If You Want To Be A Good Writer DON’T Do NaNoWriMo

Or do it & stop taking writing advice from mediocre bloggers like me …

As NaNoWriMo approaches unsuccessful writers all over the blogger sphere will be attempting to cash in on your dreams.

They know it’s hard to write a novel, so hard in-fact that they have given up trying. Instead they are here to you offer you advice on how to complete their lost dreams.

Do yourself a favour and ignore them all. Unless they are both known to you and successful (however you define success), what could they possibly hope to teach you?

Still, those click baiting titles, like this one will, grab some eyes, and fill unsuspecting minds with junk.

Don’t let that mind be your mind!

If you want to be a good writer, there’s two things you need to do:
1: Write
2: Read

Seriously, that’s it.

Spend some time listening to interviews of bestselling authors. They all have their individual methods and approaches, some of which will work for you of course - most of which won’t, but the through line of all of them is always:

“If you want to be a good writer, you need to read and write. A lot.”

Personally, the idea of NaNoWriMo sounds terrible. Way to stressful and not appropriate for my lifestyle and circumstances. For other people it is the perfect prompt to get them going.

There is no ‘correct’ way. Just do you.

The book ‘Daily Rituals, How Artist’s Work’ highlights this perfectly. It gives countless examples of world-famous artists morning rituals across multiple creative fields. Some are regimented, some are free, some are drug filled, some are straight edge. Point is, by the end of the book you realise that the real answer of ‘how to write well’ is to discover what works for you.

Try a collection of things and keep what works. Discard the rest. If you want to do NaNoWriMo do it. If you don’t, don’t.

Just stop clicking on articles like this, written by someone you have never heard before - your writing will thank you.