TOUGH WRITING TRUTH: You must write 2000 words a day, and 200 of them must be in your own tears, and 100 in your own blood. I don’t make the rules.
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HARSH WRITING ADVICE: You have to hunt and eat your fellow writers. They will taste of Cheetos, pink wine and despair. But this is how the Publishing Gods are fed. Sorry.
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PAINFUL WRITING REALITY: Your editor is your foe. You will do battle across the planes of space and time, a battle of corrections and stets; this will play out even after you are both dead. Again and again the cycle repeats. This is how good fiction is made. It is what it is.
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MISERABLE WRITING FACTOID: If you use an adverb, a bird dies. That’s how it goes.
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EXECRABLE WRITING CERTAINTY: You get readers not by writing compelling fiction but by trapping them in various oubliettes and ditches, in cellars and crates. They are your true audience. I’m just speaking truth to power.
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SINISTER WRITING GOSPEL: You wanna be a writer you gotta pay your dues. You gotta find another more successful writer and drive them around town. Gotta wash their dishes and their feet. Gotta bake for them a variety of increasingly weird cupcakes. Don’t like it? Too bad.
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MIND-SCOURING WRITER APOTHEGM: If you don’t use the word “apothegm” once per book, your career is cooked. Get used to it.
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SOUL-DESTROYING WRITER PARADIGM: You gotta go to Writer School and get your MFA from the Whispering Centipedes in the Bleak Stump out in the Wordless Wastes, and the Deciding Coat will sort you into your Chosen Genre. Suck it up, professor.
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SPLEEN-EXPLODING WRITER PRECEPT CARVED IN THE GRANITE BOOK OF AUTHORIAL TRUISM: Or maybe don’t listen to shitty writing advice on Twitter. Bye.
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(More seriously, other writers are community, not competition. Writers are readers and fans too, and often, acquaintances or friends. We are not in ruthless contention. A rising tide lifts all boats. Success for all is success for you. Okay bye for real.)
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As a few people seem to think I also created the original HARSH WRITING ADVICE tweet (so I’m subtweeting myself??), I did not and am just being silly. The original tweet, not by me, was —pic.twitter.com/0LSbpZaEdB
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