GET A CAT; PREPARE FOR SLEEPLESSNESS; STAY CLEAR OF STRONG ELIXIRS - SEVEN TOP WRITERS’ TIPS ON WRITING

By El Ochiis

Cats are mascots for writers. More importantly, Edgar Allen Poe had one; Hemingway had twenty-three; and, TS Elliot wrote a poem to them.

I have a cat, yet, I haven’t written anything since the beginning of the pandemic; then, the unrest of protesting for justice came crashing down, tearing at my moral responsibility to fellow humans, further spiraling me into writing silence. I reached out to an old guru who was stuck in self-isolation and asked him for advice to try to get my writing mojo back.

He told me to put down what I was trying to complete and just write, anything. I took this advice, which propelled me into researching other writing advice. It occurred to me that there isn’t a correct way to set about writing creatively. Some writers thrive in isolation; others can hammer out award-winning prose at local coffee shops; whilst others, though a struggle, are able to snatch time between chores and cleaning little, runny noses.

Conversely, it became abundantly clearer that along with a variety of approaches, there are specific ideas and pieces of advice that many writers hold in common.

Here are seven that held my attention that I feel will help you as a writer:

1.  “Writing anything is better than nothing,” -Katherine Mansfield. Don’t get it right, get it written – “Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you are doomed,” -Ray Bradbury.

2. “Just take a page at a time,” - John Steinbeck. This advice is spot on: “Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day. It helps.”

3. “Get offline,” -Zadie Smith – Take a long hard sigh, and, turn off the Wi-Fi – it’s so much more productive if you can “Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.”

4. “If it sounds like writing, rewrite it,” -Elmore Leonard; Steinbeck too.  

5. “Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action." -Kurt Vonnegut.

6.  “You constantly hurry your narrative … by telling it, in a sort of impetuous breathless way, your own person, when the person [characters] should tell it and act it for themselves,” -Charles Dickens. “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” -Anton Checkhov. “Show don’t tell.”

7. “…what grabs readers isn’t beautiful writing, a rip-roaring plot, or surface drama; what grabs readers is what gives those things meaning and power:  the story itself,” -Lisa Cron.

The best writing serves the reader, not the writer, so don’t sit there waiting for perfect, beautiful sentences – you’ll be sitting there forever. Start out by tripping, you will fall, then get up and fall again – the key is to keep getting up after you have fallen, then, keep writing. Oh, if you were thinking about taking a sip of hard liquor, Leo Tolstoy and F Scott Fitzgerald warned: “Don’t write and drink.”