2. Avoid injecting yourself into the story. Before hitting publish, do a text search for 'I', 'me', 'my' etc. You'll be amazed what you find.

3. Read and re-read before publishing. Delete, cut, slash, burn. Make it concise without losing the emotion or human aspect.

4. Do your research! Data is the real value. Take the time to Google and include links for readers that want to go into more depth.

5. As you're writing, if you feel it's not coming together or you don't have enough to write about, hit save-draft and move on. My save-draft button is really my way of deleting a potential post without feeling like I lost the sunk cost.

6. Try to keep it under 400 words.

"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one" ~Mark Twain

Regurgitating generic advice without adapting it to the current topic is a very, very bad habit.

Inexperienced writers seem to have a really hard time with this one. The other day, I was reading some Google review that said, "I'd like to start my review by saying that I don't like Starbucks". My thought was, "So... why didn't you?"

"I don't like Starbucks." would have been a perfect introductory sentence for a review about not liking Starbucks!

Personally, I'm going to do the opposite and start all my reviews with "I'd like to start my review by saying 'I'd like to start my review by saying'." That way I get what I like, AND I get to annoy the reader.

To paraphrase Tuco, if you're going to say something, say it, don't talk about saying it.

For example, I like Steve Yegge, not Jeff Atwood.

But not many bloggers are Yegge and Graham. And they don't beat around the bush with uneccessary verbiage either, as the OP was complaining about.

Most blogs are really more like exposed journals that are only interesting to people that already know the writer well (facebook/myspace has started to, but not completely, supplanted this type of blog). For all of these, this advice would be inappropriate.

Most interesting blogs fall in between. ArsTechnica for instance calls itself a blog officially, but it has strong elements of reporting in it. In this type of blog, the readers often want and expect some editorializing and some personal anecdotes along with the news and research. For this type of blog, #3 and #4 are absolutely vital, but the rest are probably inappropriate.

Different types of blogs fall at different points between the news paradigm and personal journal paradigm and will therefore have different approaches. I suspect #3 at least could improve most blogs out there.

See this guide on "Great literature retitled to boost website traffic": http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/27lacher.html

What are the others?

Edit: Google tells me it's The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.

This is the one that has always bugged me; I am writing a novel at the moment (when I get chance). Composing chapters in my head is really easy and I get a good flow going - till I get home and sit down at the computer and it gets all stilted.

I reckon I've "written" some chapters ten times over in my head before they made it to the computer :)

- write a first draft (not in your head)

- keep consistent daily writing schedule: either time-based (e.g. 5 - 8am); or output-based (e.g. 2000 words, no matter how long it takes)

- write a lot

One thing I am trying is getting out my phone and recording it as dialogue when it occurs to me - then transcribing it later. I really want something to do that automatically but not luck yet :)

Write.

At the end of the day, that's what it comes down to. Don't pussy foot around and talk about feeling or emotion or mood. Sit down and write. Or stand and write. Or lay down and write.

But write. There is no magic bullet. Nothing that will make the words flow all the time, every time. Successful, prolific writers all share one thing in common: they write.

You say you can think about writing, but when you sit down, you can't. Yes, you can. The problem is you aren't writing. Writing is easy. The hard part is accepting that what comes out isn't going to be highly polished glass. What you write first is gonna be hard, grainy sand. It's gonna have rocks. It's gonna have bits of dirt. It's gonna be rough, and it will get everywhere. Later on, after you are done writing the entire thing, you can go back, gather the sand, get rid of the rocks, dirt, twigs, dried figs and dead fish, and start turning that sand into glass.

But write. Don't wait for inspiration. Write! Don't stop. Keep writing once you start. So what if your writing might come out like Saturday night's offerings to the porcelain god, that's why you rewrite.

But you aren't rewriting. Get the story out. Get it down. Get it done.

Write.

Edit: Because I wrote the post. Now I can go back and rewrite it. =)

I usually end up rewriting it a few times and then scrubbing it entirely. And I can do that maybe three or four times before a section is complete.

I've partially figured out the reason for this; for some reason it is difficult to "read" while you write. So what sounds great is actually awful when you come to read it back.

I'm not a snob but I don't like bad writing - so I will just scrap it :P

It's just inefficient that is all and I'd love to hack a better way.

EDIT: plus I am determined not to fall into the typical genre of fantasy writing: not particularly brilliant writing but full of sexual angst (and sex scenes to make up for it).

Let me help.

Everything you write is garbage. Everything I write is garbage. Everything Robert Jordan wrote was garbage. Everything Stephen King writes is garbage.

Writers write garbage.

However, the good writers are the ones that can take that garbage, and turn it into something nice. However, you can't do that while you are writing.

"plus I am determined not to fall into the typical genre of fantasy writing"

Ignore this. Just write. You can do this during your rewrite. For now, just get the story finished. Getting a story finished is worth more than twenty rewrites of chapter 1.

Yes you should write a lot and constantly - but you should also rewrite consistently. There is very little point writing a 15 chapter novel (with a couple of versions of each chapter) and then trying to shape it into something - you will end up having to write the book 10 times over just to get it finished.

The way I have always seen it is that you need to assemble a set of raw material and then refine it into a piece of prose. Then assemble all the prose into a book.

> The problem is, you spend time rewriting during your session.

I'm currently writing about one chapter a month (this is pretty productive for me). I write for around 4 or 5 sessions a week (when I get time). That breaks down into, say, 3 sessions of pure writing in which I will complete a couple of sections - but end up writing each of them up to 5 times. Then a session refactoring/rewriting, then a session building it together (this is a bit vague - I tend to get to the end of the month with lots of rewrites ready for a "build" in one go). What I want to do is cut down the amount of pure writing I need to do.

One successful thing I have done is get a three big whiteboards. One tracks the story as a whole (this is somewhat redundant because I've had the story in mind for about 5 years :)), One tracks the chapters I am currently working on and the last one I sketch out the current section/chapter.

At the start of the session I review the first two boards (and my memory) then start drafting ideas/timeline onto the third board. I deliberately pick points in the timeline that are "fixed" and start with them - drafting out a quick list of how it will work. Then you fill in the blanks with writing sessions.

This avoids the major problem with "just writing". In the past what has happened is I would sketch out a couple of chapters. Then I'd want to change something and it would mean that a whole lot of the chapter had to be reorganized. Or something had to push back into the previous chapter to make sense. Or.. You get the picture.

Writing a novel IMO needs one of two things: extreme natural talent (King et al) OR planning :)

(good discussion!)

Actually, that advise was basically ripped from Stephen Kings book, On Writing. He basically advises to write. Finish. Set aside the novel for several weeks, then pick it up and reread it fresh.

Read that book. It pretty much get's it down for you.

One thing to keep in mind is that interviews are pretty bad for finding tips on writing. In On Writing, Stephen King pretty much says that what he says in interviews is made to sound good, because the truth isn't as interesting.

But seriously, that book right there pretty much nails it in the head.

Now, at the end of the day, you do what works for you, of course. But at the end of the day, it's all about writing. If you've found some other method to get your writing done, great. Who am I to argue. But seriously, the best advise I can give to someone having trouble writing is to just write. You don't seem to have that problem, if your schedule is set and you've been doing it.

I guess my advise is more geared toward those who aren't writing, and want to. They ask the questions like: what word processor do you use? or do you use a notebook and pen? or when do you write? Questions that sound interesting. It's soft of like the GTD fad. Everyone is so consumed with the tools of GTD and ignore actually getting things done!

=)

And yes, good discussion. Wish I could give more karma!

Yeh I hear you; that's a good point :)

Great list and advice. A couple things I'd add:

10. As a mashup of points 3 and 6, Start Talking to Yourself. Pretend you are on stage at a conference giving a talk, and just talk. Then write that stuff down. You'll find the stuff that you write down from your talk sounds a lot more like you really sound. And you start finding some of the things you are thinking about don't hold water when you say them outloud. Or the opposite, things are much clearer when you are hearing them come out of your mouth.

11. You should be nervous hitting the publish button. It's like releasing software. If you aren't a little nervous about how this post will be received or criticized or you aren't a little nervous you just pushed some boundaries, you might not have tried hard enough. It's similar to point 7. You're creating something new here. If you aren't nervous, if you aren't a little uncomfortable, you probably are just regurgitating someone else's lessons. Making something new usually involves putting something very sensitive about yourself out there for people to crap on or love. :)

I'm planning to put together a website to showcase my various projects (for employers' sake), and was thinking of putting up my own blog, or at least PG style essays, after having worked on them for a few months. The goal being to be more impressive to employers, who can verify that I actually care and/or think deeply about this stuff.

Is that why most people blog? Or is it to make money? Or just cause they like writing (/want to practice)? Or like the attention? It seems like a major amount of effort/energy is spent on blogging and I can't say I know why.

I could do this for myself, keep it private, but the idea of making something public pushes me to be at least somewhat more rigorous. And getting feedback is fun and often educational.

One of the more important points in that list IMHO. Also, don't write and publish a post before going to bed; you'll read your post again in the morning, and yes, you're going to alter it (yes, that's actually me sometimes).

I'll save up about 10 potential blog entries and then start to write them out. Ones that flow naturally become posts, ones that I struggle to come up with a few sentences are just deleted.

To me, the hardest part is finding things to write about that haven't already been rehashed a million times before.

This should almost be one of his points. (I agree with his enumerated points.) Figuring out what you want from blogging or writing or anything really is half the battle.

  This should almost be one of his points. (I agree with his enumerated points.) 
  Figuring out what you want from blogging or writing or anything really is half
  the battle.

My metric is comments and emails elicited.

Popularity is largely dependent on promotion or communication of some form. You have to tell people about your blog -- widely and often, for best effect. It won't simply follow from the content.

Anyway, I got a lot of readers and a lot of people coming up to me at conferences saying they read my blog, without having to annoy my readers and convince them to advertise for me. If you read it, great. If you don't read it, whatever.

(Why don't I have a blog now? Because I hate all the existing blog software, and am very very slowly writing something I don't hate. I'll be back :)

(From which we may perhaps draw another guide: focus on one topic, and break substantially separate items into separate posts -- where they can be properly addressed . . .)

Here is a blog full of advice on how to write admissions essays: http://blog.gurufi.com/ which follows many of the same themes.