Some Writing Advice That’s Mostly Useless (And Why)
I’ve been spending time on writing forums — a substitute for actual work while convalescing from an operation — and… well, I’ve noticed embedded in the culture are several pieces of advice that aren’t very useful for novice writers.
Rather than stringing them out into a series, I’m going to blast through them here:
“Work on Your Motivation” — Mostly Useless
Listen. I had a gig writing novels tieing into video games.
Great games. Great gig. But rather than going, “Brilliant, an excuse to play online warrior all day!“, I had a go at them, then handed each off to my son for a thorough exploration (a chore he greatly enjoyed, though being something of a sniper, he got regularly kicked from servers).
I like video games — I’m playing through Mass Effect at the moment — but I like writing better.
See where I’m going with this?
Nobody ever posts online, “How do I motivate myself to complete Halo 3?”
Video games are automatically fun out-of-the-box, because the challenge is the game itself, not the business of getting around inside the virtual world; most games even have similar key bindings (e.g. awsd). So if writing is not as much fun as gaming, then it’s probably because you’re still struggling with the basics of writing rather than wrestling with storytelling.
Therefore if motivation is a problem for you, work on your craft. Success breeds success.
