Anyone who wants to read some of my advice on writing should feel free to click on http://mabfan.livejournal.com/tag/writing-advice . That link includes all my Robert's Rules posts as well.

I'm going to PM you about this -- I'm not comfortable stating it here because it has to do with somebody else, not me.

I have three links for you, not that they're dead serious but they're ... for me ... all true.

Here's one

and two

and three.

Just an add to what you said previously on publishers and their biz. Which is, know your prospective publisher's market.

I used to work for a publisher whose primary product was tarot cards and books about tarot cards. You could have sent us The Da Vinci Code with an endorsement from Stephen King, and I would have said, no, we don't do fiction. However literary or saleable--we don't do fiction. We didn't publish high art decks, either. I remember saying to an artist, I hate to tell you this, but while this is excellent, it's too artistic, not illustrative enough. (Please, I'm not saying illustration isn't art; just trying to make a point.) Some of the European publishers, on the other hand, did publish artistic decks as limited editions.

So a "no" doesn't necessarily reflect quality at all. However good something is, it has to be a fit with the agent and/or publishing house. Publishers are very leery of publishing a book whose target audience (how I despise that useful phrase) is unknown to them.

Here are my basic rules on writing. This is both from personal experience and from running a writer's group for a while. #1 gives me the most trouble.

1. Write. It doesn't matter how much you know, how much you think you know or how much you talk about what you know if you aren't getting words onto a page.
2. Learn the rules before you break them. If you are consistently told your ideas are great but your syntax sucks hairy donkey balls, then pick up a grammar book and learn how to do it correctly.
3. Gag your inner naysayer. That nagging little voice that tells you "you can't do that" is WRONG. Stop listening to it.
4. Accept constructive criticism. It will make you a better writer in the end.
5. Look at Rule 1 again.
6. Ask for help. Writing does not have to be a solitary activity. Find a core group of writing buddies with whom you can exchange ideas, share papercut stories, whatever.
7. Keep trying. Everyone gets rejected. Dust yourself off and submit again.
8. Still remembering Rule 1, right?
9. Don't think it will happen overnight. Expecting riches to fall into your lap on your first submission only sets yourself up for discouragement.
10. Because it bears repeating: WRITE, DAMMIT!

Edited at 2008-09-23 03:25 pm (UTC)

Excellent (added you by the way).

As someone who just got out of the publishing industry, I find all the things you listed, and others, too, wonderfully wonderful. :)

Well, you wanted to hear...

I came to the conclusion a while back that I am a blogger - not a writer, even though I am compelled to write.

I write for myself alone, so all I share is that which is in my journal.

I like to think of myself as a writer's cheerleader! :-)

Stop trying so hard. Some of the worst writing I've ever seen has come from people who are dying to show you how "artistic" they are. There can be only one Kerouac, one Hemingway, one Plath, etc. Find your own voice, and remember, if you constantly need to explain something you wrote, it's not your audience, it's you.

This advice comes from Stephen King, but I've really taken to it: go easy on adverbs. Most of the time they're unnecessary. You also don't need to use "he hissed," "barked," "gurgled," "brayed" or otherwise where a simple "he said" would do.

Good grammar and spelling counts. Yes, really, it does, don't argue this with me.

If you can't write a good sex scene, don't write one at all. Please. PLEASE.

Don't be gimmicky. If you have an idea for a love story, write the love story, don't feel like you have to jazz it up by making one of the characters an alien, or a werewolf or in the Witness Protection Program or something like that. If you start with interesting characters and give them an interesting story arc, those kinds of bells and whistles shouldn't be necessary. I'm reminded of the heavy metal singer who, after accidentally being set on fire by a pyrotechnic display during a concert, told his guitarist in the ambulance "If we could write good songs we wouldn't need to do this stupid shit."

Don't ever give up.

author E.E. Knight (eeknight) has posted a series of LJ Posts on the craft of writing that I've found really helpful.

go here: http://eeknight.livejournal.com/258236.html
and if you scroll down he has links to the rest of the posts.

Just on a personal note, there are a lot of published authors on LJ (Tanya Huff-andpuff, Caitlin R Kiernan-greygirlbeast, Phaedra Weldon-meharet, Keith De Candido-kradical, Terri Osborne-terri_osborne and of course EE Knight (above) to name a very few on my FList, and Neil Gaiman has a feed from his blog available.) Sometimes reading their blogs can be motivational and informational, if only to show the experiences of a working writer. YMMV.

Afraid I'm not going to be much help to the fiction writers out there, but I do write for some of the biggest audiences in the country—federal employees and military personnel. Being a technical writer has afforded me something I've always wanted to do, which was write reference works—in this case, software user manuals, apparatus procedures, policies, and high-level briefings.

Sure, it's not as cool as writing a novel but it does allow one the opportunity to constantly learn about the craft and get paid for it.

So, I haven't been published (yet) save for a few letters to the editor, but there's one very important thing writers need to keep in mind with writing, and that is to HAVE FUN! Yes, there are days where it's grueling, disappointing, whatever; but if you're not having fun the majority of the time, then something's wrong.

Just my $0.02...

I have had a tremendously wonderful experience doing community-sponsored self-publishing.

Just thought I'd say that, as I'm not sure how many people would. :)

Anyone who wants to read about my writing (not just what I write, but the process) can just look up my LJ here. I posted an entire novel on my LJ, and I use it to mirror the workblog I maintain on my MySpace page, plus some extras (like "Adventures in Translation" posts that I occasionally do here but never on my MySpace blog).

Actually, I just began work on a new novel, so this is the perfect jumping on point for anyone who is interested in how I approach research, outlining, and the actual writing.

Good writers apparently know the right balance of tone.

I had entered a writing competition at school (obviously, this was MANY years ago), and the teacher overseeing it pulled me aside, along with another gal. We had both done poorly, and the teacher explained that we were opposite ends of the spectrum; I was too "meat and potatoes", and she was too "fluffy dessert". Both are reasonable, but they needed some of the other person's work to make something that didn't sound either pointless or ponderous. I didn't take well to that (at the time I thought I was the bee's knees); it's no compliment to be told, as a teenager, that your style is best suited for writing technical manuals - useful as that is.

So when everyone talks about their writing (be it fanfic or paid work), or how excited they are about doing something for NaNoWriMo, I'm always on the outside looking in; I have no dog in this fight. I do my blog entries, and I keep a dream journal - and that's it. Oh, and your fiction? Haven't read it, or any other fiction, for over 30 years.

I facilitated a writing group for 4 years. I learned so much during that time, but one of the biggest issues was that people never felt the need to practice writing. That astounded me. People were so focused on submitting pieces, getting published, etc, when they were missing key elements in their manuscript that could've easily been fixed had they practiced writing.

My piano teacher used to say "Practice perfect, play perfect." I think that's effective when writing, too.

Longtimelistener Firstimecaller.

I don't know anything about the writers' market, but I've taught writing, and I find that there is one thing that makes all the difference: reading. Good writers read. They read everything they can. And they read consciously - they watch how the words go down on the page, their nature, order, and effects, to see how it was done.

kradical and I wrote an tiny little essay on writing

http://www.well.com/user/ladyhawk/GADKRADWriting.html

and I must add absolute agreement with springheel_jack.

I got nothin', but I'll enjoy reading how it works for everybody else.

Having been both published as a writer and a currently active editor, I'll say that I'd rather be on my end of the pen any day.

i.e. - The red pen has *power*. *grin*