anonymous asked: For years, I’ve written by myself, sort of in secret, and I’ve always loved it. Now, I’ve chosen to become a novelist and take creative writing in university, and suddenly I’m full of anxiety. It’s like I’m afraid of writing. I don’t want to be. Do you have any advice?

Word. This is scary. If you’ve never shown people your writing before, you’ll be scared that you’re showing them deeply personal subject matter and characters that you’ve gotten to know exclusively for so long, and you also know that they will judge you for the quality of your writing, which is probably even scarier.

There’s also the whole pressure of having “chosen to become a novelist.” Now it seems that your whole career is banking on how well you do in these classes, how much you learn, and in some ways, how much better you are than your classmates. Right? Maybe a little.

The thing is, you can choose to think this way. You can choose to think of each word you set down as something that is going to set you on the road to achieve your dream. And that’s horrifying. After all, you only live once. Can’t afford to make mistakes.

Alternatively, you can think of it as every word that you set down as a small part in a made-up story about a bunch of things that don’t exist. And if you become unsatisfied with this small piece, you can edit it out.

Nobody is amazing at writing the first time they try. It takes a metric ton of practice to get anywhere near good, and those writers that are Voices of Their Generation edit their work constantly.

Just as writing can be improved with a little work, so can you. You’re going to school to get better at writing, yes? That must mean that your writing could be improved in a whole lot of ways. So don’t worry about how good you are now. That doesn’t matter one little bit compared to how good you’ll be once you’re done, and that won’t matter one little bit ten or twenty years in the future.

So for now, just write. Have fun, and keep your ears open. There’s nothing to worry about and a whole lot to learn. Focus on the learning.

Here are some other resources relating to worries, nervousness, and stuff.

• On Writing “Books”
• The Perks of Being a Workshopper

- O

Are you looking for our page called How to Say Said?

-C

Well, thatfrenchhelper has collected together a bunch of articles (including ours) from Tumblr and elsewhere on this very subject! It’s a pretty great resource, so definitely check it out!

• Writing a drunk character

Thank you for your question! If you have further questions or a comment to add, hit us up!

-C

Anonymous added: The most useful advice I ever received about influenced characters came from my high school drama teacher. Drunk people don’t “play” drunk, they “play” sober—though they are not. Performing usual tasks, they still seek an expected result, only with a wrench thrown in. Instead of drawing arrows to the obstacle, demonstrate that it is now there outside of the character’s control. That idea of playing the same goal rather than the obstacle helped my storytelling grow up. It’s a fond memory.

tusenaravensamhet asked: I am a very big fan of your blog, as many others probably are. The idea is very simple, really, but I find it incredibly helpful. Now I have a problem regarding ideas and how to write them out. I can be a fountain of ideas but when to write them down, I find myself unable to do so. Do you have any tips on how to make ideas into words or should I just keep on trying?

Well, thanks! We try to keep things relatively helpful ‘round these parts. In keeping with this theme, we’re going to sally forth and answer your question.

Writing is really only writing when the writing happens. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this means that ideas are great, but they only become stories once they’re told, meaning, down on paper (or orally to friends/family or whomever, verbal storytelling counts!). Therefore, the inability to get these ideas into actual, you know, writing, is probably rather consternating. Luckily, there are things you can do.

• Ditch the filter. Writers tend to auto-edit. We’ll think of an idea and start to write it and then say “no no no that’s stupid.” Then we delete it. Getting into the habit of calling your ideas silly right out of the starting gate is the first way to stop ideas from flowing. If you let the idea tap continue to flow uninhibited, then more ideas will begin to appear on paper. If you get in the habit of eliminating ideas before they’re on paper, you’ll probably miss something. Ditching the filter also comes with the confidence that you will edit later on.
• Don’t feel constrained by conventional forms of writing. If you’re a poet, don’t feel a need to say “I want to write a poem about grocery shopping, I shall begin my first line of verse now!” Why not spend some time thinking about all of your feelings associated with grocery shopping, all of the details that you think are interesting/clever/beautiful/whatever, and then once you think you’ve got a substantial body of images and feelings, work it into a poem? Similarly, if you’re writing prose, don’t worry about throwing scenes together right away. That will happen eventually. You might want to…
• Try Freewriting. Once you’ve set one of your ideas on paper (maybe only as a name; “Story About Fish” will work just fine), then write just anything down. Any direction you can see this fish story headed, set it on paper. If one lead appears promising, pursue it. If a lead ends up going down a place you don’t like, go back and try again, or scrap the lead altogether and go someplace else. At this stage of the game, you have very little going for your idea, so eliminating large sections of it is far from tragic. Basically…
• Let ideas fail. Nothing at this point in time is AIG (too big to fail). If something just isn’t going to hold up, let it go. As the adage goes, “murder your darlings.” Something might seem like a fun idea, but if everything else in your story is going one way and that other idea is going another way, you might have to cut it. Sorry.
• Stop caring about logistics. If there is something that takes place in your story that doesn’t make sense for whatever reason, don’t worry about it yet. If something feels right, go for it. Fix your logistical problems later. Don’t worry about exactly how they’re going to get out of jail, just write “JAILBREAK SCENE” in big letters and worry about it later. Write large sections of your story with pieces missing. Follow what you have now. If you have energy, seize it.
• Find a routine. If there’s something that tends to work for you, work on it. If you feel comfortable starting with your antagonist, start there. I personally start with a story’s setting before I have any characters, because that’s what I’m most comfortable writing. If there’s something that you feel that you can write confidently, work there. The other bits can get figured out later.

The real meat and potatoes with getting your ideas out on paper is experimentation. Experiment with the elements of your story and experiment with the ways that you get them on the page. There are no hard and fast rules in writing, these techniques (plus the fun things in the ‘further reading’ section) are just a few suggestions. Find something that works. When that fails, try something else. Adapt, be flexible, and have fun.

Further Reading:

• Too Many Ideas Syndrome
• Breaking Down the Wall
• Ideas Worth Your Time
• Organizing Ideas
• Ideas as Strong/Weak instead of Good/Bad

Thanks for your question! If you have any curiosities about writing, always feel free to use our ask box!

- O

Yeah, we’ve gotten a lot of questions about how to “do” writer’s blocks recently, which is kind of a new phenomenon. With these questions in mind, please enjoy this Totally Authoritative Guide on how to use writer’s blocks:

Step one: Do whatever you want.

That’s it.

You see, friends, Writer’s Blocks are for your benefit. They exist so that, if nothing new is coming out of your story factory, you have a place to turn to for an image, sentence, or piece of music that can inspire you.

If you want us to read your Writer’s Block post (which, by the way, can be a separate post or a reblog, it really doesn’t matter), then tag it with “Writeworld.” We read that tag frequently. If you do not want us to read it, don’t tag it.

You may use the sentence in the piece of writing. You can also not use the sentence in the piece of writing. If an image block is a picture of a castle and you decide to write your thing about a sandwich, go for it. If you write your story and go back to look at the prompt and realize you totally misread it, it doesn’t matter. The prompts are designed to help you get writing. What you write about and how you do it is secondary.

You don’t have to write a story either. Write a poem, or an essay, or five-act musical. Just write!

- O

anonymous asked: I like to cast actors for my original characters if it ever became a movie for fun, but I just can’t find one for this one character and was wondering if everyone could help me? Here is his description: young, mid to late 20s, tall and skinny, narrow face w/ sharp features, skin tone is medium tan, of hispanic background. Thank you!

Next question.

Update:

(presumably the same) anonymous asked: I’m, uh, sorry for my last question. *sheepishly walks off into the distance in shame*

Also:

veleno-e-vino commented: Why would it be outlandish for someone to think this request may be an untapped feature of this blog? The superiority complexes of some of these people who literally blog on a website, I swear.

Word. This post was a little unnecessarily flippant. I dig that. But, as you know (if you are following our riveting ask box saga), we get a lot of questions. These questions can be divided into two broad categories: questions about writing, and questions about not writing. The question above is one of the many that we receive on a subject that is not writing. We are a blog about writing.

Because tumblr does not have a feature that allows us to respond to anonymous questions privately, we are often presented with the following conundrum: we want people to know that we will never answer their question, but we don’t want to make a post every time saying “nope, we’re not answering this one,” because that would get almost violently annoying for us and our followers.

Instead, from time to time, something like this happens. Granted, it isn’t a solution, but it does present to people that are not asking about writing the idea that we will not get to their question.

I regret that this post made someone feel small. That is never WriteWorld’s intention.

- O

Hey, anon. How are you? Sorry about O; he’s stressed because we have a zillion questions and no way to answer the ones unrelated to writing and not enough free time to answer the ones that are related to writing. It can be frustrating. I’m sure you understand!

Anyway, I’d like to introduce you to the RPCWHA community of roleplay helpers. There are many RPCWHA blogs who help writers find the right famous faces to create the cast of characters in their stories. We follow and/or know of a few really awesome blogs who can help you find the right actor for your character.

Check out poshhelpers, rphelper, and kstewrpc. If they can’t help you, a bet that they can help you find someone who can!

To veleno-e-vino: Step off my admin there, buddy. No one is hurting you. Go on ‘boutcha business. 

-C

For our Sentence Blocks, the prompt sentence is always located in the title of the post. For the post you’re talking about, for example, “You are wise” is the prompt. The rest of the post is a call to action.

Thank you for your question!

-C

First off, though the term is technically an oxymoron, self-plagiarism is a real thing (even TVTropes says so!), and people really do it, and there is really an ongoing debate surrounding it. However, I’m not sure 50 Shades qualifies.

Anybody have an insight for us?

That depends on how much you care about the sanctity of that writing, how much you desire its protection from plagiarism and value it as uniquely yours, and whether or not you hope to make money on it in the future.

If you’re writing for a Harry Potter roleplay, then I think writing on Tumblr is a great idea. If you’re writing your novel on Tumblr, I don’t know that I could recommend that, no. I’m not saying that people steal on Tumblr, but the temptation is certainly there. Also, I think that if I can read it for free on Tumblr, I’m less likely to pay for a physical or digital copy, you know?

Check out these links for more information on posting your work online and what I (C) think about writing on Tumblr:

• Posting Full Chapters on Tumblr (and why C thinks Figment is probably a better idea)
• Publishing Your Writing Online
• Writing Sites for Posting Work Online and Getting Good Feedback

Thank you for your question!

-C

avajae:

writeworld:

Also, pretty sure the title of “Ten signs that you’re a writer” used to be “Are you a real writer?”

Hmm.

Hmm. Ok. So, I’m going to explain this a little because I’m actually the original writer of the 10 Signs post. It was published on my blog Writability something like six months ago. (Original link here) 

So, originally the post was titled “Ten Indisputable Signs That You’re a Writer.” It was meant to be a fun, encouraging post highlighting the many quirks that writers have. The idea behind it was if you have these quirks too, maybe you have a budding writer inside you. 

Somewhere along the way, someone took the post, stripped out the intro paragraph and published just the signs. The title was changed and it was published on a popular tumblr blog, and I guess it went viral? I was pretty shocked, to say the least, but decided to just go with it, because while the attribution was rather tiny and at the bottom of the super-uber-popular version of the post, a lot of people seemed to be enjoying it and there was an attribution. So fine. I don’t mind if extra people get to see it. 

But the problem with stripping out the (very short) intro paragraph is that it no longer says, “here are ten signs that you may very well have a budding writer inside you,” and some people instead started to interpret it as if you don’t have these signs, you’re not a real writerwhich was never my intention at all. 

I’ve often told people that if you love to write and you write, you’re a writer, and I completely and wholly believe that. So I apologize to anyone who saw the signs and felt in any way discouraged because they thought it meant they weren’t writerly enough, or anything like that. That’s not why I wrote the post. 

So, two things I would like to highlight: 

1) If you love writing and you write—you’re a writer! That’s the only sign you need to know that you are, in fact, a real 100% genuine writer. 

2) When you take other people’s content and publish it yourself, please take care to post the whole of the post, or at least indicate that there’s more and point back to the original blog and the creator. Because sometimes things get lost in translation when you only post excerpts, and it’s helpful to refer to the original.

I hope this helps to clarify any confusion. Again, I apologize for any unintended discouragement the post caused. If anyone has any questions at all, feel free to shoot them my way. 

We are so pleased that you took the time to address this! Thank you so much for clarifying all of this confusion.

So, everyone, this is Ava Jae, admin of Writeability and original author of “Ten Indisputable Signs That You’re a Writer”. (By the way, that’s a snazzy title you’ve got there! Way better than “Are you a real writer?” for sure!) 

Her post was copied first to Writers Write’s Posterous acount, which is no more, then twice to their Wordpress, then again to their Tumblr, each time without the qualifying statements of Ava Jae’s introduction. So, by the time A Writer’s Help reposted the list from Writers Write with a link their defunct Postereous account, the blurb before the list was long gone and any qualifying statements the original post might have offered were forgotten. Here’s that intro now:

Think you might be a writer but aren’t 150% sure? Here are ten signs that you may very well have a budding writer inside you. (x)

That little blurb goes a long way in putting the list in the context of good fun for those less self-assured writers out there. We would have really appreciated its inclusion on the posts mentioned above and have added it to the version we reblogged along with credit to the original Writability post. We hope that others will do the same.

Thank you again, Ava Jae, for laying out the facts for us. You’re awesome! 

We hope that writing help blogs will heed the advice Ava Jae gave in the message above: “When you take other people’s content and publish it yourself, please take care to post the whole of the post, or at least indicate that there’s more and point back to the original blog and the creator. Because sometimes things get lost in translation when you only post excerpts, and it’s helpful to refer to the original.”

Hurray! We learned! 

-C