My Personal Advice

Here is my personal advice on writing, based on my experience. Bear in mind that just like everyone has their own writing style, everyone will also have their own writing process, and for some people, some of these tips may not work.

1. Write a story that you would like to read. Don't write a vampire story just because vampires are "in" now; write a vampire story if that's what you want to write.

2. Write what you know... within reason. Don't go out and get in a firefight so you can write your WWII story.

3. Write every day, or at least try to. Practice makes perfect. Even if you can just scrape out one or two sentences, it's better than nothing.

4. If you're at a part of your story that you haven't thought out, but there are others you can picture with Blu-ray quality, write those parts and stick them on later. Just make sure to pay extra attention when revising to catch any continuity errors, repetitiveness, or plot holes that may arise.

5. Revise... when you're done. Don't be stuck constantly revising the first paragraph over and over again. It will get you nowhere.

6. If you want, write down little blurbs about each character. But don’t waste time writing huge, detailed bios.

7. Make sure your writing environment is quiet and comfortable. I like to go up on my bed, prop myself up with a pillow, get under the covers, set up my laptop, and type away.

8. When editing, try reading it (out loud) backwards. That way, you will focus not on the story, but on the words themselves, and it will be much easier to notice if you used "then" instead of "than".

9. Whenever you make a word up and it gets flagged as a misspelling by your word processor, add it to the dictionary if you can. That way, you not only get rid of the annoying red underline, you also get notified when you misspell it.