Break These 3 Unwitting Writing Habits to Finally Get Your Novel Finished

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Break These 3 Unwitting Writing Habits to Finally Get Your Novel Finished

nanowrimo

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Kahana, a 2021 NaNo sponsor, combines the ability to create split-screen environments with notes and reference materials on one side and documents being written on the other with a simple folder hierarchy and beautiful UI. Today, content writer Gia Marcos shares some tips to break bad writing habits you might not even realize you do:

Writers are such creatures of habit. Whether you’re a planner, plotter, or pantser, your process is any behavioral pattern that has always worked efficiently.

But often, you get attached to these “success” habits—not necessarily the practice itself but the ways in which you maintain them—and gradually kill your creativity. You tend to focus on results instead of enjoying the journey. But hey, it’s human nature and there are ways to get around it.

Here at Kahana, we help writers design healthy and fun processes. We work with an international community of writers who give us insight into their unique processes. As a result, we were able to identify three unwitting habits that are stopping many writers from getting their novels done. And we come bearing tips!

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sis-tafics

rowdyravens

those posts criticizing common writing patterns in fanfiction are so fucking harmful and they ruined me

so like yknow what??? People tell you to avoid “smirk” and “chuckle” as descriptors because no one does those things (???) but then when I need to use those words I have a ten minute crisis about how I’m a shitty writer. So heres my unwarranted writing advice: If you want your characters to smirk and chuckle fucking let them and don’t let anyone tell you that no one smirks or chuckles because I do both on a daily basis whenever I tell a shitty pun, bye

sventhecrusader

Edgy fanfiction critics can eat my entire ass.

sis-tafics

I use these words all the time BECAUSE THEY ARE WHAT PEOPLE DO

fan fic writers writing advice writer life

onequartercanadian

What is even shit?

fixyourwritinghabits

All first drafts are shit. Your writing is not. You are not.

As writers, writing coaches and writing bloggers, we are fond of saying “all first drafts are shit.” There’s been some blowback about that recently, and I wanted to address it head on.

When anyone says this, they aren’t saying YOU are shit. They aren’t saying you can’t enjoy your word vomit sessions, or that joke your beloved OCs share, or anything that might not make it into a final draft. If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you know we always tell you to keep the stuff you edit out.

When any competent, compassionate scribe says, “All first drafts are shit,” this is what they mean:

It’s meant to encourage new writers to keep writing even if they don’t like their writing (yet).

It’s meant to encourage semi-experienced writers to focus on the craft of editing and refining – once you are done writing.

It’s meant to encourage experienced writers to start thinking in three (or would that be four?) dimensions about what they’re putting on the page. And that they’re gonna have to edit it at some point.

It’s meant to keep everyone writing.

So, to sum up: All first drafts are shit. Your writing is not.

YOU ARE NOT.

Keep writing.

– Aliya

writer life writing advice

jeffreydeanneganstrash-deactiva

rumpuswriters rumpuswriters

Writing Tip:

If you don’t feel like actually writing, prepare for writing:

Open your WIP Word doc
Read the last page again
Scribble notes on what happens next

Once you’ve done this, you might just find yourself wanting to continue after all. And if you don’t, no worries. You’ve made it easier to jump back into it later.

risingphoenix761

I’ve done this before. It helps!

writer life writing advice

jeffreydeanneganstrash-deactiva

Reasons to Keep Writing

morgannbethh morgannbethh

•everyone starts small. just because you’re not big now, doesn’t mean you’ll never be. and if you’re just starting out, keep in mind those bigger blogs have been writing for much longer than you. building a following takes time.

•there will always be someone who enjoys your writing. every like, reblog, and comment is one person who enjoyed what you wrote and i can assure you they want more! and remember, not everyone remembers to leave evidence that they liked your writing or they might just be too nervous to interact with you. invisible fans exist, and you’ve got them.

•going along with that last one, your writing has the potential to help others! you could write about a minority, or maybe you could publish a little something comforting at the exact time someone else needs it. and most of the time, when you affect someone like this they’ll tell you, whether it be through tags, or a private message or whatever. that’s an amazing feeling.

•getting a compliment from someone becomes a sure-fire way to make your day better. nothing feels greater than seeing a comment from someone saying how much they love something you worked hard on. maybe write down these comments somewhere, so you can look at them when you’re feeling negative about your skills as a writer.

•writer’s block is not the end of your writing career. it sure feels like it sometimes, but everyone, even the popular writers you look up to, suffer from writer’s block. everyone puts out work they’re not 100% satisfied with sometimes, and that’s okay! when you get out of this slump, your writing will be better than ever before and you’ll enjoy it again. keep writing through a block so you can get there sooner.

These are the things I think about when I feel bad about my writing, so I hope they can help someone else too.

writer life writing advice

onequartercanadian

maramahan

I see a lot of writing tips and I post a lot of writing tips but I feel like I’ve been forgetting the most important one: you’ve gotta learn to trust yourself.

And I don’t mean that in sort of “uwu have faith in yourself! You can do it!!” kind of way. I’m not here to repeat empty affirmations–I’m saying you’ve consumed a lot of media over the years. You know what you like and what you don’t like. You have good taste.

But if you’re like me, all that certainty goes out the window when you’re writing your own stuff. “Will the readers like that?” you think. “This is too weird. It’s unrelatable. Nobody else’s story looks like this–I must be doing something wrong.”

“This is silly,” you tell yourself. “Why do I even bother?”

And when you start doubting yourself like that, that’s the moment you stop creating. You get blocked and stressed and it gets all too easy to fall back on cliches and stereotypes. You start stripping away the things that make the story uniquely yours in order to make it look more like everyone else’s.

Which is infinitely sad.

You’ve lived a life no one else has seen, and you have ideas that nobody else in the world could think of. Even if the story has been ‘done’ before, there’s nobody else who can tell it like you. You can start with the most ‘cliche’ idea ever, but if you come at it with any measure of emotional honesty, it’ll still be new–because it’s being told by you.

I just finished a draft of a book that’s probably the most painful thing I’ve written so far. It’s way out of my comfort zone, and I had to explore aspects of myself I prefer not to think about. I did a lot of second guessing, and a good bit of whimpering facedown on the floor because writing is scary and hard.

And rereading the draft now, the absolute best parts are the bits where I gave up on convention and I wrote what I wanted exactly the way I wanted to write it. Yeah, it’s kinda silly and kinda dumb and kinda just a big load on nonsense–but it’s MY nonsense. If people like it, great. Wonderful. If they don’t like it, well–reading is a subjective experience, and maybe my work just isn’t for them. That’s okay.

Be you. Be honestly, genuinely you. It’s a scary, vulnerable position to put yourself in, but… Even if you’re one in a million, there are 7,000 people just like you–and that’s 7,000 people who will read your work and go “this writer gets me.”

Write it for them. Write it for you. Create shamelessly. Learning to write is only half learning the craft–the other half is learning to trust in the value of the things you have to say.

writer life writing advice

bamby0304

drunk-on-writing

sweetheart,
you are a writer
you paint picture with colors that haven’t even been named yet in only black ink
you make dreams come true with the quiet ‘click’ of a keyboard
you do things that others wish they could do
so don’t be so hard on yourself; your gift is unique to you
you don’t have to write like them
you write like you
and that is enough

for anyone who may need this reminder ♡
(cc, 2018)

writer life writing advice

flames-bring-a-ton-of-ash

sinedra

Remember, you will always be growing as a writer. There is no peak, only improvement. It’s a continual learning curve and you can only go up from here. So keep writing lovelies.

writer life writing advice

onequartercanadian

“Thanks to “show don’t tell,” I find writers in my workshops who think exposition is wicked. They’re afraid to describe the world they’ve invented. … This dread of writing a sentence that isn’t crammed with “gutwrenching action” leads fiction writers to rely far too much on dialogue, to restrict voice to limited third person and tense to the present.”

— Ursula K. LeGuin (via colubrina)

writing advice

Every year for the past six years, I’ve set out with the purest of intentions to do SOMETHING for NaNoWriMo (edit two still-unpublished novels, finish writing one I’d been working on since August, one short story a week, a 30-day writing challenge expanded into 30 days of informal essays, a poem every day, and outlining five different stories at once). Guess who crashed and burned every time?

NaNoWriMo writer problems the penguin might not be relevant but it's adorable so there

onequartercanadian

The quickest show not tell tip ever.

itstartswithablankpage

‘Always show, not tell,’ is a big fat lie. If you always show, you’ll have half a novel of descriptive words and flowy sentences that will be hard to read.

Here is a quick tip:

Show emotion.

Tell feelings.

Don’t tell us ‘she was sad.’ Show us- ‘Her lip trembled, and her eyes burned as she tried to keep her tears at bay.’

Don’t show us ‘her eyelids were heavy- too heavy. Her limbs could barely function and she couldn’t stop yawning.’ Tell us - ‘she felt tired that morning.’

Showing emotion will bring the reader closer to the characters, to understand their reactions better. But I don’t need to read about how slow she was moving due to tiredness.

Likewise, when you do show, keep it to a max three sentences. Two paragraphs of ‘how she was sad,’ with no dialogue or inner thought is just as boring.

writing advice

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.