On 29 Jun, 2015 By admin
- Read a lot. Out there the world is full of people trying to write without ever reading a page, and if you are the unfortunate person who has to check their manuscript, you would want to shoot those authors right after the first sentence. Reading should be your daily litre of water.
- Keep reading. The more you read, the more you'll be bored getting lost on Facebook or doing other stuff that seemed interesting before. Try comics and instead of TV series read their scripts. Read everything, even advertisement on the streets.
- Write. I personally set my goal at 30 minutes per day. You could laugh about this, but once you get started you may still be writing 3 hours later. In 30 minutes I write at least a page (1800-2000 characters spaces included).
If a friend calls me and says: “May I pass by?” I always answer: “Gimme at least 30 minutes”, so I can do my duty.
- Write everyday. I learned this from On Writing by Stephen King. If you lose touch with the story, the characters become just characters and day after day you'll find an excuse not to write. Writing is like going on a diet - if you skip one day, you may as well skip all the following ones.
- Become an author. You can't call yourself an author until you finish a book. Also, you can't call yourself a writer until you finish several books and keep writing everyday. I wrote five books, but I had too many lazy years, so I still consider myself an author.
- Do sports. Any sport helps you think better and longer. I know writers that like to walk or go jogging. I love basketball, but for the writing matters I warmly recommend swimming. Often when I am in the pool I find solutions to stories or do some great thinking. Many times I’ve crushed my head in the wall forgetting that I was swimming...
- Party a lot. You are spending way too much time alone by yourself. Go out there and meet people, listen to their stories, combine with yours, and you may one day write the book of the century.
- Travel. No explanation needed.
