Tips on Writing

Courtesy of Tumblr.com from Write One Leaf:

To the young poet or to anybody, my advice on writing a short story is to write it. Don’t go in search of too much advice on writing it before you write it because in the end this will only keep you from writing it.

Once you have written it, try not to be too attached to it. It is a thing you have done, but it is not you. So seek out a person you can trust, a person with a kind and generous soul, a person who is not your mother or your spouse or your pet and share what you’ve written with that person. (It helps if this person knows something about stories, about how they are constructed and how they can be improved, but it is not absolutely essential.)

Make changes to this story if you can, or if you must, or if you want. Show it to more people. Try to have it published. Publish it yourself. Read it out loud to a group of strangers.

At some point, write another. And another. And do not be afraid. This is not brain surgery. If you slip? Nobody dies.

Write one leaf in which you describe something that scares you.

The last 2 paragraphs mean the most to me. "Read it out loud to a group of strangers. ... Do not be afraid. This is not brain surgery." I love it. Pure genius.

“The very impulse to write, I think, springs from an inner chaos crying for order, for meaning, and that meaning must be discovered in the process of writing or the work lies dead as it is finished.” ~Arthur Miller

~Willow