Originally posted on February 16, 2011 at 12:20 AM
With all of the writing blogs out there, doesn’t it eventually begin to feel like everyone is just regurgitating the same advice in different phrasing? Well, you won’t have to worry about that here. Writers, I present to you:
10 Ways to Make Everything You Write Shoot Immediately to the Top of the NYT Bestsellers List and Gain Dozens of Lovers AND Have Obama Ask You to Give the Next State of the Union
10. Work naked. It frees you from doubts and inhibitions, and if you take pictures you’ll get lots of followers on Twitter. (Incidentally, follow me on Twitter!)
9. Try alternating your sentences between long, flowing, voluminous sentences that seem to roll like the spring grass on the hillside of a place so magical it could only exist in the mind, and fit in so many clauses and extra phrases that one loses sense of place and time and becomes one with the words like bathing in softly flowing rain until the letters gain their own individual meaning and impart it to you like the nectar of truth, and really short ones. It works.
8. When in doubt, make your characters start arguing violently.
7. Write only one sentence a day. Perfect that sentence. Tomorrow, move on.
6. Alternatively, write your entire novel on methamphetamines without ever stopping to eat, sleep, or pee.
5. Pay someone better than you to do it for you.
4. Don’t worry about quality. Just carry around a machete when you solicit sales.
3. If you write something that actually sounds decent, be sure to cut it out of the final draft. You’re supposed to murder your darlings, remember?
2. Whatever you’re writing, sprinkle in some monkeys. Everyone likes monkeys.
1. Do all of this simultaneously, preferably while wearing a hat that looks like this:
This works for me. It will work for you, too. Guaranteed*.
*Lies.
Share this:
