17 Tips to Improve Your Writing

Daphne Gray-Grant offers writers advice on how to stop shooting themselves in the foot.

17 things to STOP doing to improve your writing
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Negative writing tips, I find, can be just as helpful as a positive ones. And, often, they're far more memorable. Here, then are 17 things you should stop doing immediately, if you want to improve your writing.

STOP....

1. Giving yourself ludicrously ambitious writing goals. I always roll my eyes when writers tell me they're going to produce 1,500 words a day. Can you spell b-u-r-n-o-u-t? Instead, start with small, easy to achieve goals. I love the Kaizen method.

2. Reading email, twitter or Facebook when you're supposed to be writing. Multitasking is not possible. What you're really doing is constantly interrupting yourself. Turn off your notifications and just write. If necessary, get yourself a Neo Alphasmart.

3. Writing without knowing your word count goal. Would you go on holiday without knowing the destination? Of course not! If your boss or client won't give you a word count, then assign it to yourself.

4. Waiting for inspiration. "I write when I'm inspired and I see to it that I'm inspired at 9 o'clock every morning," said Peter de Vries. Be like him.

5. Outlining. I know some people love outlining the way birds love suet but try mindmapping instead. The downside of outlining? It engages your rule-bound brain. The upside of mindmapping? It inspires your creative brain.

6. Thinking you need an hour to write. Some writing can always be done in five minutes. Scribble a few sentences while you're anticipating a phone call or waiting for a meeting to start.

7. Trying to get a perfect first draft. Did you know Brendan Gill typically wrote 17 drafts of every piece for the New Yorker? 17! First drafts can be steaming garbage. But you can't edit until you have one.

8. Talking about what you're writing. While it's always okay to chat with your writing colleagues, don't lose the urge to tell a story by talking too much about it. Force yourself to communicate by writing.

9. Badmouthing yourself. You're no good, you tell yourself. Your writing is boring. Your readers and clients are suffocating from your prose. This kind of chatter hurts more than your self-esteem -- it also damages your writing. Refuse to pay attention to your Negative Nellie; starve him/her for attention.

10. Editing while you write. Editing is an entirely separate job from writing. Trying to edit while you write is like trying to wash the dishes while you're still eating dinner. Leave the plate-spinning to acrobats.

11. Thinking you need talent. I know this is hard to believe but writing is not generally about talent. It's about work. And persistence. And determination. Oh, it's also about reading, which leads to my next point.

12. Reading too much dreck. Just as you are what you eat, so, too, you write as you read. If you read too much John Grisham you'll start sounding like him. Make your reading habits worthwhile!

13. Expecting to sound like Jane Austen, Mark Twain or even Seth Godin. The converse of point #12 is that you're never going to be able to sound exactly like another writer. He or she didn't have your life experiences or, for that matter, your DNA. There's only so much you can do to change your natural writing voice. Be you.

14. Complaining instead of making a plan. Yes, your boss/client is a jerk. Yes, you're super busy. Yes, your life is tough. But if you want to write, well, then write. Just make yourself a realistic plan. Even just 50 words a day will give you a book at the end of four years.

15. Worrying about publishing (or your boss's/client's goals) WHILE you write. If you really need to worry about what others think, don't do it while you're composing. Writing is writing. Worrying is in its own category.

16. Not getting help when you need it. We all run into difficulty from time to time. If your writing is troubled then consider getting help. Read a book on writing (check the library or consider my book) or take a course (look into night school or think about my convenient online course.)

17. Failing to reward yourself. We all need rewards and so many types of writing are inadequately rewarded. That's why you must reward yourself. Find something that will give you an inexpensive pleasure -- buying a magazine, a book or a song or maybe even going to a movie. Treat yourself -- you've earned it.

Image: JokesBA.com

Big Miracle Review Up at F.O.G.

This week I examine how cunning whales chump a community into help them.

Imagine a community hustled into saving a man who’d gone swimming in an iron bathing suit?

There, you have a neat summary of this film. For the second week in a row we examine a movie set in Alaska. Last week’s The Grey was actually filmed in British Columbia because the snow there was cheaper. However Big Miracle found a suitable location in the Last Frontier for its tale of trapped gray—or grey?— whales and the con job they inflict on a community of gullible people.

More plus a nifty trailer here for you and your eyes.

Hail, Hail Estonia!

Officially, it is now my second favorite national anthem ever. And that includes all time.

h/t: Kimmomurmu

The Grey Review Up at F.O.G.

This film really captivated me except for some funny business with the wolves.

A plane crash, injured men, a blustery storm, a ticking clock, and big wolves.

This film had everything I enjoy in a movie.

To be honest, I often wish these elements were in every movie including The Artist but that’s just stubborn selfishness on my part.

Read oh so much more here.

'Nam a Tough Sell for Author Nolan

There was a time when I burned through military history books by the gross. I read famous authors like Band of Brothers' Stephen Ambrose and not-so-famous guys like Keith William Nolan. My history book reading has fallen off lately and so I just learned Nolan died three years ago from cancer. His specialty was the Vietnam War and his works relied heavily on interviews with American veterans who fought there.

Ten years ago, I had vague plans of producing a film based on Nolan's book about Operation Buffalo, which centered around the ambush of a Marine company in 1967. As I was returning to Cambodia for a project with State Dept./USAID and Warner Bros.—a story in itself—I made plans to visit the battlefields in neighboring Vietnam.

And so I contacted Keith William Nolan and asked for an option to develop a project based around his 1991 book Operation Buffalo: USMC Fight for the DMZ. I mentioned I was a former Marine who had served during the Vietnam era.

He let me have the option free.

That is simply not done in these parts.

By email, I thanked him for his generosity. In time, I toured the landscape of Operation Buffalo, a dangerous patch of ground still peppered with Viet Cong mines and booby traps as well as unexploded American and North Vietnamese artillery shells. I walked the narrow, red dirt lanes on which B Company was ambushed in an action that grew into the bloodiest day for the Marines in Vietnam.

I drew a crowd of Vietnamese, hardly any who had lived there back in the day. (Most had been relocated in 1966, the year prior to the fight.) At one point, I was invited into a hut and asked to tell a few elders what I knew of the event. With kids and dogs yelling outside, I spoke in bursts of English which my interpreter translated into Vietnamese, explaining how a battalion of North Vietnamese lured an understrength Marine company into an trap that wiped out two platoons and shot to pieces a second company that came to help. Some enemy units dressed in captured Marine uniforms to move in close and backed their assault with flamethrowers and heavy artillery—based in nearby North Vietnam.

We drank tea and smoked cigarettes as the sky grew darker outside. Reciting Nolan's book from memory as best I could, I told how the Marines returned the next day to retrieve the bodies of their dead and that turned into another fight. More reinforcements poured in on both sides, culminating in a massive North Vietnamese attack preceded by an artillery barrage. The Marines cut down the charging troops, sealed off breaches in their lines and held. The enemy withdraw back to safety in North Vietnam. Marine patrols from the hill base at Con Thien set out once more to sweep the area and the pattern of Operation Buffalo would be repeated in minor and major keys for the next several years.

Outside the kids gathered around as I reemerged from the hut. There was a huge freaking spider the size of a catcher's mitt hanging in a web attached to a nearby pole. I refused to look at the monster for fear the kids would knock the hulking arachnid down with a stick and chase it toward me to see what the tall foreigner would do.

I came home and the option expired and my movie idea eventually migrated into a rather large folder of unfinished products. Nolan wrote ten books on the Vietnam War, but never made a pile of money. His publisher wanted him to write about "popular wars" because Vietnam didn't sell. But Nolan felt he had an obligation to veterans who were treated quite shabbily. He felt someone had to tell their story.

He stayed true to that calling.

A non-smoker, 44-year-old Keith William Nolan died of lung cancer. He left behind a little girl.

Nolan's books are more than just the story of battles, interesting to history buffs like myself. They are our heritage, our nation's story, told by those present, their deeds preserved for kids like Anna Britt Nolan.

One hot August night, I was at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Little gifts, flowers and tokens are often left at its base by families, friends, and old comrades come to visit the names of the dead. Apparently a grade school class had passed through earlier and left various letters on lined paper in huge kid scrawl. One in part read: "Dear Grandpa, We saw the Vietnam Wall. I'm sorry you could not tell your stories."

Keith William Nolan could.

(And while many of us are short of money, I'm including trust fund info for Nolan's daughter. If you can, please donate.)

Anna Britt Nolan Trust
c/o First Bank
6211 Midriver Mall Drive
St. Charles, MO 63304

Images: Two-Seven Tooter

Portlandia Moment

Avian Water or Things go better with birds.

h/t: ifc

Haywire Review Up at F.O.G.

Have I come down too hard on suspense-musicals?

Sadly, this cross between The Bourne Identity and Funny Lady misses the mark on two fronts.

A meat and potatoes plot was stretched into disturbing shapes by this attempt to shoehorn show tunes into places they were never meant for.

At first, Haywire was reassuringly familiar—hot-chick Mallory Kane (Gina Carano), black ops specialist for Uncle Sam, speeds into harm’s way on her latest mission.

Read more at this link before you.