Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
~ John Steinbeck

Best Advice for Writers

Writing is an art rather than an exact science. The creative process takes you beyond all your plans and assumptions and makes room for you to surprise yourself.

Andre Dubus says to follow the headlights. He says, “It’s like driving a car down a dark, unfamiliar road, simply describing what you see as they become visible under the beam.”

Ask yourself, “What’s on the side of the road? What’s the weather? What are the sounds?” Open your window, what do you smell? If you capture the experience all along the way, the structure starts to reveal itself. He says, “My guiding force and principle for shaping the story is just to follow the headlights—that’s how the architecture is revealed.”

I’ve offered similar advice before, as it was offered to me in my early stages of writing, and it’s worth repeating. Leave your critical editor on the shelf for your first draft. Give it a break. It’s not that you can’t reread what you’ve written for continuity. But to go over it, again and again, to get it perfect, can inhibit your creative muse.

To keep in theme with the above advice, just like you don’t drive a car with your foot on both the gas and the brake, you don’t write and edit at the same time. Both attempts will get you nowhere and frustrate you to no end in the process.

Let your creative muse rip on the first draft and let your critical mind do what it does best on the second one. It was the best advice I ever received.

Enjoy!

Jasmyne