October Novel Prep Challenge

Jedi Moose , I have learned to take all the writing tips with a grain of salt. Why? Because what is true for one writer isn't true for another. Have I been writing the same book every year for a while. Sort of. There are dozens of ways to tell a story and I have written and finished this one trying to find the best way. I can't move on to the second until I am satisfied with the first or they won't be linked up very well.

Now, I could set it down, which I intended to this year, and move on to a different project but the moment my mind switches to a different story, even if that story quite often is just a short story, my characters leave me and they don't come back.

For people who can read two or three books at a time this is great. For people who write their scenes in jumbled order then go in and figure out how they fit together, It might work too.

I am not one of either of those people. Once I sit a story aside, It is gone for good. I opened up the files for my first Nano win yesterday and you know what, its good. I am tempted to post it in my port to see what others think. I think its pretty good. But, to write it again... Do all the editing it needs... Not likely. I sat it down for the next Nano story and I couldn't tell you anything about it now. Not really. Broad strokes maybe. My memory isn't what it was when I was a kid.

We don't all work the same way. We can't. We are different people with different challenges. I am not saying this to dismiss your attempt to help others. I am saying this because, everyone should watch out for the trap of falling for another person's writing advice and style and accepting that's the way it is. When you do that, your run the risk of your style no longer working and not understanding why because so and so said... Insert advice here... empirically so it must work for everyone. They are a writer. they know.

Same thing drives me nuts about this new trend of calling adverbs lazy writing. Why? Because Steven King says so? Please, have you seen how many he has used? Not only that but look at Mark Twain, Jane Austin, Agatha Christie. The greats didn't shy away from adverbs and we still call them great. People still read them. So, one man with some success as a writer of horror is now dictating the writing style of ever genre? Why? He is not Mark Twain or Jane Austin. I can promise you that. He is as much a smut writer as any Harlequin romance novel. It's a different kind of smut but its still smut. Harlequin has most writers running from romance. It's blase now. So why aren't we running from Steven King and his advice?

Take what works for you. But, test it all before you do. Throw out the rest and never forget just because someone famous believes it, doesn't make it true for you. I will fight for the honor of that poor adverb for the rest of my life.

Anyway, that is my two cents worth for whatever its worth.

"Adverb, adverb, adverb, get your adverbs here."