16804--Welcome to Write Club...

The first rule of WRITE CLUB is you do not talk about WRITE CLUB.  Writing is about writing, not talking about writing or finding a hundred other easier to perpetrate distractions.  You have a large and important job ahead of you and only you can get it done.  Your work will be humanity's mirror.  Your work will help humanity keep from tearing itself apart for another day, even if it only serves as a distraction during the reading.

The second rule of WRITE CLUB is  you do not talk about WRITE CLUB.  See the first rule.  You're not a talker, you're a writer.  Stop trying to impress people with what you plan to do someday.  Go do it.  Don't wait for inspiration.  You're not a waiter.  You're a writer.  A writer writes to get the writing done.  It's an active, dynamic process that produces a result because you hunted it down, clubbed it and dragged it home to be your bitch.  That's when you'll take those words and put them together with the fit of a verbal jigsaw puzzle, painting a picture that only you could've made.  You don't do Show-and-Tell.  You just show and let your writing do your talking.

The third rule of WRITE CLUB is if someone says "stop", goes limp or taps out, the writing is over.  Because you weren't a real writer, anyway.  If you were, quitting would never have been an option.  Some writers seem to spill words onto the blank page with ease.  Good for them, but there's no promise that coherency and quality are going to come together with ease.  What you've undertaken is supposed to be one of the hardest endeavors known to man.  Do it anyway.  Look into yourself, go where the pain is and poke it with a hot, dull spoon.  Take what you've found there and put it on your page.

The fourth rule of WRITE CLUB is you're alone with your writing.  There's endless inputs into your raw material, churning and filtering through the magical processor atop your neck.  There can be as many helpful hands as you like proofing and editing, but between your brain and the stringing together of words into coherent art there is only you.  No one can get your work to done better than you.

The fifth rule of WRITE CLUB is write one at a time.  Focus on your goal.  Finish whatever's on your mind before going on to something else.

The sixth rule of WRITE CLUB is shirts and shoes don't matter.  You're not a fashion model.  You're a writer.  Kick off the shoes and socks.  Write naked.  Or wrap up in a parka or a blanket.  Get comfortable and get to work.

The seventh rule of WRITE CLUB is writing will go on as long as it has to.  Give it all the time it needs, but don't rewrite forever.  At some point, you need to call it finished and show it to somebody else.

The eighth rule of WRITE CLUB is if you're going to be in WRITE CLUB, you have to write.  Writing is what writers do.  It doesn't get any simpler than that.  If you're going to write then do it.  Write or die.  You can plan all you like, but you never know what'll unfold while writing until you're writing. That's not something that comes by waiting for inspiration but by just getting on with writing.  Start it.  Then, finish it.  Not half.  Not some.  All of it.  You don't know what writer's block is because that's something whiners get, not writers.  In fact, from now on, let's just call it "whiner's block".  You write every day you breathe.  You have to.  You wouldn't feel right if you didn't.  You write, therefore you are.

16345--Rong Writing Made Right

Probably the worst writing advice I've ever received was also the weirdest.  Sadly, it came from another writer I met once.  I don't recall his name, my brain cells devoting themselves to processing and making attempts at rationalizing his strange words overwhelmed their normally firm grasp on names.  C'est la vie.

Years later, I'm not sure if his advice was sincere or if this writer I had a brief exchange with one afternoon had it in his heart to sabotage other writers.

It went like this, "Quality writing should be devoid of ego, so after you write something you need to set it aside.  Come back to it the next day and read it fresh.  Anything you like, you need to discard because that has an ego attachment."  I didn't feel like arguing with this guy, so I said, "I see," and let it go at that.  The philosopher in me really could understand the viewpoint.  By that point in Life, I'd been through a lot of martial arts training and spiritual philosophy stuff, so I was more than a little familiar with the concept of divesting oneself of the burdensome ego.

Still, it never sat right with me.  There were a lot of aspects of Life I could see making a case for leaving your ego to warm the bench and I could even see limiting its influence over my writing, but to throw out any thing I liked felt wrong.  How was that any way to assess your own work?  Assuming the work ever even found an audience, how would you ever even connect with them?  "Hi, everyone.  Thanks for buying my book.  Glad you like it, but I don't know why.  What's my favorite part?  I didn't like any of it."  He might as well have told me never to trust my eyes.  How about, "When you cook, taste the food.  Throw out anything that tastes good to you."

Advice like that I could only see resulting in bad cooking and bad writing.  Personally, I'm glad I chose to eat the many chocolate delights I've baked, the many meals I've cooked and to have written the works that I've crafted.  I put a lot of time, energy and attention into all of them because, y'know, practice practice practice.  That's how you get better at anything.  Whether it be culinary arts, martial arts, literary arts or whatever else you choose to dedicate yourself to, open yourself to what you love love love and practice practice practice.

A lot of us learn by doing.  Some only learn by doing wrong.  Either way, can mean a lot of crispy cookies and burned pancakes.  It could mean broken bones and things, depending on your particular passion.  One of the great things about writing is that the practice paving the road of improvement is rewriting which has no limit to the number of times it can be done.  If all goes well, the more you do it, the less you'll have to do it.

That just leaves the other question.  Weigh-in with your thoughts.  Was it sincerely weird advice or sabotage couched as counsel?