11 Conventional Rules of Writing Worth Questioning
There’s a lot of bad writing advice floating around. Have you bought into any of it?
There’s a lot of writing advice floating around these days. So much, in fact, that writing for writers has become a whole industry.
How much of this writing advice is solid? And how much of it should you ignore?
I looked at some common writing advice doled out to writers and found the following to be suspect.
1. You must write every day
Must you? Why? What happens if you only write every other day? Do the writing police come and take you to a re-education camp where they burn all your published work? (I’ve been working on a dystopian novel, can you tell?)
Look, I’m all for consistency and the amazing benefits it provides. When you’re working on a project, coming back to it regularly ensures that you stay connected to it and don’t lose steam when it gets difficult.
Equally, if you’re just beginning to create a writing habit, working on building a streak helps you stay motivated.
Writing every day is good advice, but use it as a tool, not a rule.
2. Write what you know
This is a good starting point for new writers because it gives you access to material that you already are comfortable and familiar with. Further, if you’re a beginner writer, it’s easy to go down the rabbit hole of research and use that as a way of distracting yourself from the actual writing.
Write what you know when it’s relevant, but more importantly, write what you want to know. That’s where the real magic begins.
3. Good writing is rewriting
Sometimes, for some writers, sure. When I first started writing fiction it was terrible. Good writing was rewriting and a lot of it. It required help from an editor I trust and is excellent at what she does. For my first novel, good writing was rewriting.
That said, I wrote the second half of my second novel in one draft all the way through, and my editor didn’t touch a single word. It was the best writing I’ve ever done. By going and rewriting what was vulnerable and powerful writing, I would have taken out the rawness, the thing that made it shine.
Rewriting makes sense when a piece of work doesn’t work the first time. But if you’re rewriting as a rule, all you’re doing is giving in to the instinct of perfectionism and becoming increasingly precious about your writing.
4. Write first thing in the morning
No, thank you. I write after midnight when my family has gone to bed and I have three solid hours ahead of me to write in peace. I sit in bed, the cat at my feet, and I make myself a cup of tea (or pour myself a glass of wine), blast some tunes and write. It’s heaven.
I feel more creative after midnight when the world is quiet and I feel like I’m the only one up and practically, too, there is more time and space.
When I’ve forced myself to wake up early in the morning to write, I’ve been miserable, writing has felt like pulling teeth, and I’ve been no fun to live with. Why would I want to do that to myself, my family, and my creativity?
I understand why people give this advice but forgive me for not drinking the miracle morning Kool-Aid. There is no one good time to write.
Figure out what the most creative times are for you and then build your writing schedule around that.
5. Join a critique group
I’m going to get so much pushback for saying this but someone has to, so here goes: Most critique groups are full of unpublished writers regurgitating advice they’ve read online but have no experience with.
I think critique groups can be extremely helpful — and I’ve been part of some amazing ones — but only if they’re run by someone who actually has some experience writing and publishing and can guide the conversation.
If you’re going to join a writing or critique group, check out the members, look at their publication history, and make sure that when someone offers you a critique on your work, you regard it as one opinion and not the final verdict on your work.
6. It’s more about the journey than the destination
I’m a journey person, I am, I promise. I truly believe that you need to enjoy the act of writing. Show me a writer who says “I hate writing but love having written” and I’ll show you a writer who is secretly miserable and wondering why they’ve committed to a lifetime of this.
Loving the journey is great. But you know what? The destination’s pretty important, too, because if you didn’t care about the destination, why are you even doing this in the first place?
Now, your destination doesn’t have to be the same as my destination. The destination may also change as you move ahead in your career.
For my first novel, the destination was just being able to finish it and prove to myself that I could do it. The destination, or the thought of it anyway, is what kept me going when the journey was anything but fun. The destination for my journalism pieces was always national and international newspapers and magazines and good thing, too, because do you really think I was going to report thousands of stories and just sit on them, having them read by no one? Who does that serve?
Enjoy the journey, for sure. I’d say you almost have to if you want to be in this game long term. But let’s not belittle the destination. It’s equally essential.
7. Write 1,000 words a day
The life and career of a writer are, we’re all fully aware, full of chaos and uncertainty. I believe this is why so many of the “rules” we’re sold are so incredibly specific. If, in the uncertainty of publishing and sales, you could have this concrete target to hit every day, then it makes you feel a bit more in control.
The problem is that this arbitrary number has become a gold standard in the writing world. If you write less than this, it becomes a stick to beat yourself up with. If you write more? Other writers will cast shade on the quality of your work.
Not only are we all different writers with different energy levels, life situations, and goals, but your productivity changes over time and with different projects.
Word counts are a great way to measure productivity and how quickly you’re getting a project done, but there is no right number to which you must aspire.
Some days you write 200 words and some days you write 8,000. That’s the beauty of a creative career. Roll with it.
8. Write to an eighth-grade reading level
This is relatively new advice, mostly given to bloggers and writers publishing online. It makes sense, too. You don’t want your readers to run to the dictionary every few minutes because of course, instead of running to the dictionary, they’ll be running to a different writer’s story.
That said, let’s stop acting as though readers are one homogenous group, okay?
I enjoy a brief article on productivity as much as I enjoy a long, thoroughly researched story on climate colonialism in the New Yorker. I don’t want the New Yorker to write to an eighth-grade writing level, that’s not what I read them for.
This advice, like much of what I’m discussing, comes from a good place. Writers often try to look smarter than they are in print, and this often has the opposite effect. Don’t make your writing sound smarter than it is. But don’t dumb it down either.
The trick is simple: Write what you like to read. Find your natural style and build on that. Then, experiment with it based on what you’re writing and who you’re writing it for.
9. Write a “shitty first draft”
The term “shitty first draft” comes from Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird. In it, Lamott offers the advice that you should “romp all over the page” and allow the writing to not only be bad, but to be terrible.
Here’s the problem: Most writers assume this to mean that they should aim for terribly-written first drafts, that they will then clean up.
Aiming for a badly-written first draft is a very different concept from allowing for a badly-written first draft. When you’re allowing for an awful first draft, you’re getting rid of the perfectionism and letting yourself write from the gut without judgment at every step, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But aiming for a bad first draft is nonsense.
Here’s the most important thing, and something we need to consider: When you’re a new writer, lousy first (and second and third) drafts are almost a fact of life. You do the absolute best you can and it still ends up barely readable. That’s how you learn. But when you’ve been writing for two, three, four, ten years, you don’t write terrible first drafts anymore. Ask any journalist who has been writing for over five years and they’ll tell you that while sure, they struggle with a piece of writing every now and again if you told them they had a deadline of three hours and a story to report and submit by then, they’d get it done and they’d get it done well. Their first draft would be their final draft, and they’d have no trouble with it.
I suggest that you allow for shitty first drafts. If you write something and it’s terrible, that’s fine. Just don’t go intending to write one because if you do, that’s precisely what you’ll end up with.
10. Show, don’t tell
Ever heard this advice? That you should always show and not tell because you want the reader completely immersed in the scene rather than to feel distanced from the action? Want to know what I think?
Show, don’t tell, is bad advice.
You need to show and tell.
You need to show when you want the reader to connect deeply. Tell when you need to inject pace. Both are important.
You show when you want to immerse a reader in the experience of your character or to be placed in the middle of a scene. This is exactly the technique you use when you want to heighten the drama of a swift and devastating event, like a car crash, a shooting, or a tsunami. It slows the pace down and lets the reader connect to the action.
However, if you read pretty much any published novel, you’re going to see a lot of telling in there. Because if you want to increase the pace of a certain chapter or get through several years of history in one go, you have to tell.
11. Don’t write for money
This is the awful advice I’ve spent most of my career railing against.
Listen, if you’re writing for fun or as a hobby, that’s totally cool and there is no need to think about money.
However, if you’re a professional writer or want to be one, then please, yes, think about money. Get paid for your work.
Now, I’m not saying write for the market. Especially if you’re a novelist or short story writer, you don’t want to write in genres only because you think they’ll sell. But you should definitely write for the money, by which I mean write whatever you want, however you want, then make sure you go out and sell it and get the best possible price.
That we don’t talk about money or demonize it is the reason the “starving artist” myth is so prevalent in our industry. I’ve been making a living from my writing for almost two decades now, right from the very beginning when, as a nineteen-year-engineering student, I decided that I wanted writing to be my career.
It wouldn’t have been my career if I’d made no money from it or if I hadn’t thought about how I was going to sell what I wrote.
If you want to do this professionally, you must, too.
Final thought
Remember, any advice you receive (including mine) is what worked for that writer at that time. Your experience will be different and your learnings will be, too. Don’t forget to trust your instincts and do what is best for you, regardless of how other writers approach their work.
If you learn to trust yourself, you can almost never go wrong.
Read more of my articles on creativity and publishing here.
