The question is some form of: should you throw down a crappy first draft or should you edit as you write? Every day, I see writers praising the crappy first draft and encouraging new writers to just get it all onto the page. You can fix a mess later, they say. You can’t fix a… Read More Should You Edit As You Write?
“Write what you know.” It’s classic writing advice, but recently on social media, I saw someone ask if it was “good” advice. And much to my surprise, a fair number of people said, no. As if it were a ridiculous idea that fiction writers, especially, should know what they’re writing about. While I kind of… Read More Writing What You Know
Housecleaning is part of my writing process. People always tell me to leave the dishes in the sink and the dust-bunnies on the stairs, as if there’s something pathological about needing to clean first. For a while, I believed them and tried to force myself to just sit down and write when I had ten… Read More Do You Have A Prewriting Ritual?