Write As You Would Vomit
I hate vomiting. It’s scary and unpleasant to expel the contents of your stomach. Also, the feeling that goes along with it should be banned worldwide. But vomiting has taught me an important lesson:
How to write!
I hate vomiting. It’s scary and unpleasant to expel the contents of your stomach. Also, the feeling that goes along with it should be banned worldwide. But vomiting has taught me an important lesson:
How to write!
Rejection is brutal. I mean, it really hurts.
When someone rejects your guest post pitch or tells you your story needs more work, your eyes well up, your chest compresses, and you have to wait for your vision to clear before you can pick your heart up from the floor. It’s painful.
If you’ve finally managed to carve out a chunk of time to sit down at your computer and write, you don’t want your writing time to be full of interruptions and writer’s block. When I sit down to write, I expect to just write. Here are three ways to be prepared so you’re not getting up every few minutes for something.
I’ve recently read the short story collection – Diaboliad by Mikhail Bulgakov. As with all of his writing, these stories revolve around the fantastical, written in the recognizable Bulgakov style. There’s one common thread in them, though – he’s always referring to a Russian writer, mainly a predecessor.
In the introduction, the English editor explains that it’s the Russian writer’s tradition to pay homage to your predecessors, those that shaped the national literature and your early development.
About a decade ago, I had the good fortune to read a screenwriting book called How to Write for Animation by Jeffrey Scott. Unlike most screenwriting books, Scott hardly mentions story theory; instead, he focuses on teaching a very practical writing process. I applied his methods in my own work, and was amazed at how helpful they were. In fact, Scott’s book turned out to be one of the three most helpful professional books I’ve read.
I’m a trial by fire guy. I haven’t always been that way, but I’ve learned to love it, especially with writing. As an entrepreneur, I subscribe to the READY, FIRE, AIM methodology, as opposed to the traditional READY, AIM, FIRE.
I know authors who subscribe to the READY, READY, AIM, AIM, AIM system. ‘Work In’ never translates to ‘Work Out’. Are you one of them?