- Write the story (or blog post!) first, edit later. See them as separate tasks.
- Read widely and well to feed the brain. I like a mix of fiction and non-fiction, humour and serious things.
- Subscribe to a writing magazine to get market news, enter competitions and so on.
- When entering a competition, if there's an option to get feedback, seriously consider choosing it. I've received a lot of helpful advice and tips this way.
- Refer to The Writers and Artists Yearbook for where to submit work, details of writing festivals/conferences and so on.
- Go to writing festivals/conferences. You make friends for one thing and learn a lot from the courses you do. I'm going to the Swanwick Summer School for the first time this year and am looking forward to it already. And I very much hope one thing to come from it will be more writing friends.
- Develop writing friendships. The mutual support and understanding (especially when yet more rejections come in) can help you both.
- Accept the fact you won't get something written perfectly (or as near to perfect as you can get) first go. Redrafts are your friend!
- Outline whether you write short stories or novels. How much you put in an outline is of course up to you. I've found working out my ideas first has helped me clarify my thoughts, has stopped me going off at a tangent and has sped up the actual writing of the story.
- Enjoy your writing - if you don't, nobody else will!
Every writer has their own writing rules, the things that work for them. Here are some of mine:-
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm Allison Symes and write fairytales with bite, especially novels and short stories. Archives
October 2019
Categories |