Happy national writing month

I hope everyone is having a good NanoWriMo.  November is a great opportunity for getting our writing hustle on and busting out some pages.  In honor of that, this month I’ll be discussing some of the best advice I’ve learned to help burgeoning writers get over the hump and put ink to paper.

The first is simply this.  Don’t sweat your first book.  I’ve met too many people who were so terrified their first foray into writing would be a flop, they never got started.  And that’s a pity.  I’m of the firm belief that writing is a skill (not some arcane magical power) and therefore everybody can learn and improve.  That includes everybody reading this post.

If you’re just getting started, your first goal is to form the habit of writing.  Get something on to the page.  Anything.  If it’s more mess than masterpiece, don’t worry.  You should have seen the first draft of my first novel.  It would have brought Dickens to tears, and not in a good way.  But that’s the way of things.  If you listen to the top authors out there, many of them wrote several novels that never reached publication while they honed their skills.  There’s no reason you can’t add your name to that list if you’re willing to stick with it.

And that’s my advice.  Get to writing.  Sure, read the top authors in your genre and learn from them.  But don’t judge yourself by them.  Your goal now is to improve, and you can’t do that without practice.  So long as your next manuscript of draft is better than the last, you’re on the write track (pun intended.)  Keep at it, and best of luck.

Happy Writing,

Russell