Best Writing Advice You Heard

[cows]

This thread might be useful to new users or struggling writers. Hopefully it can be useful to some. I want to hear the best advice you have all heard about writing.

The best advice I have had came from an English professor in college. He said that writing is something that you shouldn't do regularly if you can help it because good writers can't. He also said the the biggest thing that kills a writer's prose is over complicating the flow. Simplicity is for the text and if you get complicated, let it be with the topics and characters.

I didn't like the teacher at the time, but those words stuck with me.

[B-Mental]

here is a link to a post I started a while back with some advice from Kurt Vonnegut. http://"http://www.online-literature...d.php?t=23807"

[Monica]

I've been told that the most important stuff is to tell a story. And that the reader comes first... which apparently isn't always that obvious. Also there're 10 rules by Elmore Leonard http://www.mysteryinkonline.com/2004...es_for_wr.html

[Scheherazade]

Never use an eraser.

[Turk]

Never try to copy another writer, you are not him it will seem quite affectation, write whatever you want to tell us. Try to see the world and try to understand it. Those are few...

[linz]

Never try to copy another writer, you are not him it will seem quite affectation, write whatever you want to tell us. Try to see the world and try to understand it. Those are few...

Everyone trying to be special leads to a bunch of pompous babbling nonesense. You must not believe in objectiveness at all!

[cranberry]

Always write what comes to you immediatley write it down so that what ever you want to tell seems clear.

[chasestalling]

This thread might be useful to new users or struggling writers. Hopefully it can be useful to some. I want to hear the best advice you have all heard about writing.

The best advice I have had came from an English professor in college. He said that writing is something that you shouldn't do regularly if you can help it because good writers can't. He also said the the biggest thing that kills a writer's prose is over complicating the flow. Simplicity is for the text and if you get complicated, let it be with the topics and characters.

I didn't like the teacher at the time, but those words stuck with me.

that's very interesting because writing is always a drag for me but for a three month window during winter when i feel that i can do no wrong.

as for the best advice -- an injunction to rewrite by a teacher's assistant. and he's right as the stuff i turn out during those three magical months is invariably flawed.

[Charles Darnay]

Don't force it....don't write becasue you think you have to, write becasue you think you want to.

[applepie]

The advice that was given to me was by my high school english teacher. She would always tell me "Never write in half measures. Throw yourself into it with all of your heart. Sometimes it will be garbage, sometimes it will be great, but always it will be yours." It was some of the best advice I've ever recieved. She was right and to this day I always submerse myself in my writing. I don't try to imitate others I just write what pleases me, and who knows somtime in the future it may be a pleasure to someone else.

[Visionary3]

I once took a poetry writing class by a published Texas poetry writer. So many of us were sensitive about getting rejections and she told us that the factors might not have anything to do with how good a poem was. In some contests the person paying for the prize can be the judge so it could be chosen because of their personal taste. With regard to magazines the poet has no way of knowing what all else they have published, what is in their files to be published, or what the editor's taste is. With regard to books, not a lot of new poetry books are being published so self publishing is an option. She didn't think we should give up because of rejections.

[Bakiryu]

Always carry a notepad and write when the muse gets you, don't force it.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I like the alteration made by Grace Paley to the familiar "Write about what you know" which she amended to read "Write what you don't know about what you know."

[dzebra]

Stephen King said something like "To be a good author, read 4 hours a day and write 4 hours a day." I don't know anyone who actually does that, but after I read that, I started devoting more time to reading and writing and I felt like I got better.

[Mortis Anarchy]

I took a creative writing summer course at this arts place...well my instructor was rather blunt. He told us, exact words...."DON'T SUCK STUPID!" I think he was referrin to this one person in particular...it has stayed with me since then though.