Just thought I would share these tidbits of advice from three very different writers.

Neil Gaiman’s pep talk on the NaNoWriMo site is a must read particularly for novice novel writers like myself. Basically he’s saying what we are told in Writing 101 – just write. It’s not going to write itself. I like his analogy of building a dry stone wall. There are a lot of those around where I live so I will be constantly reminded of his words on this as it relates to the writing process.

PD James at 93, and still going strong, offers up her top ten tips for writing novels. Some of these resonated strongly with me. In particular, number 9. It certainly made me smile to realise that even a writer with her track record goes through that awful waiting period after submitting her work to her publisher wondering if they like it. (…sent it on Friday, surely they should have rung by Saturday to say how good it is…)

And then there’s this very long blog post from Rachel Aaron who has worked out how to go from writing two thousand words a day to ten thousand. She certainly has no problem writing a lot of words. However it’s worth ploughing through (and speed reading) as she does make some good points. Perhaps the best one being to find a place to write without the distraction of the internet.

However, if you want to skip all that, just go with Neil Gaiman’s succinct analysis…write “one word after another”.

That’s it. End of story!