A few years ago I attended one of Katie Fforde's writing courses at York.  The other day I was decluttering my office and I found this and felt it could be useful to all our writers.

Do not believe everything you learn from writing courses
Write what you know
Persevere
Have a good plot
Write in your own voice
Top tip - dont make it sound like writing
Cut out all the dull bits
Be comfortable with making the reader feel the pain
Don't write just for the money
Don't cheat your reader - don't skip scenes
You're allowed to write badly

YES!

Yes to all of that.

My only query concerns that old chestnut - 'Write what you know'

Unless I'm writing a guide book or instruction manual, I'd rather write what I don't know. If we all wrote what we knew and nothing else, it would be an extremely dull world.

H3K

Quote from: hillwalker3000 on January 17, 2018, 12:21:36 PM
My only query concerns that old chestnut - 'Write what you know'

Unless I'm writing a guide book or instruction manual, I'd rather write what I don't know. If we all wrote what we knew and nothing else, it would be an extremely dull world.

I don't take the "write what you know" quite that literally. My take on it is that we intuitively know quite a lot of things that we don't "know" in the sense that we haven't learned them or experienced them, but we still get them.

E.g. I don't know what it's like to have a brother, seeing that I never had one, but I can extrapolate from my experience with having sisters, friends, cousins, what it could be like.

I don't know what it's like to lose a parent (yet), but I know loss.

I don't know how to play the violin, but I know what a violin looks and feels like. I know what it sounds like. And I know how to play the piano, so again, I can extrapolate from there.

If you're writing fiction I would add 'Have a Story to tell'.  Should be obvious, but it isn't always there.

Some people write beautifully, but the story's missing.  You see this sometimes with famous authors who are perhaps struggling to meet their one novel a year obligation.

You see others whose writing is a bit choppy, or who make word choices which snag at your mind, but the story itself is compelling enough for you to read on through these obstacles.

All of the above.  It's a good list - except for the last one.  You're not allowed to write badly.  Writing badly is not an option.  If you think you might be writing badly, go back and write better.

I try to write a minimum of 1000 words a day. Looking over my stuff, out of ten days, one day is good. Out of ten good days, one day is excellent. Try as I might, I'm still writing a lot of crap. But I have to write the crap to get at the excellent pieces.

Quote from: DAnuchan on January 17, 2018, 04:55:40 PM
I try to write a minimum of 1000 words a day. Looking over my stuff, out of ten days, one day is good. Out of ten good days, one day is excellent. Try as I might, I'm still writing a lot of crap. But I have to write the crap to get at the excellent pieces.

At least you recognize the difference. The real problem comes from writing crap and thinking it's worthy of a Nobel Prize.

Quote from: Jo Bannister on January 17, 2018, 02:41:16 PM
All of the above.  It's a good list - except for the last one.  You're not allowed to write badly.  Writing badly is not an option.  If you think you might be writing badly, go back and write better.

I think I see what you mean, and I'm going to disagree - if only just a little. I don't do bad writing, and sometimes I wish I could, but my mind isn't wired that way. But because I have to produce at least reasonably good writing every time I write, I find myself suffering from writer's block often.

So I'd say bad writing is allowed as long as you go back to fix it later. Theoretically of course, because try as I might, I can't make myself to do it.

Quote from: Dansinger on January 17, 2018, 08:18:53 PM
I'd say bad writing is allowed as long as you go back to fix it later.

And that sounds a perfectly reasonable way to proceed.  Whether you fix as you go along, or fix after you've finished, the main thing is to fix - and to fix before you show it to anyone else.

Of course every word we write isn't going to be perfect first time.  I too do a lot of sifting through dross in the hopes of uncovering gold.  Gaviano is right: it's recognising the difference between what we first thought of and what we're capable of producing, and taking the trouble to upgrade it from the former to the latter, that makes us writers rather than just people who know how to type.

I think what Katie meant about being allowed to write badly, is that if you are a new writer, dont worry about experimenting with your writing.  In that respect you are allowed to write badly, as long as you learn to improve as you go along. 

Lin