When I was around 13 a guy who went on to some success as a writer asked me a question. “Trevor, what do you write with?” I answered a typewriter. “No, what do you write with?” I answered, um, sometimes a pencil? “No. You write with your ass. Because if you don’t put your ass in a chair, you don’t write.” There’s no substitute for thousands of pages of terrible writing to cull out the acceptable writing to shape into the good writing.
When I was around 20 a woman who was a professional writer told me she was working on her next book. “What’s it about?” I asked. She said thanks for asking but she wasn’t going to say. She said you can either write, or you can talk about writing. You need to decide which one you’re going to do and not confuse them. When you talk about writing, your brain thinks you’ve written and stops working. Only writing is writing. Feedback from peers can be helpful. General statements of where you’re at, fine. Specifics of what you’re doing to the general public is making a big map and never walking in the territory.
These two bits of advice have been tremendously helpful to me. I get published every once in a while.
When I was around 13 a guy who went on to some success as a writer asked me a question. “Trevor, what do you write with?” I answered a typewriter. “No, what do you write with?” I answered, um, sometimes a pencil? “No. You write with your ass. Because if you don’t put your ass in a chair, you don’t write.” There’s no substitute for thousands of pages of terrible writing to cull out the acceptable writing to shape into the good writing.
When I was around 20 a woman who was a professional writer told me she was working on her next book. “What’s it about?” I asked. She said thanks for asking but she wasn’t going to say. She said you can either write, or you can talk about writing. You need to decide which one you’re going to do and not confuse them. When you talk about writing, your brain thinks you’ve written and stops working. Only writing is writing. Feedback from peers can be helpful. General statements of where you’re at, fine. Specifics of what you’re doing to the general public is making a big map and never walking in the territory.
These two bits of advice have been tremendously helpful to me. I get published every once in a while.