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Favourite Writing Tips

What's your favourite writing tip? I have a large collection of them in a notebook and when I feel in need of inspiration and encouragement (which is quite a lot of the time to be honest) I flick through and pick out the ones that seem to apply to my particular writing problem or dilemma.

Most of the tips come from well-established and successful writers and I was pleased to find a few new ones the other day in the Successful Writer e-letter which comes from the informative website http://www.writethismoment.com/ I look at this site on a regular basis and it is one of the links on my website (http://www.melissalawrence.co.uk/) because it contains up to the minute listings of jobs and other opportunities, including competitions, for freelance writers and journalists.

I have been puzzling over one of the two writing tips they included from Ray Bradbury which is "You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance". If anyone can explain it to me, I'll be happy to include it in my little red book! (The other Bradbury tip was "You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you" if anyone is interested.)

The one I found the most helpful from Succesful Writer's list was from Anton Chekhov (we're in good company today!) which is "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass". I'm going to try and remember that one next time I'm struggling with "show don't tell".

I've picked a couple of tips from my notebook which might be useful if, like me, you have trouble actually getting down to writing. Esther Freud says "Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don't let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won't matter to you that the kitchen is a mess." And one of my all time favourites from Gerald Dickler is "A writer is one who stays in and writes".

Do let me know what your favourite writing tips or sayings are. I'd love to hear them.

 



  

Comments

  1. Anonymous27 August 2011 at 03:06

    What a good idea to write them down. I must start doing that too for when inspiration is lacking. Thanks also for the website link: it looks very useful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Melissa Lawrence27 August 2011 at 19:11

    Thanks Vanessa. Hope the website brings you in some work.

    ReplyDelete

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