Sharing writing tips with other writers helps the whole writing community
I spend a lot of time learning about writing. I read blogs, listen to podcasts, attend conferences, scrutinize magazines, and study books. Though I will never finish growing as a writer, I have learned so much. In fact, everything I know about writing came from one of these five sources.
In considering it all, the one thing that helped me the most was the simple adage to write every day.
This advice to write every day, however, isn’t absolute, it’s a principle to write regularly. It means to have a schedule and stick with it. It reminds us to write on the days we don’t feel like it or have other things we’d rather do.
It was a big stretch for me just to move to five days a week, which later became six, and eventually seven. Now I’m working on scaling back to six days so I can have one day off each week from writing. It’s a hard adjustment for me to make. I’m still not there.
Yet the principle to write every day has made the difference for me and my writing.
Please share it with other readers in the comment section below.
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Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
4 replies on “Your Turn: What’s the Best Writing Advice You’ve Ever Received?”
As Nike says, “Just do it!”
So true!
I agree – write every day is probably the best advice. I came close to accomplishing this during NaNoWriMo this past year and found that this does work! Now to keep it up. December effectively messes me up as far as keeping any kind of schedule (I sew and craft a lot of gifts and travel a lot during that month). Now to give myself the gift of writing every day (with one day off already scheduled in).
Besides advice, the encouragement I’ve received, from high school Creative Writing teacher, college prof. (with whom I’ve recently reconnected), recent editors of anthologies where my poetry has been published, and most of all my discerning and wise husband (biggest fan and best critic/critique) keep me writing, and spur me to be better and better.
Holy, we can all use some encouragement from time to time. I’m glad you have people to spur you on!