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    Why I Don’t do 70 Days of Sweat (and other sprints)

    J. Timothy King Fri 29 Feb 2008 16:04
    writing | writing life

    70 Days of Sweat, Round 3 begins tomorrow. I will not be participating. Just as I participate in neither NaNoWriMo nor NaNoEdMo. Why not? What do I have against writers trying to write a book? Nothing, except…

    In my view, either I’m a writer, and I write consistently. Or I’m not a writer, and I don’t. Therefore, churning out a novel before the end of the day May 10, that exercise does not make me a writer. Just a few hundred words each and every day, that does make me a writer. This misperception many writers and aspiring writers seem to have. It’s as if they think they need to push themselves to the limit in order to get enough time for writing, and that requires something like NaNoWriMo or 70 Days of Sweat.

    Or else there’s some lure in the idea that, if you just buckle down and do it, you could actually write a novel in only a month (or 2½ months). I think that’s the wrong attitude to take. Rather, look at it this way: If you can spend just 10 or 20 minutes each day writing, you can finish a complete novel in under a year. That’s right, if you really want to be a writer, you don’t have to give up your life. You don’t have to “find time,” because you can probably find 10 or 20 minutes easily enough. (More on that in a sec.) (Read more…)

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    The Real 7 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer

    J. Timothy King Mon 6 Aug 2007 13:33
    writing | writing life

    Getting caught up on my RSS feeds, I saw Brian Clark’s 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer. He didn’t make up this advice. It has been repeated far and wide. But it’s absolutely wrong.

    The advice is basically, if you want become a better writer, you should write, write some more, keep writing and writing and writing until you become a better writer. Some authors even take great pride at how much they’ve written that’s never been published. They take pride in the number of rejections they’ve gotten, because it makes them feel like they’re pursuing their dream, even if they’re not getting anywhere.

    None of that makes you better writer. That makes you a so-so writer at best. If you want to be a better writer, especially if you want to be a truly great writer, here are 7 steps you can follow that will actually make you a better writer, and not just a prolific one. (Read more…)

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