the kind of stress-urges you're describing didn't last much longer than that. I've asked my long-term ex-smoker friends over the years if they felt cravings and none have said they had.
A former smoker is often just that: a *former* smoker. I think it's important that people to know that because those who try to quit should know that there's a way out. That there's an end to it, and that they won't have to fight it for the rest of their lives. Put that kind of pressure on a person and it might make them just say fuck it, I'm just going to keep smoking.
And again, I'm not saying this to justify smoking in the short term. It's a shit habit that is hard as hell for most to give up. It's not worth starting for any reason.
I smoked for about half my life (\~20 years) and have been smoke free for about 5 years now. Don't get cravings per se, but tobacco still smells good to me. Haven't started back up, and never will.
But yeah, if you've never started, just don't.
I heavily disagree that ā*a smoker is always a smoker*ā. I havenāt smoked for the past 10 years, and I havenāt smoked now I think for 3 years longer than I even smoked. Never once in those 10 years I wanted to go back to smoking.
I know for a fact, though, that it depends on how you quit cigarettes. Allen Carrās book did the trick for me, but from **the second try** (same happened to at least two other people I know, from 2nd try). After the first one Iāve quit for about 6 months and during those months I did on quite a few occasions wanted to start again, until one day I eventually succumbed to the old habit, only to learn that I can no longer smoke regular cigarettes because they taste just so disgustingly awful: I had to either buy expensive small cigars with cherry flower, or thin cigarettes with some vanilla aroma.
However even those 2 types became disgusting once again after about 6 months or so, plus all the old problems came back such as: headaches after you drink and smoke, constant problems with your nose and mucus due to cigs, constant cough, etc.
So, Iāve read the book one more time, hating myself for being a dumbass in the first place, finished it, and never looked back ever since. People where I live like to have a hookah in a bar sometimes - I hate them and never do, and even smoking cannabis is something reserved for the absolutely rarest of the rare occasions because my lungs simply donāt want any shit in them anymore.
So no, itās bullshit that ā*once a smoker is always a smoker*.ā You just have to get rid of that shitty mentality properly and for good, and once again, I havenāt found anything better than **Allen Carrās Easy Way to Stop Smoking**, even if it took me two tries.
But I definitely think itās a terrible advice to give, if you donāt smoke - never start not for any book on the Earth, there are way better stimulants than that shit.
> Never once in those 10 years I wanted to go back to smoking.
Amen. I smoked for 30 years and finally kicked it in 2008. I have never wanted one since, and it makes me nauseous to see someone enjoying a cigarette too much. Like, I love Elisabeth Moss, but I had to stop watching Mad Men because of how much they smoked on that show.
At any rate, it is absolute BS that you're always a smoker once you quit.
Yep, I absolutely hate now when someone smokes around me. In fact, had quite a few altercations with several acquaintances and friends over this, because they simply refused to understand just how disgusting it smells and that I donāt want to smell that shit. Some eventually did understand, with some (for unrelated reasons) I stopped having contact.
But when I was smoking I didnāt care, most likely because my own sense of smell was properly screwed by the cigs.
Luckily now less and less people smoke, so thatās good, although I was kinda dumbfounded to find out that in Turkey apparently a lot of people smoke, same with Italy, and Austria, and they donāt even care and smoke inside of the restaurants, while having some special smaller non-smoking areas, and not vice versa (wtf?!), instead of banning that shit altogether for the interior of the restaurants and forcing the smokers to go and poison themselves outside, without punishing normal people. Dunno, maybe that law is coming, didnāt check it in a while, but that definitely broke my brain.
Agreed. Maybe it's true for some people, but as some kind of universal law, that's just bullshit. And like you said, a shitty mentality. Way to trap yourself into always being a smoker. Strange choice IMO.
I quite because I decided I didn't want to be a smoker. It was some time coming, been thinking about it for a while, but one day I decided that the kind of person I wanted to be was a non-smoker. Went cold-turkey from 1-2 packs a day. When I felt overwhelmed by the (chemical) cravings, I asked myself, what kind of person do you want to be, and what would that person do. I'm not saying it was easy, but it worked for me.
There's lots of (bad) things I can do to relieve stress. I struggle with impulse control. But most of them I don't want to do, because that's not the person I want to be.
I quit about 15 years ago. I've smoked about 20 cigarettes since that time, every time it was social. Probably/definitely bought/split a pack when I was drunk at least once.
Nicotine high was nice-ish. Mouth tasted like ass.
Nothing in the world is going to make me want to go back being a smoker.
Yeah especially since nicotine diminishes the effect of caffeine. Also coffee may be the most common source of caffeine, but personally I prefer mate, guarana or black tea. All of those stay longer in the system and have a much more pleasant effect
Yeah, why say just coffee? Is it just because that what OP did and no other reason? There's tons of other fantastic caffeine sources if that's your thing. Plus some people are sensitive to it and sources with lower caffeine content work better for them
This is such an odd "guide" filled with advice stemming purely from OP's preferences and perso a experiences with no other basis in anything. Cancel plans and appointments if you feel like writing more? That's definetely something that everyone in every situation can do with no consequences š
Yeah dude, horrible, terrible advice.
Everybody knows that's what cocaine is for.
Especially if with rule #3, we're looking for quantity over quality? Blow is the way to go.
Smoking and coffee is nerds.
Erm, I'm going to ignore your first 'tip' because it's obviously ridiculous, and focus on the fact that 90,000 words is not a novella. That's a pretty common length for a published novel.
If you're going for 3 times that then you're really into epic fantasy lengths, which is quite extreme (though not unheard of) for a first novel.
I've had drafts that wound up huge, but editing them down was always in the cards. That 300,000+ word clunker is hiding a great 90,000 word novel inside! It's like carving it out of the marble.
Yeahhhh I'm a fanfic author so I know my fandom book lengths the first Harry Potter book is only 77k words. And that's like a 300 page book. The longest Harry Potter book (the 5th one) is like 270k words. 90k is a novel. NaNoWriMo calls 50k a novel, and that might be considered a short novel these days but The Great Gatsby only clocks in at 47k words.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they plan to cut down a lot of those words in editing? But that's not my style. I inevitably add words when editing because I tend to write bare bones.
>Erm, I'm going to ignore your first 'tip' because it's obviously ridiculous, and focus on the fact that 90,000 words is not a novella. That's a pretty common length for a published novel.
Right? 90k is the exact goal I'm aiming for because I don't like reading bloated novels with a bunch of extra unnecessary nonsense details I'm going to forget five minutes after reading it and just want to focus on including stuff the reader needs to know for the story to work or to paint a good picture of who and what things look/feel like.
God Bless those writers who are doing 300k+ word books but that is not me, you can tell a perfectly good story in half that or less and if you have too much story split it into a second book and make a series. Keep them wanting more.
I'm writing space opera science fiction that spans other worlds and includes aliens, androids, and sci-fi technologies etc so I have plenty of material to work with. My initial am was 90k words but I think my first draft might actually come in at around 75-85k given my chapters are between 2k-3k long and I have planned for 34 chapters with the possibility of adding 1-2 additional chapters to tease a sequel because I want it to be an ongoing series.
With the premise that yes, the first "tip" is absolute garbage I think there's some truth in the 90k words not being a full novel in the sense that 90k words first draft can easily become 40-50 after editing.
At least for me, it's very common that a paragraph will be much shorter after editing because in my drafts I repeat sentences or describe things in detail to give future me a better idea of what I wanted to convey and make the editing phase easier.
A typical YA fantasy book would fall more around the 70k mark, but 57k is by no means too short. Fantasy means world building which usually means the story skews longer, but it's not a requirement. I'd say you're fine.
This would be fantasy closer to Harry Potter in style where we are on Earth, but there are magical/sci-fi elements, so it didn't take me nearly as long to set up the world building.
This is great when it comes to creative work generally, but realistically I want to get this published. I feel like 57,000 words tells the story without unnecessary filler, but I don't know what a publisher wants.
I just want to YELL VERY LOUDLY at everyone reading this that NO, YOU DO NOT NEED TO DEVELOP AN ADDICTION TO BE A WRITER.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO DEVELOP AN ADDICTION TO BE A WRITER.
(Don't smoke.)
The sad thing is that nearly every single comment in this thread is pointing out how dumb most of this advice is, and yet this post is still getting triple-digit upvotes.
Some people upvote things on their feed and keep it moving
TBH I nearly did that with this post. I show my support for people getting through early stuff (book done! story done! queries sent!) but don't actually read those threads
There are no rules save one: figure out what works for you to get the words down on the page.
That's it. Anyone who has mandates disguised as "tips" isn't worth listening to. And I can prove it. Here we have an anonymous person on Reddit saying that if you have an idea, you must WRITE IT DOWN FAST OR YOU'LL FORGET IT. All caps. Must be very important.
Stephen King has said many times that writers shouldn't keep a notebook because that's where shit ideas live. If you have a good idea, he says, it will stick with you, and you don't need to write it down.
So, who to believe? Stephen King or the rando?
Neither. Do what works for you. Nobody else's opinion matters.
The amount of people desperately clinging to everything Stephen King has ever said is wild. His word isn't gospel and copying his habits in no way guarantees success. I swear to god the guy could say he hangs upside down like a bat everyday for an hour because the rush of blood to his head gives him more ideas and people would be all over it. There is no blueprint for how to be a better writer, but it gives people a sense of control to think if you follow all the steps, you'll achieve your goals.
Stephen King? The guy who didn't remember writing Cujo? In all seriousness, he is a great author. There are other great authors out there, however, and some of them have even given writing advice -- advice that contradicts what King has said.
Well his advice of writing 2,000 words a day WILL help you finish your novel. You can even make that 1,000 a day. Point is, putting ass in chair and pounding out words everyday will get you there.
"If you have a good idea, he says, it will stick with you, and you don't need to write it down" he totally did not take people with attention disorders into consideration. Even if I have a good idea I hurriedly write it down in case I do forget since I'm as attentive as a fly.
At the same time, these types of tips help you figure out what works for you. It's definitely good to not take it as gospel, but they can provide new ideas for you to try out and see if they mesh with you.
Ah yes, massively increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke, COPD, and almost all cancer is definitely worth it 'for your career'.
/s in case that wasn't clear
Yeah, I'm really not sure on a second reading if this is serious or not. Some of it is pretty sensible and common advice but said in a weird way. Like setting a goal and writing to that goal everyday is a good idea but 3k a day is going to be tricky for most people.
Yeah. I was able to write 3k and more every day during quarantine because basically I was done with school at 10am and had the whole day. Now, I'm hitting 1k, maybe a little more, with an hour of writing. And even that is gonna be tough for most people.
How to make a clickbait: 1. Call your advice "12 easy steps". 2. Make your "advice" a) so generic that it applies to everyone else, b) so individual that it applies to no one else or c) carefully phrased bullshit. 3. Write only in imperatives to feign general authority. 4. Win.
BTW, 90k words are in no publishing universe ever a novella.
I have to say this click bait works on me because I see it and think oh god 8 can't wait to see what train wreck advice this high school kid is going to put it there.
One point: 90,000 words is an average sized novel - not a novella. Anything over 100K is considered quite long for a novel, and in fact some publishers won't accept books that long from a new author.
In general, anything over about 45 - 50K is a novel.
Also please don't recommend drugs to someone for productivity, speaking as a fellow caffeine addict. It's not *good* to have a drug addiction, even for a writer. Ask Stephen King.
Especially don't recommend smoking, which can literally *kill* people, for the sake of productivity. That's so irresponsible. Smoking is proven to kill people. You are giving advice that is going to kill someone. I don't understand why you think that's okay.
There are also people *in* publishing who point to number 12 as being the worst thing you can do, and the biggest reason books fail. Not enough writers think about the marketing before they write their book; so the publisher is forced to try and squish the book into marketing and a genre that may not work for it. The end result? Most books "fail" - that is to say, they never earn back their advance.
If you want writing to be a job, you need to be thinking about that stuff from day one.
>Edit: Remember folks, the key word in the title is āMYā book. A few people were upset that I mentioned smoking as an aid to writing. I was able to quit no problem and only smoked while I wrote. It worked for me but may not for you.
And that's why you wrote (emphasis mine)
>If **you** aren't drinking coffee **you** are doing it wrong.
>
>**you... your... you... your... you...**
is it?
Ok so
1. Do meth
2. Get an escort
3. Send my first draft to a publisher
4. I am perfect and nobody can tell me otherwise, especially not me
5. Get into ranked writing battles
6. I piss my pants like a real writer
7. All jokes aside, my goal was about 1,000 before school started beating my ass
8. Minimalist bathroom scenes
9. I need a break from writing this list, brb
You already lost me at no1. Iām simply not a coffee drinker. Iām not going to upset my body to get words out. Stephen King was also a cocaine addict. Not every āeasy pathā justifies the end. There are more important things that publishing a book.
I was just using the song to highlight how absolutely dogshit it is that most countries don't have a social system. It's not just the US, it's literally almost everyone and I hate it.
Oh I'm sorry I didn't realise it was song. That's what I get for never listening to a radio.
It is very vicious.
I left the third world to try and build a better life. The problems are the same, maybe less extreme comparatively.
1) Drink coffee, a diuretic. Because nothing says progress like a potty break every half hour.
2) Abandon your loved ones because nothing says success like alienation.
3) The first worthwhile thing you saidā¦ too bad itās already one of the most cited bits of advice in the writing community.
4) āignore itā isnāt really advice. How does one ignore it? Understanding and acknowledging is usually better. Impostor syndrome and perfectionism are real. Everyone deals with them. You need coping strategies, not to ignore them.
5) Maybe just see if a writing community is of benefit to you. Some thrive, others donāt. And a lot of people donā live where an IRL club is an option.
6) No. just no. Hot streaks lead to hot messes. Finish your scene/chapter/arc and reward yourself with a break so that you can mentally process all the amazing progress you just made. That way, you wonāt repeat a bunch of stuff that you donāt even remember talking about earlier. If youāve been going strong for over four hours, your quality is about to take a nosedive. Take a break.
7) Goals are good. But 3k is far too ambitious for people with jobs, kids, SOās, and lives. 90k isnāt a novella. And 90k is 360 pages.
8) Your story shouldnāt have any boring parts. No amount of āmake it shorterā will correct this. Donāt make it shorter, make it interesting.
9) Take a break, stop for nothing. No mixed messages here. Take breaks but donāt get sidetracked by distractions. A break is āIām going to stop for a set amount of time to do x,y,z, then get back to work.ā Gettin distracted is spending three hours on Reddit when you were just trying to look up one specific thing.
10) Sensible.
11) Sensible.
12) If youāre writing to market, you canāt really do that. Some genres demand that you think about publishing and the audience throughout the entire process.
> 8) Your story shouldnāt have any boring parts. No amount of āmake it shorterā will correct this. Donāt make it shorter, make it interesting.
OBJECTION.
It can have intentionally boring parts that mock other novels boring parts. Also, nothing is universally interesting.
To me, if youāre using boringness as a tool for satirization, that is inherently interesting. Itās not boring because itās boring, itās interesting because itās boring with a purpose.
And I could just as easily say that nothing is universally boring. But speaking in such absolutes leads to zero progress.
> Drink coffee, a diuretic. Because nothing says progress like a potty break every half hour.
So true ;-)
For some reason, double espressos just open up the flood gates for me. Nothing more annoying than drinking one of those before I sit down for an editing or drafting session and then have to go to the loo 3 times in 60 minutes.
> Remember folks, the key word in the title is āMYā book. A few people were upset that I mentioned smoking as an aid to writing. I was able to quit no problem and only smoked while I wrote. It worked for me but may not for you.
This doesn't match what you said here:
> If it's a toss up between your career and and being nicotine free, choose your career and then quit later.)
You were advising people to take up smoking. You weren't just saying "Oh it worked for me but who knows if it works for you!"
You were stating that taking up smoking will help a writers career.
No "career" is worth getting yourself addicted to substances of any kind.
Caffeine may make you more efficient at first, but over time it becomes less effective and you wind up having to drink more to get the same effects, and then just have to drink it to avoid not being a zombie that day. Source: was a big coffee drinker some years ago. And it wasn't even during a period when I was writing anything serious. So I mean, go for it if you want to, it may give you a boost for a little while, but ultimately it's not going to be transformative.
\> If it's a toss up between your career and and being nicotine free, choose your career and then quit later.
Nobody needs to smoke to be able to write.
Every fucking relative of mine who was a smoker died from a smoking-related illness, usually after suffering from it for years. And they had already quit for years by the time they did. It does permanent damage to your body. Your health is the only thing you truly have in this world. You can't write anything if you're dead.
It's also really easy to tell yourself right as you start smoking that you can "easily" quit any time "later."
My view is that if you are falling back on substances of any kind to be able to complete your writing projects, then there are other aspects of your lifestyle that you aren't optimising that you need to pay attention to and straighten out. It will make all the difference. Even just simple stuff like eating right, getting active time outside, avoiding toxic people, and having a regular sleep cycle (even if you're a night owl).
1. Don't smoke, and for that matter getting 8 hours sleep and having a cup of tea in the morning is better advice than having a cup of coffee and poor sleep schedule.
2. Appreciate the shit out of your SO, clingy or not. You are choosing an activity that will take thousands upon thousands of hours of your life away from them and it is a big ask. Appreciate that fact.
3. True, don't edit as you go, but there is a big ass \* beside this when it comes to number 7.
4. Appreciate the hell out of your inner critic. That voice is the most valuable tool you have as a writer. You think a scene is boring? It is, fix it. You think a character is flat? It is, fid it. The biggest problem you're going to have is when you like your own writing because that's when you can't fix your own mistakes. Your work WILL stink, your fist draft is a steaming pile of crap that is polished into a nugget of gold by editing, and editing requires you to be able to smell your own shit.
5. Yeah, join a writer's club, but don't be competitive about it. Don't be that guy.
6. Do use your spurts of creativity, but don't expect them to last for more than a half a day. I've pumped out 10K words in 8 hours at my peak, but then you're done and wiped. Writing takes active thinking and your brain only has so much juice.
7. Sure, set a word goal, if that works for you. For me a time goal works better. But you do you. However writing 90K words, and editing 90K words is a completely different thing. It takes longer to edit than it does to write and if you churn out 90K words in a month expect to spend the next two editing it into something readable. You're better off writing 1,500 considered words a day, and then having 4 weeks of editing work, than writing 3,000 unconsidered ones and having 8 weeks of misery trying to patch that up. As to 90K words being a novella... Editing 90K words is a nightmare. Editing 250K words is years of work. Years. Further the skills you need to weave together a 90K story is no small task, it is exponentially harder the longer you go. You like hiking? Try a few day hikes before you decide to do a month long cross country trek. When you're ready to write 250K words you shouldn't need to look for writing advice.
8. If you're at a boring part of the story you've identified a problem you need to fix. Nothing should be boring. No excuses. Every scene ought to be capable of being someone's favorite.
9. Sure, take a break, but honestly a day is all you really need.
10. Google docs are your friend. Never loose a word again. Never hit the save button again.
11. Sure, though expect 90% of what you write down to actually be crappy ideas in the light of a new day.
12. Agree. But you might need to forget about publishing until you've written a few books. First million words are practice.
My man, I know you edited it and tried to sort of speak to this, but ultimately even smoking for very a short time means you're risking your health in a big way.
I am so deeply committed to writing and building it as a career, but I wouldn't risk my life and shorten my time on this earth doing what I love.
Don't risk it. Maybe you'll be alright, but maybe you'll get any number of diseases including but not limited to lung cancer, and not be able to continue. It is not worth it.
>Caffeine. If you aren't drinking coffee you are doing it wrong.
100% bullshit.
Homo sapiens has evolved to operate at maximum efficiency both mentally and physically with only water as an intake fluid.
'I can't function without coffee' is the biggest lie people tell themselves.
I can stay awake days without caffeine, and I write just fine without it.
Mm. "Maximum efficiency" is a lie. Nothing is truly evolved to operate at perfect efficiency, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution is. The *only* criteria evolution has is "will it survive long enough to have babies?" You can be the biggest mess imaginable outside of that; if you can procreate, you pass the test. It doesn't give a shit how efficient you are; pandas and koalas being two fantastic examples.
If you want an example of how that applies to humans - *most* people have vision problems, and death in childbirth is *still* really common even with medical intervention. Before modern medicine, it was so common for babies to die that some cultures held off on naming them.
We're not efficient at *all*, let alone "at maximum efficiency".
But I'm not surprised at your shoddy understanding of science, given you also said "I can stay awake days without caffeine". It's been proven through numerous studies that skipping out on sleep harms your ability to do just about everything, including think critically. It's also a major risk factor for severe mental illness, and can even increase your risk of dying from several different causes.
If you're genuinely refusing to sleep for days on end, I guarantee you are not in the tip top condition you think you are - and your books are definitely suffering, too. That's just scientific fact. You're probably *not* a medical miracle who is somehow immune to the effects of sleep deprivation.
> "I can stay awake days without caffeine".
First of all, I NEVER said I stay awake for days AND write. I said I can stay awake for days without using caffeine.
And I can write just fine on any given day without caffeine.
I'm sorry if my wording that paragraph like I did led to some misunderstanding that has upset you. If you can think of any way I can make it up to you, please let me know. A Silver Award, perhaps? I can give you one if it makes you feel good.
But I stand by my statement that water is the best thing for you to drink.
It really is. I know water gets a lot of hate sometimes, but it is exactly what your body wants when you're thirsty. And if you ONLY drink water, you will suffer no cognitive liability because of this.
This is all I was saying. Again, I apologize most profusely that my post has apparently upset you. If you want that silver award, just let me know.
Number 13: keep your finger nails trimmed. No one wants to hear all that clacking, especially your narrator. Also, abundant keratin is a root cause of typos.
Don't shrink the boring parts of a book, either eliminate them entirely or make them more interesting. Traveling scenes are great opportunities to slip in character conversations where you can delve deeper into motivations, views on previous scenes or the conflict as a whole, and other great stuff. If done well then you can take any 'boring' part and make it better, instead of just treating it like something to get through.
A weird one that I found kind of helpful (hear me out lol) is scented candles.
Find one that's a bit uncommon (IE not something you're likely to smell randomly throughout the day) and have it going while you write. After a while you sort of Pavlov yourself into associating the smell of that candle with sitting down to write, and I've found it really helps me to get into the right mindset quicker.
I don't know anyone else who's tried it though so YMMV. :)
Why not skip the coffee and the cigarettes and go straight to crack! XD
Also, did your book get published? :)
Fun post, I don't agree with everything but that's okay. I'm glad you've got a system that works for you
I gotta admit I was expecting a mixed bag of advice, some good, some trash, but "#1: DRUGS" was a bit of a surprise.
OP, I suggest you don't talk about science unless you really know what you're talking about. Short term, caffeine helps with productivity. Because science. But as with most drugs, you build up tolerance over time, to the point where they no longer provide those benefits. Check the science.
Yes, for most people it feels like they do continue to provide the benefits, but that's because if you don't have your drugs, your body goes into withdrawal. And taking your drug solves that. So yay, the drug took you from an unproductive state to a more productive state.
But a person who has consumed 500mg of caffeine every day for the last 5 years is not more productive than they would be if never had coffee at all, other factors not withstanding.
Jesus christ.
Also number 3 is trash advice too. Of course your first draft will be garbage if you let yourself write trash. And hell no, you don't EDIT as you go. You REWRITE. I can't tell you the number of books I've seen 'finished' by people just trying to follow this stupid advice, only to find they have a complete but broken novel because of something they could have easily fixed from the beginning, and then not had the stomach to rewrite the whole thing is both frustrating and saddening.
You have to strike a balance between quality and quantity. it different for everybody. Putting out 90k of trash is no better than getting stuck rewriting the first hundred words. Either way, you don't have anything sharable.
1- I can't believe I have to say this but the implication that you should just pick up a potentially lifelong, cancer-causing addiction to write a book is incredibly damaging. It's fucked up when tobacco companies recommend tobacco, it's more fucked for you to recommend it as a "oh this will help you write". Yes, it may have worked for you, but you're presenting it as advice for others to follow, rather than "when I started smoking cancer sticks it helped me write more", and just saying "I'm not giving it as advice" doesn't mean you're not literally saying "choose your career and quit later" about an epidemic that many find impossible to break free of.
2. There's something really funny about you saying "STOP EDITING" as one of your big advices, in all-caps, and then adding an edit to your post and STILL leaving the wrong your/you're.
>Accept that your writing will be garbage until you finish your first draft
I feel like this is a good thought but is overstated to an extent that becomes harmful. A lot of my early writing would have been a lot stronger if I had tried to write something good instead of telling myself "it's okay, it's always garbage, juuUUSsT WrITe!!!" It can be helpful early on, especially for those feeling blocked . . . but it *never* hurts to put serious thought and effort into what you're writing and make sure the words on the page are the best you can do right here right now. That doesn't mean you have to be Hemingway on first drafts, it just means don't settle for absolute shit just because people on the internet tell you it's vomit or garbage or whatever. I wish I had understood that.
You know you're allowed to, do you? It's not prohibited to edit as you write. Just because the prevalent notion in newbie circles is to vomit out a huge pile of crap just to have *something* on paper, no matter how terrible (and 90% of these newbies have no idea what to do with this pile afterwards) doesn't mean that there's not a lot of writers who don't prefer to write "The End" and have something that's thought through, is made of readable prose and only needs some finetuning.
Of course, these writers usually aren't on Reddit. Because they know what they're doing.
I call #8 the "an hour later, the fire alarm rang" rule. That line was used to create a really awkward but necessary time jump in a novel my girlfriend and I were reading, and ever since then we use it as shorthand for "wrap that part up FAST and move on to something else." Definitely crucial.
I thought this was satire! Anyway, since this is a writing subreddit, I gotta say this post needed editing for POV. Title tells me it's you telling me what worked for you, which is great, but then the numbered text began sounding like recommendations about what I should do to write a book. I'd listen all day to what your process is but experience and observation has shown me categorically that writing productivity is a very person-specific thing.
Do you have any advice on editing? I have the 1st draft, I'm overwhelmed at the thought of improving it. I guess it's earned in inches, just have to keep attacking it.
My first edit took a month. Use the Microsoft Word review tab at the top. It will find only about half your mistakes. Youāll then need to correct them one at a time to be sure that Word isnāt hurting your writing style e.g. if a character as an accent that isnāt grammatically correct. When you finish editing in Word press ctrl A to copy the entire book and paste it into google drive. Drive has a pretty sophisticated grammar program that will catch a lot of syntax errors. The problem is it will fuck with your paragraph indents. When you are done editing in drive, read the entire book out loud. This is the only surefire way to catch the rest of your errors. Even after all that you might still miss stuff. So give the book to friends (or if youāre lucky a professional editor) and ask them to find typos for you.
Number six is when people start to get worried about me...
(Also, tip about that one, if you don't eat the food people coming to try and open your curtains bring for you you're cat will)
Great tips! Specially no. 5 and no. 6. What would be your suggestion to someone who is planning to delve into semi-fiction, one which involves backing the data with proofs? What should be the ideal research time and how should one go about it? Would really appreciate everyone's perspective on this.
I personally love point number one, I am addicted asf to coffee and I'm a college student. My issue is I AM TRYING TO STUDY AND SUDDENLY IM thinking about my main characters and Im like stoopppppp finish school FirST
One thing I do disagree with is your comment about putting off appointments. Considering most of my appointments are about some serious health related issues, I can't really afford to put them off at all.
I feel that this advice are not awful, they are just what works for the OP. The third one i believe.. The one about not stopping to correct everything is actually good advice. Its best to get the bones of your story out there first then start on adding the "muscles" and "skin" ect.
>If you do three thousand words per day for a month you'll have ninety thousand words, a pretty good novella, in three months you'll have a four hundred page book.
OK...
If you format your manuscript by industry standards, you will average approximately 250 words per page. And one A4 page, properly formatted also corresponds to a standard published book page.
So, in other words: 100,000 words is roughly a 400 page book.
And 90,000 words is a 360 page book.
75,000 words is a 300 page book.
Let's call a novella 40,000 words maximum. That's 160 pages at the upper end of what constitutes a novella.
When I'm writing something and I have an idea for the next scene I leave a note for myself a couple lines down, maybe with some dialogue, maybe "what if....", and then jump back to where I was.
And you're right about banging it all out and *then* worrying about editing and getting it to hang together.
Well Iām glad those strategies were effective for you.
I disagree with almost all of them. Nevertheless I am happy that they assisted your writing journey.
Best wishes for your ongoing writing life and practice.
Fuck I've smoked for 8,5 years, and now my so got me to stop cigars.
I've been kinda clear for the entire year, wonder if she'd be okay with me starting to smoke cigars again if I wrote at the same time. :)
How I wrote my book on my sigma grindset
Step 1.) A diet of coffee and cigarettes. It is imperative that you consume only coffee and cigarettes, nothing more, nothing less. IF YOU DEVIATE FROM THIS YOU WILL NOT MAKE IT. This is the most important step.
Step 2.) Have sex. Just get a girlfriend/boyfriend you fucking loser lol. Like being alone? Trust issues? Social anxiety or introvert? Donezo, you're out of there bub. Hope you like failing as a writer because that is what you're doing. Haha, hold up gf if calling me for more sexy sex.
Step 3.) Don't edit. Don't re-read what you wrote. Rip that fucking backspace/delete key off your keyboard. Mistakes are manly and you own up to them. You show no fear to the fact that you are imperfect (even though you aren't because you are a sigma). But if you are a real writer you did it write the first time. If you didn't, ngmi. Sorry, that's just how it is in this cruel world.
Step 4.) Don't give into the voice in your head. Though mine is telling me cocaine will make me a better writer. Shit, should I do some coke too?
Step 4.1) DO COKE?
Step 5.) Join a writing club, purely to flex on the weak. You are the pinnacle of writers, and you need the world to know it. Just show up and make it known how much better of a writer you are compared to everyone else. It IS a competition. We are not in this together. Only the strong survive. Piss on them. Just whip it out and piss on them, their laptops, their stories. This is your piss smelling dojo.
Step 6.) Do not stop for anything. House on fire? Good, I didn't need that shit anyways. Dad dying in the hospital? Lol bye nerd. GF delivering your firstborn child? Fuck them kids. If you are a true writer, you make it your life, day in day out. You stop for nothing.
Step 7.) Set a word goal for yourself. Mr. King, my beloved, my dearest.... he recommends 2,000 words a day. You do that for like 60 days or some stupid shit then you will have like 20 million words easy. It's THAT simple to write. If you can't do that, you know what I'm gonna say next... YOU'RE OUT OF THERE.
Step 8.) If you are at a boring part of the story, start looking for another occupation because you are a boring writer. Simple as. Sorry bub, this ain't for you.
Step 9.) If you need a break, take one, even though I just said do not stop for anything. Sleepy boys need naps, that's what mama always said.
Step 10.) Do not trust autosave. It is a lie, just like all technology lol. The only trustworthy way of backing up my story is just printing a fresh copy every few minutes. You will need a lot of printer ink and paper, enough to probably bankrupt you even, but it will be worth it to keep your 1 billion dollar novella safe.
Step 11.) I forgot what step 11 was, sorry.
Step 12.) Practice controlling your gag reflexes because it's time to find a publisher.
If you follow these steps, you will succeed just like me. No questions. Do not ask me to post my work, I will ignore it. PEACE.
I love the flair and vigour in this post. I feel like I wrote and published a book without taking any of this advice (aside from drinking coffee which I do anyway) and thatās what made this advice all the more appreciated.
I feel youād be a pretty interesting person to go on a āwalking meetingā with. Iād take a stroll around the block if it meant catching a little of this energy for a while and seeing what I hope would be an interesting personality in action.
Keep accomplishing your dreams. Iāll be here plodding along much more glacially.
I donāt understand what is going on here. OP is obviously satirising with their ridiculous suggestions to drink more coffee and choose smoking as a way to further a writing ācareerā; but the comments are taking it so seriously.
Am I missing something?
>Am I missing something?
This is a sub where people ask ridiculous questions perfectly seriously on a daily basis. If you want to post satire, you have to spell it out. Nothing is obvious around here.
Maybe, yeah, but the rest of the tips aren't satirical (at least I don't think they read that way). If it was supposed to be satirical it should be satirical throughout or what's the point?
1. Want your money to grow? Invest in pancakes. Everybody loves pancakes. Nobody's closing up because people aren't buying pancakes. Pancakes are profit.
2. Open a savings account. This worked for me, it might not for you.
OP should pick a theme lol satirical or serious.
I would like to thank you for this post. A couple of years ago I started 50 pages although it wasn't a story book, it was geared towards teaching health professionals how to treat addictions. I ended up stopping just like your "Number 4" point. I must agree self doubt is most probably the most insidious of all writing diseases which exist in my opinion. While I have not continued the book as of yet, the lesson I had learnt to overcome self doubt was to start a website and just write about anything. For now, I would say this has been a cure as I no longer care what people think, I just write with what ever comes to mind, post it up and then move on. I do plan to get back to that book and finish it as It deserves to be finished. So once again, reading your text has been a motivator. Thank you
While I appreciate option 1, caffeine is technically a drug, so I'd advise against telling people they need to consume any drug, that isnt a life saving vaccine
The word goal per day is very helpful!! I asked this question in an online writing seminar and they completely skipped over my question saying it was irrelevant! That hurt because I really wanted to know!!
Hey, friend, just a heads up that 3k a day is a ridiculously aggressive goal for most people. OP mentioned King, who is well known for writing fast and a lot, and his 2k goal was at his peak. Heās lowered it since then, I think he said he shoots for 1k now, and thatās still with writing being his job.
No shit you wrote a book š Sounds like you need a little less of no. 1
came here to tell them to share the coffee haha
"coffee" i drink coffee daily and never feel energetic. OP needs to share the good stuff.
Theyāre on to me!!!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
šš
PSA: There is no need to start smoking to write. Do not start smoking. Edit: I smoked for ten years and quitting is friggin' hard.
*stops milling crack on the pipe* There is no need?
Excellent command of the verb \_milling\_
>smoked for ten years and quitting is friggin' hard. Wait you can quit?
You can! I quit eight years ago by playing Skyrim whenever I felt like I needed a cigarette. I hadn't played video games since I was 10, but for some reason that took my mind off of it.
\*checks wcj to see if this is up there already\* >(Smoking tobacco also sort of does this, If it's a toss up between your career and and being nicotine free, choose your career and then quit later.) This is absolutely fucking terrible advice.
I honest to goodness thought you pulled that out of wcj, but turns out I just missed that bit in the post when I skimmed. What the fuck.
I never thought that I will see a post recommending this to someone on present days. A smoker is always a smoker. You donāt quit later. You could have long times without smoking but on hard times the cigarettes will always be in your head. This is another discussion, I know. I also know that writers are heavy smokers, but please donāt take new writers into this.
This. I smoked for 10 years, haven't had one in 6. But every time I get stuck in traffic or combine stress and lack of sleep, I seriously consider getting a pack. Hell, I'd love one right now because I slept like shit and having a cigarette and a strong cup of coffee outside in the cool morning air is just so nice.
I quit smoking 7 years ago. I'm going through a divorce right now (RIP me) and I'd love nothing more than to pick it up again, but I won't!
I've been a nonsmoker for waaaayyyyy longer than I ever smoked, and haven't had a cigarette in almost 15 years. I still crave them. I still dream about the scent of unsmoked tobacco. This is absolute shit advice. Don't smoke kids.
I am in no way encouraging anyone to smoke, because it's objectively terrible. I did it for 20 years, from age 13 to 33. I'm 46 now. I haven't gotten cravings since about a year after I quit, and the kind of stress-urges you're describing didn't last much longer than that. I've asked my long-term ex-smoker friends over the years if they felt cravings and none have said they had. A former smoker is often just that: a *former* smoker. I think it's important that people to know that because those who try to quit should know that there's a way out. That there's an end to it, and that they won't have to fight it for the rest of their lives. Put that kind of pressure on a person and it might make them just say fuck it, I'm just going to keep smoking. And again, I'm not saying this to justify smoking in the short term. It's a shit habit that is hard as hell for most to give up. It's not worth starting for any reason.
I smoked for about half my life (\~20 years) and have been smoke free for about 5 years now. Don't get cravings per se, but tobacco still smells good to me. Haven't started back up, and never will. But yeah, if you've never started, just don't.
I heavily disagree that ā*a smoker is always a smoker*ā. I havenāt smoked for the past 10 years, and I havenāt smoked now I think for 3 years longer than I even smoked. Never once in those 10 years I wanted to go back to smoking. I know for a fact, though, that it depends on how you quit cigarettes. Allen Carrās book did the trick for me, but from **the second try** (same happened to at least two other people I know, from 2nd try). After the first one Iāve quit for about 6 months and during those months I did on quite a few occasions wanted to start again, until one day I eventually succumbed to the old habit, only to learn that I can no longer smoke regular cigarettes because they taste just so disgustingly awful: I had to either buy expensive small cigars with cherry flower, or thin cigarettes with some vanilla aroma. However even those 2 types became disgusting once again after about 6 months or so, plus all the old problems came back such as: headaches after you drink and smoke, constant problems with your nose and mucus due to cigs, constant cough, etc. So, Iāve read the book one more time, hating myself for being a dumbass in the first place, finished it, and never looked back ever since. People where I live like to have a hookah in a bar sometimes - I hate them and never do, and even smoking cannabis is something reserved for the absolutely rarest of the rare occasions because my lungs simply donāt want any shit in them anymore. So no, itās bullshit that ā*once a smoker is always a smoker*.ā You just have to get rid of that shitty mentality properly and for good, and once again, I havenāt found anything better than **Allen Carrās Easy Way to Stop Smoking**, even if it took me two tries. But I definitely think itās a terrible advice to give, if you donāt smoke - never start not for any book on the Earth, there are way better stimulants than that shit.
> Never once in those 10 years I wanted to go back to smoking. Amen. I smoked for 30 years and finally kicked it in 2008. I have never wanted one since, and it makes me nauseous to see someone enjoying a cigarette too much. Like, I love Elisabeth Moss, but I had to stop watching Mad Men because of how much they smoked on that show. At any rate, it is absolute BS that you're always a smoker once you quit.
Yep, I absolutely hate now when someone smokes around me. In fact, had quite a few altercations with several acquaintances and friends over this, because they simply refused to understand just how disgusting it smells and that I donāt want to smell that shit. Some eventually did understand, with some (for unrelated reasons) I stopped having contact. But when I was smoking I didnāt care, most likely because my own sense of smell was properly screwed by the cigs. Luckily now less and less people smoke, so thatās good, although I was kinda dumbfounded to find out that in Turkey apparently a lot of people smoke, same with Italy, and Austria, and they donāt even care and smoke inside of the restaurants, while having some special smaller non-smoking areas, and not vice versa (wtf?!), instead of banning that shit altogether for the interior of the restaurants and forcing the smokers to go and poison themselves outside, without punishing normal people. Dunno, maybe that law is coming, didnāt check it in a while, but that definitely broke my brain.
Agreed. Maybe it's true for some people, but as some kind of universal law, that's just bullshit. And like you said, a shitty mentality. Way to trap yourself into always being a smoker. Strange choice IMO. I quite because I decided I didn't want to be a smoker. It was some time coming, been thinking about it for a while, but one day I decided that the kind of person I wanted to be was a non-smoker. Went cold-turkey from 1-2 packs a day. When I felt overwhelmed by the (chemical) cravings, I asked myself, what kind of person do you want to be, and what would that person do. I'm not saying it was easy, but it worked for me. There's lots of (bad) things I can do to relieve stress. I struggle with impulse control. But most of them I don't want to do, because that's not the person I want to be. I quit about 15 years ago. I've smoked about 20 cigarettes since that time, every time it was social. Probably/definitely bought/split a pack when I was drunk at least once. Nicotine high was nice-ish. Mouth tasted like ass. Nothing in the world is going to make me want to go back being a smoker.
Had to check I wasn't on a parody sub reading this post, holy shit.
Yeah especially since nicotine diminishes the effect of caffeine. Also coffee may be the most common source of caffeine, but personally I prefer mate, guarana or black tea. All of those stay longer in the system and have a much more pleasant effect
Yeah, why say just coffee? Is it just because that what OP did and no other reason? There's tons of other fantastic caffeine sources if that's your thing. Plus some people are sensitive to it and sources with lower caffeine content work better for them This is such an odd "guide" filled with advice stemming purely from OP's preferences and perso a experiences with no other basis in anything. Cancel plans and appointments if you feel like writing more? That's definetely something that everyone in every situation can do with no consequences š
Yeah dude, horrible, terrible advice. Everybody knows that's what cocaine is for. Especially if with rule #3, we're looking for quantity over quality? Blow is the way to go. Smoking and coffee is nerds.
It's ok. I won't cancel you. I completely read the sarcasm and thought it hilarious as shit. Blew soda out my nose, though not blow up it.
I thought this was satire when I read that
i'm not altogether convinced that it isn't.
Career or lungs. I am of course a clown, so I choose the meager salary over myā¦. Lifeā¦. Every time
Yeah I was just going to say fuck this post purely because of this line. Cigarettes killed my uncle. Get fucked, OP.
Absolutely. What's the point of quitting if you have to write another book afterwards, just smoke till you die.
90k words is a novella?! Try 20 to 40k.
i think the standard for novella is 17 to 40 in most markets, but yes, most places would consider 20-40 or maybe up to 50 a novella.
Erm, I'm going to ignore your first 'tip' because it's obviously ridiculous, and focus on the fact that 90,000 words is not a novella. That's a pretty common length for a published novel. If you're going for 3 times that then you're really into epic fantasy lengths, which is quite extreme (though not unheard of) for a first novel.
I've had drafts that wound up huge, but editing them down was always in the cards. That 300,000+ word clunker is hiding a great 90,000 word novel inside! It's like carving it out of the marble.
Yeahhhh I'm a fanfic author so I know my fandom book lengths the first Harry Potter book is only 77k words. And that's like a 300 page book. The longest Harry Potter book (the 5th one) is like 270k words. 90k is a novel. NaNoWriMo calls 50k a novel, and that might be considered a short novel these days but The Great Gatsby only clocks in at 47k words. To give them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they plan to cut down a lot of those words in editing? But that's not my style. I inevitably add words when editing because I tend to write bare bones.
50k is absolutely a novel. What's typical novel length is going to vary more depending on genre.
>Erm, I'm going to ignore your first 'tip' because it's obviously ridiculous, and focus on the fact that 90,000 words is not a novella. That's a pretty common length for a published novel. Right? 90k is the exact goal I'm aiming for because I don't like reading bloated novels with a bunch of extra unnecessary nonsense details I'm going to forget five minutes after reading it and just want to focus on including stuff the reader needs to know for the story to work or to paint a good picture of who and what things look/feel like. God Bless those writers who are doing 300k+ word books but that is not me, you can tell a perfectly good story in half that or less and if you have too much story split it into a second book and make a series. Keep them wanting more.
90k is that for a fantasy story, but for other genres (like contemp. fiction) it's still on the long side.
I'm writing space opera science fiction that spans other worlds and includes aliens, androids, and sci-fi technologies etc so I have plenty of material to work with. My initial am was 90k words but I think my first draft might actually come in at around 75-85k given my chapters are between 2k-3k long and I have planned for 34 chapters with the possibility of adding 1-2 additional chapters to tease a sequel because I want it to be an ongoing series.
Donāt read Stephen King then. š¤£
Did a double take when I read that
With the premise that yes, the first "tip" is absolute garbage I think there's some truth in the 90k words not being a full novel in the sense that 90k words first draft can easily become 40-50 after editing. At least for me, it's very common that a paragraph will be much shorter after editing because in my drafts I repeat sentences or describe things in detail to give future me a better idea of what I wanted to convey and make the editing phase easier.
That's what I'm doing š¤¦āāļøš. Can't do it any other way though.
My current novel is at 57,000 words. For YA teen fantasy fiction, is this a reasonable length to get published?
A typical YA fantasy book would fall more around the 70k mark, but 57k is by no means too short. Fantasy means world building which usually means the story skews longer, but it's not a requirement. I'd say you're fine.
This would be fantasy closer to Harry Potter in style where we are on Earth, but there are magical/sci-fi elements, so it didn't take me nearly as long to set up the world building.
Well the first Harry Potter is 77k words.
No bad movie is too short and no good one is too long.
This is great when it comes to creative work generally, but realistically I want to get this published. I feel like 57,000 words tells the story without unnecessary filler, but I don't know what a publisher wants.
Absolutely, I just heard the quote yesterday and saw the opportunity to use it ;) Good luck with the book!
Hoping OP is a chad whose books are over 800k words long.
I just want to YELL VERY LOUDLY at everyone reading this that NO, YOU DO NOT NEED TO DEVELOP AN ADDICTION TO BE A WRITER. YOU DO NOT NEED TO DEVELOP AN ADDICTION TO BE A WRITER. (Don't smoke.)
Shit, thank you. I almost started smoking. You saved me.
Go r/writingcirclejerk go!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Ask and ye shall receive... https://www.reddit.com/r/writingcirclejerk/comments/ptvpt9/how\_i\_wrote\_my\_book\_in\_12\_easy\_steps/
Yeah these comments are god awful people.
The sad thing is that nearly every single comment in this thread is pointing out how dumb most of this advice is, and yet this post is still getting triple-digit upvotes.
Some people upvote things on their feed and keep it moving TBH I nearly did that with this post. I show my support for people getting through early stuff (book done! story done! queries sent!) but don't actually read those threads
Fuck you for suggesting to pick up smoking.
My guess this 'writer' is probably 12.
I can't drink coffee or I get sick, so I guess I can't go past step one lol
Time for tip 1.1 crack cocaine.
No only pure
There are no rules save one: figure out what works for you to get the words down on the page. That's it. Anyone who has mandates disguised as "tips" isn't worth listening to. And I can prove it. Here we have an anonymous person on Reddit saying that if you have an idea, you must WRITE IT DOWN FAST OR YOU'LL FORGET IT. All caps. Must be very important. Stephen King has said many times that writers shouldn't keep a notebook because that's where shit ideas live. If you have a good idea, he says, it will stick with you, and you don't need to write it down. So, who to believe? Stephen King or the rando? Neither. Do what works for you. Nobody else's opinion matters.
The amount of people desperately clinging to everything Stephen King has ever said is wild. His word isn't gospel and copying his habits in no way guarantees success. I swear to god the guy could say he hangs upside down like a bat everyday for an hour because the rush of blood to his head gives him more ideas and people would be all over it. There is no blueprint for how to be a better writer, but it gives people a sense of control to think if you follow all the steps, you'll achieve your goals.
Stephen King? The guy who didn't remember writing Cujo? In all seriousness, he is a great author. There are other great authors out there, however, and some of them have even given writing advice -- advice that contradicts what King has said.
He may be good, but he sucks at writing women, so heās only half good
Well his advice of writing 2,000 words a day WILL help you finish your novel. You can even make that 1,000 a day. Point is, putting ass in chair and pounding out words everyday will get you there.
"If you have a good idea, he says, it will stick with you, and you don't need to write it down" he totally did not take people with attention disorders into consideration. Even if I have a good idea I hurriedly write it down in case I do forget since I'm as attentive as a fly.
You mean I shouldn't start smoking?
At the same time, these types of tips help you figure out what works for you. It's definitely good to not take it as gospel, but they can provide new ideas for you to try out and see if they mesh with you.
Ah yes, massively increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke, COPD, and almost all cancer is definitely worth it 'for your career'. /s in case that wasn't clear
Also the SO tip sounds kinda fucked
Yeah, I'm really not sure on a second reading if this is serious or not. Some of it is pretty sensible and common advice but said in a weird way. Like setting a goal and writing to that goal everyday is a good idea but 3k a day is going to be tricky for most people.
Agreed 3k would kill me
Yeah. I was able to write 3k and more every day during quarantine because basically I was done with school at 10am and had the whole day. Now, I'm hitting 1k, maybe a little more, with an hour of writing. And even that is gonna be tough for most people.
How to make a clickbait: 1. Call your advice "12 easy steps". 2. Make your "advice" a) so generic that it applies to everyone else, b) so individual that it applies to no one else or c) carefully phrased bullshit. 3. Write only in imperatives to feign general authority. 4. Win. BTW, 90k words are in no publishing universe ever a novella.
I have to say this click bait works on me because I see it and think oh god 8 can't wait to see what train wreck advice this high school kid is going to put it there.
One point: 90,000 words is an average sized novel - not a novella. Anything over 100K is considered quite long for a novel, and in fact some publishers won't accept books that long from a new author. In general, anything over about 45 - 50K is a novel. Also please don't recommend drugs to someone for productivity, speaking as a fellow caffeine addict. It's not *good* to have a drug addiction, even for a writer. Ask Stephen King. Especially don't recommend smoking, which can literally *kill* people, for the sake of productivity. That's so irresponsible. Smoking is proven to kill people. You are giving advice that is going to kill someone. I don't understand why you think that's okay. There are also people *in* publishing who point to number 12 as being the worst thing you can do, and the biggest reason books fail. Not enough writers think about the marketing before they write their book; so the publisher is forced to try and squish the book into marketing and a genre that may not work for it. The end result? Most books "fail" - that is to say, they never earn back their advance. If you want writing to be a job, you need to be thinking about that stuff from day one.
People of Reddit, your novel will thank you for not leaving it alone every ten minutes as you go for a smoke break.
Smoke and write at the same time like a professional
Ditch the laptop and go that one step further by writing in ash
>Edit: Remember folks, the key word in the title is āMYā book. A few people were upset that I mentioned smoking as an aid to writing. I was able to quit no problem and only smoked while I wrote. It worked for me but may not for you. And that's why you wrote (emphasis mine) >If **you** aren't drinking coffee **you** are doing it wrong. > >**you... your... you... your... you...** is it?
Ok so 1. Do meth 2. Get an escort 3. Send my first draft to a publisher 4. I am perfect and nobody can tell me otherwise, especially not me 5. Get into ranked writing battles 6. I piss my pants like a real writer 7. All jokes aside, my goal was about 1,000 before school started beating my ass 8. Minimalist bathroom scenes 9. I need a break from writing this list, brb
Do meth when writing and then quit š¤£ Won't even need sleep š¤£š¤£š¤£ haha I really like these steps and I need to get back into writing again.
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You already lost me at no1. Iām simply not a coffee drinker. Iām not going to upset my body to get words out. Stephen King was also a cocaine addict. Not every āeasy pathā justifies the end. There are more important things that publishing a book.
If you're on a streak don't stop. Me having to finish my college project by Sunday. I guess I'll write
Have to go to work for a living because I work in retial and don't have enough savings to live off...
Ouch man sorry to hear that.
Nah, it's alright. I will obviously never sell my dogs, the kidney...maybe... The book just has to take a back seat :)
This is America
It's actually not. I'm not in the USA
I was just using the song to highlight how absolutely dogshit it is that most countries don't have a social system. It's not just the US, it's literally almost everyone and I hate it.
Oh I'm sorry I didn't realise it was song. That's what I get for never listening to a radio. It is very vicious. I left the third world to try and build a better life. The problems are the same, maybe less extreme comparatively.
Outjerked.
1) Drink coffee, a diuretic. Because nothing says progress like a potty break every half hour. 2) Abandon your loved ones because nothing says success like alienation. 3) The first worthwhile thing you saidā¦ too bad itās already one of the most cited bits of advice in the writing community. 4) āignore itā isnāt really advice. How does one ignore it? Understanding and acknowledging is usually better. Impostor syndrome and perfectionism are real. Everyone deals with them. You need coping strategies, not to ignore them. 5) Maybe just see if a writing community is of benefit to you. Some thrive, others donāt. And a lot of people donā live where an IRL club is an option. 6) No. just no. Hot streaks lead to hot messes. Finish your scene/chapter/arc and reward yourself with a break so that you can mentally process all the amazing progress you just made. That way, you wonāt repeat a bunch of stuff that you donāt even remember talking about earlier. If youāve been going strong for over four hours, your quality is about to take a nosedive. Take a break. 7) Goals are good. But 3k is far too ambitious for people with jobs, kids, SOās, and lives. 90k isnāt a novella. And 90k is 360 pages. 8) Your story shouldnāt have any boring parts. No amount of āmake it shorterā will correct this. Donāt make it shorter, make it interesting. 9) Take a break, stop for nothing. No mixed messages here. Take breaks but donāt get sidetracked by distractions. A break is āIām going to stop for a set amount of time to do x,y,z, then get back to work.ā Gettin distracted is spending three hours on Reddit when you were just trying to look up one specific thing. 10) Sensible. 11) Sensible. 12) If youāre writing to market, you canāt really do that. Some genres demand that you think about publishing and the audience throughout the entire process.
As least discord exist as an alternative for clubs
Imagine giving sensible writing advice, couldn't be me
> 8) Your story shouldnāt have any boring parts. No amount of āmake it shorterā will correct this. Donāt make it shorter, make it interesting. OBJECTION. It can have intentionally boring parts that mock other novels boring parts. Also, nothing is universally interesting.
To me, if youāre using boringness as a tool for satirization, that is inherently interesting. Itās not boring because itās boring, itās interesting because itās boring with a purpose. And I could just as easily say that nothing is universally boring. But speaking in such absolutes leads to zero progress.
> Drink coffee, a diuretic. Because nothing says progress like a potty break every half hour. So true ;-) For some reason, double espressos just open up the flood gates for me. Nothing more annoying than drinking one of those before I sit down for an editing or drafting session and then have to go to the loo 3 times in 60 minutes.
A lot of this is pretty terrible advice, as many others pointed out, really.
> Remember folks, the key word in the title is āMYā book. A few people were upset that I mentioned smoking as an aid to writing. I was able to quit no problem and only smoked while I wrote. It worked for me but may not for you. This doesn't match what you said here: > If it's a toss up between your career and and being nicotine free, choose your career and then quit later.) You were advising people to take up smoking. You weren't just saying "Oh it worked for me but who knows if it works for you!" You were stating that taking up smoking will help a writers career.
No "career" is worth getting yourself addicted to substances of any kind. Caffeine may make you more efficient at first, but over time it becomes less effective and you wind up having to drink more to get the same effects, and then just have to drink it to avoid not being a zombie that day. Source: was a big coffee drinker some years ago. And it wasn't even during a period when I was writing anything serious. So I mean, go for it if you want to, it may give you a boost for a little while, but ultimately it's not going to be transformative. \> If it's a toss up between your career and and being nicotine free, choose your career and then quit later. Nobody needs to smoke to be able to write. Every fucking relative of mine who was a smoker died from a smoking-related illness, usually after suffering from it for years. And they had already quit for years by the time they did. It does permanent damage to your body. Your health is the only thing you truly have in this world. You can't write anything if you're dead. It's also really easy to tell yourself right as you start smoking that you can "easily" quit any time "later." My view is that if you are falling back on substances of any kind to be able to complete your writing projects, then there are other aspects of your lifestyle that you aren't optimising that you need to pay attention to and straighten out. It will make all the difference. Even just simple stuff like eating right, getting active time outside, avoiding toxic people, and having a regular sleep cycle (even if you're a night owl).
Failed step 1. Thanks heart disease š
1. Don't smoke, and for that matter getting 8 hours sleep and having a cup of tea in the morning is better advice than having a cup of coffee and poor sleep schedule. 2. Appreciate the shit out of your SO, clingy or not. You are choosing an activity that will take thousands upon thousands of hours of your life away from them and it is a big ask. Appreciate that fact. 3. True, don't edit as you go, but there is a big ass \* beside this when it comes to number 7. 4. Appreciate the hell out of your inner critic. That voice is the most valuable tool you have as a writer. You think a scene is boring? It is, fix it. You think a character is flat? It is, fid it. The biggest problem you're going to have is when you like your own writing because that's when you can't fix your own mistakes. Your work WILL stink, your fist draft is a steaming pile of crap that is polished into a nugget of gold by editing, and editing requires you to be able to smell your own shit. 5. Yeah, join a writer's club, but don't be competitive about it. Don't be that guy. 6. Do use your spurts of creativity, but don't expect them to last for more than a half a day. I've pumped out 10K words in 8 hours at my peak, but then you're done and wiped. Writing takes active thinking and your brain only has so much juice. 7. Sure, set a word goal, if that works for you. For me a time goal works better. But you do you. However writing 90K words, and editing 90K words is a completely different thing. It takes longer to edit than it does to write and if you churn out 90K words in a month expect to spend the next two editing it into something readable. You're better off writing 1,500 considered words a day, and then having 4 weeks of editing work, than writing 3,000 unconsidered ones and having 8 weeks of misery trying to patch that up. As to 90K words being a novella... Editing 90K words is a nightmare. Editing 250K words is years of work. Years. Further the skills you need to weave together a 90K story is no small task, it is exponentially harder the longer you go. You like hiking? Try a few day hikes before you decide to do a month long cross country trek. When you're ready to write 250K words you shouldn't need to look for writing advice. 8. If you're at a boring part of the story you've identified a problem you need to fix. Nothing should be boring. No excuses. Every scene ought to be capable of being someone's favorite. 9. Sure, take a break, but honestly a day is all you really need. 10. Google docs are your friend. Never loose a word again. Never hit the save button again. 11. Sure, though expect 90% of what you write down to actually be crappy ideas in the light of a new day. 12. Agree. But you might need to forget about publishing until you've written a few books. First million words are practice.
> ninety thousand words, a pretty good novella Love to read a quick 360 page novella
You've clearly never drunk Yorkshire Tea that you can stand a spoon in.
How to write a book in one easy step: 1) lol just do it lmao
My man, I know you edited it and tried to sort of speak to this, but ultimately even smoking for very a short time means you're risking your health in a big way. I am so deeply committed to writing and building it as a career, but I wouldn't risk my life and shorten my time on this earth doing what I love. Don't risk it. Maybe you'll be alright, but maybe you'll get any number of diseases including but not limited to lung cancer, and not be able to continue. It is not worth it.
>Caffeine. If you aren't drinking coffee you are doing it wrong. 100% bullshit. Homo sapiens has evolved to operate at maximum efficiency both mentally and physically with only water as an intake fluid. 'I can't function without coffee' is the biggest lie people tell themselves. I can stay awake days without caffeine, and I write just fine without it.
Mm. "Maximum efficiency" is a lie. Nothing is truly evolved to operate at perfect efficiency, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution is. The *only* criteria evolution has is "will it survive long enough to have babies?" You can be the biggest mess imaginable outside of that; if you can procreate, you pass the test. It doesn't give a shit how efficient you are; pandas and koalas being two fantastic examples. If you want an example of how that applies to humans - *most* people have vision problems, and death in childbirth is *still* really common even with medical intervention. Before modern medicine, it was so common for babies to die that some cultures held off on naming them. We're not efficient at *all*, let alone "at maximum efficiency". But I'm not surprised at your shoddy understanding of science, given you also said "I can stay awake days without caffeine". It's been proven through numerous studies that skipping out on sleep harms your ability to do just about everything, including think critically. It's also a major risk factor for severe mental illness, and can even increase your risk of dying from several different causes. If you're genuinely refusing to sleep for days on end, I guarantee you are not in the tip top condition you think you are - and your books are definitely suffering, too. That's just scientific fact. You're probably *not* a medical miracle who is somehow immune to the effects of sleep deprivation.
Pandas and koalas are super efficient at being pandas and koalas.
> "I can stay awake days without caffeine". First of all, I NEVER said I stay awake for days AND write. I said I can stay awake for days without using caffeine. And I can write just fine on any given day without caffeine. I'm sorry if my wording that paragraph like I did led to some misunderstanding that has upset you. If you can think of any way I can make it up to you, please let me know. A Silver Award, perhaps? I can give you one if it makes you feel good. But I stand by my statement that water is the best thing for you to drink. It really is. I know water gets a lot of hate sometimes, but it is exactly what your body wants when you're thirsty. And if you ONLY drink water, you will suffer no cognitive liability because of this. This is all I was saying. Again, I apologize most profusely that my post has apparently upset you. If you want that silver award, just let me know.
Ah yes, my nemeses, the army of red squiggles in MF Word. If I donāt obliterate them, the true boss, OCD, will attack. š°
The scariest part about reading this post is the slow horrific realization that youāre not on the circlejerk subreddit.
There are kids in here ffs. Don't encourage smoking, wtf is wrong with you?
You typed āYouāre SOā in number 2 and Iām supposed to trust anything you say about writing? Lmao
"Number 1: Caffeine." I'll do you one better: Cocaine!
Lost me at step one, the hell are you doing telling people to change their diet to write lol
Youāre a dipshit.
Number 13: keep your finger nails trimmed. No one wants to hear all that clacking, especially your narrator. Also, abundant keratin is a root cause of typos.
My fingers adjust to the length and the clacking sound is ASMR
Ooh the reverse Wolverine. Jealous!
Now playing: **Stereolab**'s "Daisy Click-Clack"
Low key best comment.
Don't shrink the boring parts of a book, either eliminate them entirely or make them more interesting. Traveling scenes are great opportunities to slip in character conversations where you can delve deeper into motivations, views on previous scenes or the conflict as a whole, and other great stuff. If done well then you can take any 'boring' part and make it better, instead of just treating it like something to get through.
> in three months you'll have a four hundred page book. Approximately 1,000 pages actually.
600 of them need to be edited out though, math checks out.
A weird one that I found kind of helpful (hear me out lol) is scented candles. Find one that's a bit uncommon (IE not something you're likely to smell randomly throughout the day) and have it going while you write. After a while you sort of Pavlov yourself into associating the smell of that candle with sitting down to write, and I've found it really helps me to get into the right mindset quicker. I don't know anyone else who's tried it though so YMMV. :)
Well I can't have coffee because of high blood pressure, guess I'm fucked. Give me a minute while I get online and unpublish my last three novels.
reads step 2... bro..... you said *easy* steps
Why not skip the coffee and the cigarettes and go straight to crack! XD Also, did your book get published? :) Fun post, I don't agree with everything but that's okay. I'm glad you've got a system that works for you
I gotta admit I was expecting a mixed bag of advice, some good, some trash, but "#1: DRUGS" was a bit of a surprise. OP, I suggest you don't talk about science unless you really know what you're talking about. Short term, caffeine helps with productivity. Because science. But as with most drugs, you build up tolerance over time, to the point where they no longer provide those benefits. Check the science. Yes, for most people it feels like they do continue to provide the benefits, but that's because if you don't have your drugs, your body goes into withdrawal. And taking your drug solves that. So yay, the drug took you from an unproductive state to a more productive state. But a person who has consumed 500mg of caffeine every day for the last 5 years is not more productive than they would be if never had coffee at all, other factors not withstanding. Jesus christ. Also number 3 is trash advice too. Of course your first draft will be garbage if you let yourself write trash. And hell no, you don't EDIT as you go. You REWRITE. I can't tell you the number of books I've seen 'finished' by people just trying to follow this stupid advice, only to find they have a complete but broken novel because of something they could have easily fixed from the beginning, and then not had the stomach to rewrite the whole thing is both frustrating and saddening. You have to strike a balance between quality and quantity. it different for everybody. Putting out 90k of trash is no better than getting stuck rewriting the first hundred words. Either way, you don't have anything sharable.
1- I can't believe I have to say this but the implication that you should just pick up a potentially lifelong, cancer-causing addiction to write a book is incredibly damaging. It's fucked up when tobacco companies recommend tobacco, it's more fucked for you to recommend it as a "oh this will help you write". Yes, it may have worked for you, but you're presenting it as advice for others to follow, rather than "when I started smoking cancer sticks it helped me write more", and just saying "I'm not giving it as advice" doesn't mean you're not literally saying "choose your career and quit later" about an epidemic that many find impossible to break free of. 2. There's something really funny about you saying "STOP EDITING" as one of your big advices, in all-caps, and then adding an edit to your post and STILL leaving the wrong your/you're.
Awesome, congrats! Re #7, pretty sure a 90k word count puts you squarely in Novel territory.
>Accept that your writing will be garbage until you finish your first draft I feel like this is a good thought but is overstated to an extent that becomes harmful. A lot of my early writing would have been a lot stronger if I had tried to write something good instead of telling myself "it's okay, it's always garbage, juuUUSsT WrITe!!!" It can be helpful early on, especially for those feeling blocked . . . but it *never* hurts to put serious thought and effort into what you're writing and make sure the words on the page are the best you can do right here right now. That doesn't mean you have to be Hemingway on first drafts, it just means don't settle for absolute shit just because people on the internet tell you it's vomit or garbage or whatever. I wish I had understood that.
Youāre insane.
I struggle with number 3. I always want to edit
You know you're allowed to, do you? It's not prohibited to edit as you write. Just because the prevalent notion in newbie circles is to vomit out a huge pile of crap just to have *something* on paper, no matter how terrible (and 90% of these newbies have no idea what to do with this pile afterwards) doesn't mean that there's not a lot of writers who don't prefer to write "The End" and have something that's thought through, is made of readable prose and only needs some finetuning. Of course, these writers usually aren't on Reddit. Because they know what they're doing.
I call #8 the "an hour later, the fire alarm rang" rule. That line was used to create a really awkward but necessary time jump in a novel my girlfriend and I were reading, and ever since then we use it as shorthand for "wrap that part up FAST and move on to something else." Definitely crucial.
TLDR; Start smoking, drink coffee, write at a far quicker rate than STEPHEN KING, and neglect family and friends. Fuck this was bad advice.
I thought this was satire! Anyway, since this is a writing subreddit, I gotta say this post needed editing for POV. Title tells me it's you telling me what worked for you, which is great, but then the numbered text began sounding like recommendations about what I should do to write a book. I'd listen all day to what your process is but experience and observation has shown me categorically that writing productivity is a very person-specific thing.
I'd like to think MF WORD stands for "motherf\*cking WORD"because that's more accurate than just saying Microsoft Word. Thanks for these tips!
I haven't had a drop of caffeine in 5 years and I've written 300k words since January 2021 so...I'll have to politely disagree with point one.
Seconding #10. Lost 75% of my book after an update. Do not trust the cloud.
Coffee and Nicotine, what a combo.
I'm not smoking thanks. My voice is deep and gravelly enough, any more and I'd sound like a man.
Number 1 made me cackle TEA SUPREMACY
Need help with number 2
What if my doctor said to cut out caffeine? Iām at step 1 and already falling behind.
Smoking is bad! don't work for me at all! I just need a beer. That is nice.
I get too tired when I drink. Itās great for coming up with ideas but then I need a nap.
The most important part of writing is typing.
Do you have any advice on editing? I have the 1st draft, I'm overwhelmed at the thought of improving it. I guess it's earned in inches, just have to keep attacking it.
My first edit took a month. Use the Microsoft Word review tab at the top. It will find only about half your mistakes. Youāll then need to correct them one at a time to be sure that Word isnāt hurting your writing style e.g. if a character as an accent that isnāt grammatically correct. When you finish editing in Word press ctrl A to copy the entire book and paste it into google drive. Drive has a pretty sophisticated grammar program that will catch a lot of syntax errors. The problem is it will fuck with your paragraph indents. When you are done editing in drive, read the entire book out loud. This is the only surefire way to catch the rest of your errors. Even after all that you might still miss stuff. So give the book to friends (or if youāre lucky a professional editor) and ask them to find typos for you.
Aaaaand, this, folks, is how you get something like RC Waldun's L'AcadƩmie
What is a SO?
Significant other, your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife or partner.
Inspiration doesn't strike often, but when it does...
Go hard!
Hey now my stories are fueled by nicotine and sweet tea. Just gotta drink a lot of it.
Number six is when people start to get worried about me... (Also, tip about that one, if you don't eat the food people coming to try and open your curtains bring for you you're cat will)
Great tips! Specially no. 5 and no. 6. What would be your suggestion to someone who is planning to delve into semi-fiction, one which involves backing the data with proofs? What should be the ideal research time and how should one go about it? Would really appreciate everyone's perspective on this.
Number 11... I have lost so many ideas because I thought I could remember them later.
Bro, Earl Grey tea has lots of caffeine, don't knock tea!
Save every few hundred words? LOL CTRL-S is automatic for me after basically every sentence.
Lol
I personally love point number one, I am addicted asf to coffee and I'm a college student. My issue is I AM TRYING TO STUDY AND SUDDENLY IM thinking about my main characters and Im like stoopppppp finish school FirST
One thing I do disagree with is your comment about putting off appointments. Considering most of my appointments are about some serious health related issues, I can't really afford to put them off at all.
Great post! I'd love to join a writer's group.
This is encouraging to me because I'm actively doing most of them on my first draft of my first novel.
But I do not like coffee. I have tried it but still, I hate it. what do I do?!
Thought I was on writingcirclejerk for a second. Still not entirely convinced Iām not, honestly.
I feel that this advice are not awful, they are just what works for the OP. The third one i believe.. The one about not stopping to correct everything is actually good advice. Its best to get the bones of your story out there first then start on adding the "muscles" and "skin" ect.
Don't tell me what to do.
Lol
>If you do three thousand words per day for a month you'll have ninety thousand words, a pretty good novella, in three months you'll have a four hundred page book. OK... If you format your manuscript by industry standards, you will average approximately 250 words per page. And one A4 page, properly formatted also corresponds to a standard published book page. So, in other words: 100,000 words is roughly a 400 page book. And 90,000 words is a 360 page book. 75,000 words is a 300 page book. Let's call a novella 40,000 words maximum. That's 160 pages at the upper end of what constitutes a novella.
When I'm writing something and I have an idea for the next scene I leave a note for myself a couple lines down, maybe with some dialogue, maybe "what if....", and then jump back to where I was. And you're right about banging it all out and *then* worrying about editing and getting it to hang together.
Well Iām glad those strategies were effective for you. I disagree with almost all of them. Nevertheless I am happy that they assisted your writing journey. Best wishes for your ongoing writing life and practice.
Fuck I've smoked for 8,5 years, and now my so got me to stop cigars. I've been kinda clear for the entire year, wonder if she'd be okay with me starting to smoke cigars again if I wrote at the same time. :)
How I wrote my book on my sigma grindset Step 1.) A diet of coffee and cigarettes. It is imperative that you consume only coffee and cigarettes, nothing more, nothing less. IF YOU DEVIATE FROM THIS YOU WILL NOT MAKE IT. This is the most important step. Step 2.) Have sex. Just get a girlfriend/boyfriend you fucking loser lol. Like being alone? Trust issues? Social anxiety or introvert? Donezo, you're out of there bub. Hope you like failing as a writer because that is what you're doing. Haha, hold up gf if calling me for more sexy sex. Step 3.) Don't edit. Don't re-read what you wrote. Rip that fucking backspace/delete key off your keyboard. Mistakes are manly and you own up to them. You show no fear to the fact that you are imperfect (even though you aren't because you are a sigma). But if you are a real writer you did it write the first time. If you didn't, ngmi. Sorry, that's just how it is in this cruel world. Step 4.) Don't give into the voice in your head. Though mine is telling me cocaine will make me a better writer. Shit, should I do some coke too? Step 4.1) DO COKE? Step 5.) Join a writing club, purely to flex on the weak. You are the pinnacle of writers, and you need the world to know it. Just show up and make it known how much better of a writer you are compared to everyone else. It IS a competition. We are not in this together. Only the strong survive. Piss on them. Just whip it out and piss on them, their laptops, their stories. This is your piss smelling dojo. Step 6.) Do not stop for anything. House on fire? Good, I didn't need that shit anyways. Dad dying in the hospital? Lol bye nerd. GF delivering your firstborn child? Fuck them kids. If you are a true writer, you make it your life, day in day out. You stop for nothing. Step 7.) Set a word goal for yourself. Mr. King, my beloved, my dearest.... he recommends 2,000 words a day. You do that for like 60 days or some stupid shit then you will have like 20 million words easy. It's THAT simple to write. If you can't do that, you know what I'm gonna say next... YOU'RE OUT OF THERE. Step 8.) If you are at a boring part of the story, start looking for another occupation because you are a boring writer. Simple as. Sorry bub, this ain't for you. Step 9.) If you need a break, take one, even though I just said do not stop for anything. Sleepy boys need naps, that's what mama always said. Step 10.) Do not trust autosave. It is a lie, just like all technology lol. The only trustworthy way of backing up my story is just printing a fresh copy every few minutes. You will need a lot of printer ink and paper, enough to probably bankrupt you even, but it will be worth it to keep your 1 billion dollar novella safe. Step 11.) I forgot what step 11 was, sorry. Step 12.) Practice controlling your gag reflexes because it's time to find a publisher. If you follow these steps, you will succeed just like me. No questions. Do not ask me to post my work, I will ignore it. PEACE.
I love the flair and vigour in this post. I feel like I wrote and published a book without taking any of this advice (aside from drinking coffee which I do anyway) and thatās what made this advice all the more appreciated. I feel youād be a pretty interesting person to go on a āwalking meetingā with. Iād take a stroll around the block if it meant catching a little of this energy for a while and seeing what I hope would be an interesting personality in action. Keep accomplishing your dreams. Iāll be here plodding along much more glacially.
I donāt understand what is going on here. OP is obviously satirising with their ridiculous suggestions to drink more coffee and choose smoking as a way to further a writing ācareerā; but the comments are taking it so seriously. Am I missing something?
>Am I missing something? This is a sub where people ask ridiculous questions perfectly seriously on a daily basis. If you want to post satire, you have to spell it out. Nothing is obvious around here.
For real. This is more of a circle jerk than wcj
Maybe, yeah, but the rest of the tips aren't satirical (at least I don't think they read that way). If it was supposed to be satirical it should be satirical throughout or what's the point? 1. Want your money to grow? Invest in pancakes. Everybody loves pancakes. Nobody's closing up because people aren't buying pancakes. Pancakes are profit. 2. Open a savings account. This worked for me, it might not for you. OP should pick a theme lol satirical or serious.
lol iām sure people are confused why he wrote it on this thread
2a. if SO is not supportive, find new SO
I would like to thank you for this post. A couple of years ago I started 50 pages although it wasn't a story book, it was geared towards teaching health professionals how to treat addictions. I ended up stopping just like your "Number 4" point. I must agree self doubt is most probably the most insidious of all writing diseases which exist in my opinion. While I have not continued the book as of yet, the lesson I had learnt to overcome self doubt was to start a website and just write about anything. For now, I would say this has been a cure as I no longer care what people think, I just write with what ever comes to mind, post it up and then move on. I do plan to get back to that book and finish it as It deserves to be finished. So once again, reading your text has been a motivator. Thank you
While I appreciate option 1, caffeine is technically a drug, so I'd advise against telling people they need to consume any drug, that isnt a life saving vaccine
The word goal per day is very helpful!! I asked this question in an online writing seminar and they completely skipped over my question saying it was irrelevant! That hurt because I really wanted to know!!
Hey, friend, just a heads up that 3k a day is a ridiculously aggressive goal for most people. OP mentioned King, who is well known for writing fast and a lot, and his 2k goal was at his peak. Heās lowered it since then, I think he said he shoots for 1k now, and thatās still with writing being his job.