My Favorite Writing Advice

Writing advice is sort of the equivalent of your in-law's suggestions about your career choices/parenting style/etc - you use what works and toss the rest, without the guilt. Everyone is different and what works for one person won't work for another - it's not a one-size-fits-all profession. For instance, in more than one place I've seen writers recommend rising at 4am to get in a solid few hours of writing before day breaks. God bless 'em but no one would want to read the junk I'd crank out at 4am - plus, I'd just fall back asleep and get drool all over my keyboard. I'm much better at the late-at-night-when-the-household-is-sleeping kind of writing. So, you have to test out what works best with your own schedule and personality.

I will share my two favorite bits of writing advice that have helped me and they are both from a book called On Writing by Stephen King. I'm a huge fan of his novels but was surprised by how inspirational I found this book. NOTE: I read this quite a while ago so if I remember anything incorrectly, I sincerely apologize to Mr. King for any errors (and adverbs).

1) Write 2,000 words per day. This doesn't seem like a lot of words until you sit down after a full day of working either inside or outside your home/have fed and bathed the kids/have folded laundry and washed dishes/etc. However, when I wrote my YA novel a few months back, I set that as a goal and it worked. I'm not gonna say I didn't cheat - some nights I'd type 5,000 words if I was going out the next night and knew I wouldn't write but I did AVERAGE 2,000 words a night, 5 nights a week. Of the 2 nights off per week, one night I'd type a blog post and review my critique groups' work and Sat. nights are sacred date nights w/ the hubby. Now that I'm revising, I'm on a different schedule but I'm 20K into the next novel and will start this schedule again in a month or two. NOTE: I'm pretty sure Mr. King advises a minimum of 6 nights per week of writing but I did finish my book so I was pretty satisfied with my results.

2) Read as much as you write. Okay, I admit I was doing this anyway but it was nice having Mr. King validate it for me. I think it's important to read extensively in the genre you write but also to read outside the scope of your work. Recent reads for me have included The Book Thief, The Help, and Catching Fire and next up are The Heretic's Daughter and Hush, Hush. Reading as a writer has been a different experience for me than just reading for fun and has made me a better writer - I hope.

Enough about me - what about you? What's your favorite piece of writing advice? Favorite book on writing? Favorite recent read?