Can you please share some advice?
New year, new idea... hope you like it!
Happy New Year,
Ideas are impertinent. At least mine are. They always seem to show up when I’m in the middle of working on something else and never seem to wait their turn.
It’s like children when you’re on the phone. They always wait until you’re on the phone to need your attention desperately. Even if you ask them in advance. Do you need anything? No, Mom. Until you’re on the phone.
I was writing a post when the idea started jumping up and down to get my attention.
A collaborative post on Medium. A whole bunch of us.
Two reasons!
1) We have a lot of writers in this group. So many! Some of you write on Medium. Some have written books, or are writing a book. We have poets and memoirists, non-fiction and fiction writers. Content creators and every sort of writer you can think of. No matter how you cut it, writers are a big part of this group.
2) Some of the hand-down best tips, ideas and insights I’ve had in the last year came from the conversations that happen in the comment section of my Friday letters. Y’all share ideas and experience so generously and you have inspired me so much.
Honestly? I think we have something good here.
I believe if we team up, we can bring something really incredible that one person can’t bring alone. Because one person brainstorming ideas and 20 people brainstorming are different things. Know what I mean?
So I started a draft at Medium. It’s called: “Writing advice and inspiration from 25 writers you might not know yet, but should.”
Incidentally, I plucked 25 out of the air. The number can change.
Here’s how we can do it.
1) If you could share one bit of inspiration or advice with other writers, what would it be? It might be something you learned the hard way, or something someone else told you that helped. It might be how you’re dealing with something you struggle with. It might be something that makes writing easier. Or faster. Post it as a comment. 50-100 words (give or take) would be perfect!
2) At the bottom of the comment, add your Medium profile link if you’re on Medium, or any link you want me to use if you’re not on Medium. So I can credit and link to everyone that contributes.
3) I’ll cobble the whole thing into a beautifully formatted post. I promise to use your words as submitted and if any corrections/edits are needed, I’ll check with you first. I’d love everyone to feel good about being part of our joint effort.
I think it could feel like collectively lifting each other up, along with other writers that read the finished piece — and what a great way to start the New Year. If it works, I’d love to do a group post every month, but we’ll start with this one and see how it goes.
I hope you’ll join in. It would mean a lot to me.
Thanks in advance!
“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul…”
—G. K. Chesterton
What I wrote this week…
GoDaddy Offered Employees a $650 Holiday Bonus. It Was a Trick.
Medium Revealed the Top 5 Stories of 2020 So I Put Them In the Wayback
Cleopatra, Caesar and Marc Antony and What They’d Look Like Today
Good Grief, Don’t Build Your Author Site Like the Pulitzer Winners
Thanks for reading. If you’re reading in email, click the title to leave a comment. If you enjoyed this, click the heart to let me know or just to say thanks. :)
xo,
Linda
I have two pieces of advice.
I started blogging in earnest just over a year ago. I’d had a post before but it was a solitary adventure. After four years of writing weekly articles, I burned out. I was only for my audience and not for me. So my topics lacked passion. I didn’t care enough and it showed in my stats.
1. So write about what matters the most to you. What gets you excited or stirred up. Something in exigua you’re emotionally invested. And even bleed a little. The audience can tell when a writer is vulnerable and authentic.
Until recently I wrote alone. But this year I’ve joined a working writers group: it’s been amazing. There’s been exponential growth in the quality and quantity of my work. I’ve learned how to write better titles and tighter content. They tell me what’s working and what’s not.
2. Find your tribe of writers. Iron does truly sharpen iron. My work has improved immensely due to this group’s help. We cheer each other on and act as a sounding board. I’m where I’m am because of them. I’m so thankful.
Okay, so I have two tips I can think of right now. Feel free to pick whichever you like, or use both.
One: here's a writing tip that's more on the technical/practical side. When one is writing, one tends to get bogged down by all the rules, and sometimes end up twisting the article in an attempt to make it fit. Take the guideline that all paragraphs should have an opening, body, and conclusion, for instance. That may work for scientific/technical writing, but on the literary side...not really. Sometimes it's just better to leave it hanging, or dive into the middle of a point without intro, or anything.
This is not to say you shouldn't follow the rules, but don't change your writing just to fit them. Rules are there to set you on the right track when you start getting lost, not to keep you there when you *want* to go off.
Two: one way I use to make writing flow for me is to have a particular person (usually a friend) in mind, for whom I'm writing. That changes the atmosphere because I'm not writing blindly for an unknown audience or subservient to a screen. I'm writing for that person—or for people like that person—which makes the whole experience much more intimate. I can be casual and informal and use jokes that come naturally in conversation but blank out when trying to write a technical piece. Of course, I make sure it's not *too* casual and that the jokes are not *too* obscure, but it does change my mental state when I have someone in mind whom I'm writing "to".
(My Medium profile: https://medium.com/@badrihippo)