How not to be a writer - #6

How can you stop yourself from becoming a writer? By keeping all your thoughts locked in your mind, and never lifting a piece of tool to record down these thoughts that eventually turns into an essay, a dissertation, a short story, a novel, a play.

Don't bothere picking up your pen and a pad of paper to record fleeting thoughts. Don't take your phone out and write a short note about the idea you have that will bring the point home to what you are achieving.

If we don't use tools at our disposal, whether it's a typerwriter, an iPad, a pen and paper, Scrivener, then there's no way the world can read what your ideas are, what stories you have in your mind.

So, open up your wrod processing of choice, your favorite pen, sit down, and start writing. Write, whether you have 3 minutes or 3 hours. I have a 20-month old girl sitting next to me, and I never know how long I have to write these posts. Part of these exercises is to also get her used to her mommy writing on the laptop and teach boundaries ("No, no touching the laptop! Ahhh, you typed some weird letters!"

Humans have the ability to create fantastic tools to help us achieve things. It's time to use them.

How not to be a writer - #5

The best way to never become a writer is to never surround yourself in the company of other writers. Contrary to popular belief, most aspect of the writing craft is not done in a silo. Isolate yourself, and then you won't have much of an opportunity to become a writer.

Surrounding yourself with writers enables you to access many parts of shaping the stories you write. They provide encouragement, they provide feedback, they suggest tools, tips on how to organize what you are writing.

They also help you stay on track, and provide a sense of external accountability. This helps writers reach their goals.

By isolating yourself, you more than likely end up in an echo chamber. This can make the projects terrible to read. Ideas are not validated, unclear and confusing, and not as explored as deeply as it could go.

How do I mean by not exploring as deeply? When others give feedback, they can ask questions, provide their own interpretation in ways you never thought about and give you a fresh insight on things. It might even spark an idea about an unexplored part of a story.

Writing in company of others also motivates you to help writers improve their own craft. Doing this not only helps them but helps your own writing because you saw someone else's perspective, their stories, and it also inspires your writing.

Isolate yourself, and you won't have to worry about becoming a writer.

How not to be a writer - #4

Never write everyday. Or at all. By not writing everyday, you won't produce as much content, and you won't have to worry about needing something to write about. Or needing and wasting time that you can use to do something more useful to spend your life on. Like video games and web surfing. Those activities are useful, and if they are worth your time, then forget about writing. Why sacrifice any part of your day to writing? If you don't write everyday but some days, then why bother?

Writing inconsistently won't get you anywhere. To have the best chance at becoming a writer who publishes things, you need to be writing everyday, or at least 6 days a week if you can. You can start small, write a blog post everyday if you can't write something for your fictional story 9whether it be short story or a novel that you're working on).

That's basically why I started writing these blog posts. It's quick, raw, but gets me writing and held accountable by the world of internet.

So, to never become a writer, don't start a blog and start writing. 

How not to be a Writer #3

As breifly mentioned in the last post here, if you don't want to be a writer, don't read. By not reading, you won't get inspired by what you read. Reading is an ember, and the more you read, the more air is blown on the ember, and eventually start a fire.

This fire is the idea of your own story. Sure, it might have some elements of what you just read that inspired the story, but it won't be the same. It is your own spin.

After all, there is no "originality" as there are basically 6 stories. Man versus nature, man versus man, Man goes on a heroic journey, etc, etc.

So. If you don't want to be inspired to write a story, don't bother reading. That way you will never be a writer and think of new worlds and new characters of your own creation.

How not to be a writer - #2

In the next post of the series of how not to be a writer, of which the first post can be found here. For this post, we will cover the art of not daydreaming. It is important to never daydream because if you do, then you can succeed as a writer.

How do writers get ideas? One of those ways is to daydream, dream of worlds that don't exist. Dream up of strange animals, of strange, evil governments and dream of magical talisman.  When you read a book, you enter into these worlds and you start dreaming about them. The what ifs! The plot twists! The buildings and fashion!

That's why some love fan fiction so much, because they can continue daydreaming about the characters and the world they loved reading or watching about. That's why you also shouldn't read, but that's another post for another time. The topic here is about dreams.

Sure, there are pre-existing worlds we could dream about, but if you never dream up your own, then you will never be a writer. You will always be a fan fiction writer. Is that what you want? Nothing wrong with fan fiction, I'm a supporter of them because they let you practice writing. But they don't really let you practice world-building because that work is already done for you. That is the bad side of fan fiction.

THough, nothing stops you from building a new world with some of the characters of that world and make it yours. Just try not to be too obvious with what you are doing. It might be an enjoyable book, but people will always criticize you for copying characters straight up from someone else's work, a la 50 Shades.

So, dream. Dream a lot, and write down snippets of those dreams. Mine this information, and you will become a writer. If you don't want that, then don't dream.

How Not to be a Writer - #1

As a part exercise and part educational, I am writing a series of how not to be a writer.  At this point, this is all rough drafts and not polished, for the most part. This is in raw form. That's how you are not a writer--writing without polishing and putting it in front of the world for all to see.

Why is polishing important as a writer? No world-acclaimed or amatauer writer can write the perfect first draft. This draft is full of errors, stream-of-thought process where no self-editing is allowed. So many thoughts, most of them repetitive in the hopes of clarifying a though as best we can, needs to be cut out. There are also ideas that we write that shouldn't be there because it's confusing.

Not to mention the grammar, the spelling!

So, never polish your writing to make your writing stronger. This way, you will never become a writer that makes their living off what they write.

Into the void

After 19 months of being a mom, I am finally getting to a point where I am able to write once more. It's been so long, and the itch to write had been growing for the past few months. I did it. I now wrote a story which I have posted to /r/nosleep on Reddit. I will post it in this blog shortly once I have the whole story posted.

I also learned recently that I should write what I want to read. not write because I think I could tell the story. If I'm personally not interested in the characters, then why should I spend time with them?

There is a story I want to tell, but the wrong characters, the wrong setting. I don't really care about the characters. No matter the backstory, the personalities, etc., whatever, however I spin it, it doesn't work. So, I guess I will put this story on hold, Five People, One life. Maybe when I complete a fictional novel whose characters I care about, I will revisit the story idea.

So, I will write what I love to read. So, ehre are some of the things I love to read:

• Gender-bender, where the female character hides that they are a female
• Someone taking a long journey through something difficult, essentially by themselves. Inspired by Journey video game on Play Station 3
• Pirates, tall ships, the ocean
• Characters going through a tough training to get stronger
• Portal into another world
• Urban fantasy where the magical world hides themselves from the regular folks (Artemis Fowl, Mercy Thompson, Harry Potter)
• I don't realy care about villain-villains. Though horrible mean people, certainly. Like Umbridge, though she is considered to be a villain ... but not who Harry really faces off with in the end.

So, looks like I have the makings of a novel with all these elements I like to read about. Now I just need a character I care about and share an adventure with...