When I was a college student I was hungry for any tips that would further my dream of becoming a professional writer. I eagerly read through stacks of magazines and books on writing.

But a lot of the advice, even from my favorite authors, confused and upset me. Often the advice givers had “clout,” so I was reluctant to challenge them, even if what they said contradicted earlier assertions or what another renowned writer said.

Bad advice hampered me for many unhappy, unproductive years. Some of it passes for common sense and gets repeated day after day and is bound to be repeated again and again for many years to come.

Here is some advice that frustrated and confused me most.

“If you consistently find it hard to make yourself write, it must not be for you. You should give up and do something else.”

This was the advice that made me stop listening to writing advice.

In a writing magazine an interviewer asked a best-selling author to offer tips to struggling writers. He responded by saying that if you have trouble making yourself write, you probably just like the idea of being a writer, and you should give it up and go find another activity you can enjoy more, and leave the writing to writers like him “who can’t help themselves.”

At the time I read this, I was severely depressed and going through the worst case of block I had ever endured, but I was still trying to write every day despite my mood crashes and general misery. The advice deepened my despair and strengthened my fears that I would never be able to enjoy writing again the way I had as a kid.

What saved me was remembering that I had enjoyed writing as a kid. I may have lost the sense of it being fun, but it was not that I did not want to write. Something else was going on.

There are many reasons why someone who wants to write may dread writing, fears of criticism and failure being high on the list, and that was the case with me. I finally got past my block and I am so glad that, instead of following the discouraging and unhelpful advice from a writer with “clout,” I stopped reading magazines on writing and started thinking for myself.

“On the days you write, you must read constantly.”

Whenever someone says “Read a lot,” I am inclined to agree with them.

I have always loved to read. Reading is where my love of writing began. However, the “read constantly while writing” rule frustrated me because even if I had written prolifically on a particular day, I also felt pressured to read “a lot” and I would feel I had failed if I had not met a self-imposed reading quota.

Plus, after reading, my imagination was already engaged. When I settled down to create my own worlds and stories I had trouble switching from reading mode into creating mode. I would also compare my own work, usually unfavorably, to what I had just read. If I wanted to immerse myself in reading a work of fiction, I had to do it after I wrote, not before, but if I had written for over 4 hours, my mind would be too exhausted for immersive reading.

As a rule, the more I read, the less I write, and the more I write, the less I read. It is not hard to see why. On the days I write a lot, I do not read much because (drumroll) I am writing.

I treasure reading, but I am unable to read and write at the same time, no matter how much I may love to do them both. Accepting this has relieved pressure so that I can focus fully on my writing when I need to, and set aside other times for reading when I can give it my full attention.

“Make yourself write every day, at the same time, for an hour or more.”

While this often-repeated advice sounds sensible, I tried following it for many years and only ended up frustrated. For me it was too rigid. I imagined that on each day I must produce equal output and spend equal time writing, or I had failed.

But each day insisted on being different than the day before. Some days brought interruptions beyond my control. I had headaches and depressions and illnesses and sick cats. There were days I had not slept the night before and could barely hold my eyes open.

Setting up inflexible conditions for success was not helping, but hindering me. All I wanted was to write consistently but the rigid structure was unnecessary and led to a state of constant guilt, frustration, and self-abuse.

The rigid rules set me up for failure. If I did not meet every criteria, if I wrote for 34 minutes and 4 seconds instead of the even four hours I had planned, I felt like I had failed completely and would not even give myself credit for the 34 minutes and 4 seconds I did write.

What finally worked was that, rather than setting ambitious targets for my writing, I set small easily achievable goals like a sentence a day. Sometimes I even experimented with setting limits of one sentence or 15 minutes. When I made myself stop writing, I would go away wanting to write more. By limiting my writing on some days, I rediscovered my desire to write. Gradually, by easing the pressure off myself, I was able to increase the amount of writing time in which I could focus fully on my fiction and enjoy it.

My only rule was to always write at least sentence a day, which was easy to achieve even on days I was sick or felt depressed. If I wrote more than a sentence, which I almost always did, I could congratulate myself, but if I did write only a sentence, that was fine too, and it kept my guilt at bay.

Despite what many believe, guilt is an enemy of writing. Guilt drains energy while creating resistance and a need to make excuses. It hurts me and it hurts my productivity. It has no part in my writing process, and if I see it coming, I give my cat permission to chase it into a corner and make a snack of it.

When my cat is asleep, the one-sentence rule banishes my guilt, but after writing a sentence, I almost always want to write more. However, do not use it as a way to “trick” yourself into writing longer. In fact, it is not a bad idea to take yourself up on the offer to quit every now and then. Being honest with yourself is always the way to go.

Thanks to the “one sentence rule,” I never have to force myself to write anymore. The amount of time I spend writing each day varies, and so do my starting times. I usually write around 4 to 6 hours a day now, but if I only get in 30 minutes, that is okay. I have accomplished what I desperately wanted for many frustrated years: to write consistently while thoroughly enjoying what I am doing.

“Writing is grueling work like coal mining, and if you expect to have fun doing it, you will never be a professional.”

On some days writing is harder than others, but if I did not mostly enjoy it, I would be doing something else. Writing is not known for its high pay and the market is flooded with legions of other writers who make it difficult to stand out and earn a living wage.

No writer should ever feel guilty about not having “fun,” but if writing makes you feel like you are pressing your palm onto a hot stove while chanting “fear is the mind-killer,” something is wrong. Writing is hard, sometimes insanely hard, but it should not cause wailing and gnashing of teeth.

If it does, that does not mean you should quit writing. At one time writing was “hot burner” torture for me, and I almost gave up but I was able to get past it.

As for the charge that anyone who writes for enjoyment is unprofessional, many renowned writers such as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov have described writing as a wonderful addiction. Ray Bradbury went so far as to say that he had never “worked” a day in his life. At one time I was unable to identify with them at all but now, like them, I find it difficult to stop writing.

“Before writing, do research to find out what agents and publishers are looking for.”

This advice may have confused me the most. I had loved writing since I was a child and had always been praised for it, but, even when working for a grade, I had always felt free to write what I cared about and in my own voice.

Writing to please publishers and adopting their “editorial styles” was a foreign and uncomfortable idea, and one that sank my mood. However, it seemed to mark the difference between a professional writer and an amateur, between a “real” writer and a wannabe.

I thought that if I was as good a writer as my teachers said, I should be able to meet the biggest and most important challenge: to please and impress publishers. However, a barrage of form rejection letters from magazines suggested that school had not prepared me for “the real world.”

I turned to magazines on writing for help. The covers would always say something like “Get Published: Top Writing Trends” or “Ten Interviews with Top Agents: What They are Looking For.” I would pore over those magazine articles, getting more and more depressed with every word I read. At the time I believed I felt depressed because I lacked the necessary skills to succeed.

Now I can see that much more was going on. I had been a painfully shy, bullied kid who had turned to writing in express parts of myself that had “gone underground.” Writing had been my refuge, the one place where I could make the rules and express how I really felt and what I thought. Plus, I had enjoyed writing.

Guessing what a publisher wanted and delivering what they already had in mind excited no passion; spurred no creativity; inspired no vision.

Most of the complaints in my rejection letters said, “It does not fit.” It did not fit their needs or their editorial style or the trends of the moment. So the obvious question seemed to be, “How can I fit?” It was the wrong question.

After many years of block and confusion, I could see that the need to “fit” had taken away my sense of owning my work; stripped it of fun; and turned writing into a numb chore. To enjoy writing as I once had, I had to write what I wanted to read, not what I thought others wanted to read. When I wrote what excited me, readers responded well. This insight helped to restore my creativity and made writing fun again.

“If you really want to be a writer, go out and get a lot of different jobs for the life experience.”

This falls into the category of vague, difficult, and time-consuming “prerequisites” for writing that once made me feel like I would never be qualified to be a writer. It conspired with my under-confidence to make me put off writing and made me feel that my dream of being a writer would forever recede beyond my grasp.

Experiences do enrich writing, but “going out and getting” them is unnecessary. Experiences are everywhere. Writing fiction requires being literate and human, and having experienced the emotions of love, hate, sadness, jealousy, and fear.

S.E. Hinton, author of the classic best-seller The Outsiders was a teenager when she wrote her novel. She had never been a lumberjack, a bar bouncer, or a crime reporter, yet she was able to craft a moving and unforgettable story using the experiences and insights she did have. Writers do not need “exotic” experiences if they are perceptive enough to see the strange in the familiar. “Going out and getting jobs” for the vaguely defined purpose of having new experiences is time-draining and absurd advice.

I have given a summary of writing advice that impeded my writing for much of my life. That being said, every writer is different. Some writers, for example, seem to work well under deadline pressure, whereas I resist it.

Some writing advice has helped me, but it can be destructive if accepted uncritically. Writing is the best teacher, and the ideal is for writers is to move beyond obeying “authorities” to becoming authorities themselves.

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