I am not a professional writer but I do love to write and so I thought I would make a post about the things I have found most helpful in the writing process. This will include things I have read over time, stuff I have learned from my own experience and just over all helpful things to hopefully help someone else write their story one day.
1. Write for fun!
This is the best piece of advice anyone can ever listen to. Don't write thinking about what's popular right now or who will like it. Don't think of publishing or audiences. Think about you. Write for yourself, write because it makes you happy. The best mindset you can have is that you are writing for yourself. So that even if you never get published at least you will have that story for yourself. Once you have it written out and you are happy with it, then start thinking of what you want to do with it. If you want to publish it that is fine, if you want to just bind it and keep it on your personal bookshelf that is fine too.
2. Writers are crazy!
The best piece of advice I have every heard was to let your character's speak to you. And that is the best advice I ever heard and it took a while to understand but it really did improve my writing when I started listening. What this means is instead of writing as yourself write as your character. A great example of this playing out is J.R. Ward, who writes the Black Dagger Brotherhood Series. There are many examples out there where J.R. Ward will have conversations with her characters, and the back and forth really brings her characters to life and shows how they speak to her and her process of writing.
This is a great way to grow your character's personality and to understand how your character thinks and what they would do in certain situations. Personally, I like to say my characters tell their story and I just write it. For my first novel Pathway To Love, I literally pretended to be a therapist sitting down and have my characters come to me and share their story with me. And sometimes that's how you have to let your characters take over. Your head may say something but your imagination is always right. When I stopped second guessing the things my imagination was coming up with, writing became much easier and I found later on things that seemed odd to me came full circle.
3. Go nuts, but not too nuts!
The trick to good writing is being believable, and something people can relate to. This can be hard sometimes because you often have to put your character into situations where you need to understand them real well. As a person you may choose path A but your character may choose path B which is hard to write because it is not what you would do at all. But you have to put yourself in their shoes to understand why they choose that and that's what makes it realistic.
It is also great to get input from people. For example, in my novel Pathway to Love I write a lot of characters and one includes a father and I have no children. It was hard for me to write certain parts of the book from his point of view, so I got a friend of mine who is a father to read those parts. He told me as a father how he would feel and what he would do and I started to think and wonder about what he was telling me until I found something my character fit with.
4. Get it all out!
Drafts are a writer's best friend. When you start a book, just write. Don't worry about your grammar or spelling, just let the story out of your head! Personally, I write a draft by hand, and then explore it more later. Once I have a rough draft, I go through it and do what I call, "Character Drafts". This means I look at what I wrote from the point of view of each character so I can try and get as much information and detail out of my head as I can. Finally, after all that I put it together and type up another draft.
Once I have everything typed up, I let it sit for a while. Then after a week or a month, I come back to it and start editing it all over again.
5. Scribble a lot!
Sometimes things pop in your head for no reason... WRITE IT DOWN. It doesn't matter if you are thinking of something from your book that you haven't gotten to yet, just write it down. Often times I know the ending of my book before I am even finished chapter one. Write anything down, even if it doesn't fit into your book, its a nice bit of information you know. Also, don't be afraid to jump around. You don't have to write things in the order they happen, write things when they come to you.
My stories get hard to write sometimes, especially around emotional scenes, so I skip forward and get some other parts written and then go back when I feel like the time is right.
6. Write!
No matter what is on your mind, write. Get in the habit of writing and it will come so much easier. If you're thinking of butterflies write about that, it doesn't matter if they are ramblings that mean nothing, ideas for a new book or ideas for the book you are working on just write.
A great website to help with this is 750 Words. They will track what you write, and what days you write and are a great place to just let go and write what you want, with no pressure.
