Things I have learned since taking up writing

Writing is just like exercise, in fact, writing is exercise. You should aim to write at least one thousand words a day. Just like you should aim to do at least one thousand metres on the cross trainer or treadmill at the gym every time you go.
At first you do twenty metres and you’re puffed out but keep it up and in no time at all you’ll be getting to one thousand with enough in the tank for a load more. And it’s just like that with writing; when you start you do one hundred words and that’s it, you can’t think of anything else to say, but keep it up and soon you get to one thousand and go ‘whoa, I haven’t even begun to say what I need to.’
And just like exercise, if you lay off writing for a while when you start again you struggle again. So write something every day, anything; it could be a chapter in the next best-selling novel, a diary entry or just a random stream of thoughts, it really doesn’t matter what it is.

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Never delete anything, if it doesn’t fit with the story then cut it out, but save it, it could be the perfect part for your next story – I do this all the time.

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A useful quote attributed to Ernest Hemmingway (slightly paraphrased) is ‘read your dialog out loud, then you’ll know if it sounds stupid.’

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You must use the language that your character would use, and if your character is vile racist, then you have to use vile racist language. Do this and you should feel uncomfortable as you write their dialogue, if you don’t, then you’re not doing it right.

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Don’t overthink character names; if you create a name that is unusual, make a note of the spelling, because there’s nothing worse than fifty-thousand words later you realise that you’ve changed the way you spell it. Well, okay, there’s loads of things worse than that and changing it is not hard, but it is very annoying.
If you do come up with an unusual but cool sounding name, do check that it isn’t another language’s disgusting term for a body part.

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And most importantly, the thing to remember about writing for adults is this: You can write a one-hundred-thousand-word novel with themes of love, tolerance, understanding and equality for all. You write it in in a subtle non-preachy way, and the only thing adults will want to talk about is that one page with a bit of sex in it.

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