I think it'd be nice to have a thread where we talk about the craft of writing.
Do you write every day? What are your writing habits like? I've seen people who write 1,000 words a day no matter what; anyone here do something like that?
What's been the biggest source of improvement in your writing skills? Do you read books on writing, or just learn through practice?
Anyone here participate in writing groups or workshops?
There's a workshop of sorts on /lit, in the form of the critique thread. People regularly share their writing and receive feedback of dubious quality. Still, I find it more productive than threads like this one, which usually just attract armchair writers and editors who like to talk about their work but rarely put their words where their ideas are.
Not to bash your intentions or anything, but I've seen a lot of threads like these that don't really go anywhere.
I try to write everyday, even if I only have shit to write about.
Reading a lot is essential, of course.
I want to live in a house with other writers. I want to drink with them all and turn the building into a temple
I try to write down my dreams whenever I can remember them, and I also like to write down little scenes and sometimes do cut-ups of donates books and magazines people donate at my job. Then I like to combine them and cut them up and if I can put them through a translator (especially Google Translate, since it translates so literally) a couple of times and then cull ideas from that. Not that it helps me, because besides the fact that I probably will never use any of these new scenes and metaphors and whatever else that I stumble upon doing this, I am also just a shitty writer in general and am too afraid and insecure to show my pretentious, meandering, aimless shit to anyone. But anyways, that's what I do.
at my peak i was writing 1½ hrs/day, 6 days/week but i'm nowhere near that now. i try to write for at least an hour at a time. i don't count words.
i have an english degree with a writing emphasis. i concentrated on short story and poetry writing. i read books on writing. donald maass has some enlightening books on fiction.
i've been in a few writing groups, not currently because my output is too slow. critiquing is a skill that grows with practice so it's easy to find a bad group with beginner writers giving beginner critiques. like the critique threads for instance.
critique threads get more replies because they're full of people with no craft.
I'm 20 and I'm starting university in September and I haven't really had to write essays since I finished school when I was 16. What tips do you guys have on brushing up my essay writing skills and making them better?
I'm trying to finish the manuscript to my first novel before i go off to college on the 18th.
This would be the 9th draft, and i'm doing a good job of pushing out 4000 words a day. It takes me about 9 hours and i drink a LOT of coffee
I hope i can keep that pace up tomorrow when i go back to work. May have to stay up late, get up early. I might quit my job a few week early to finish it out.
This is just going to be for the next month or so. Usually i write about 1500-3000 words a day, depending on how into the story i am. I average about 4 hours of writing, 2 before work, 2 after or until dinner.
I gave my 8th draft to an author in my hometown. He pretty much ripped it apart. So that was helpful. I've also improved quite a bit just through critiquing my own writing. I've never read a book an writing, but reading Breece DJ Pancake really improve my prose. I like to think it did, anyway.
I write journal entries erryday. Also, uni notes and assignments
Good stuff dude, just be careful not to burn out.