So You Want to be a Writer?

2025 has started and lots of people have begun the year resolving to write a novel. There is lots of advice out there about what a new writer should do, some great and some just plain bad. I have been writing now for over two decades, but I still wouldn’t consider myself an expert. However, I will try and share some of my hard gained experience.

Write what you know

This is one of those pieces of advice that gets thrown around a lot. What does it mean to write what you know? Did Tolkien know elvish and orc when he wrote The Lord of the Rings, had George Lucas led tours of a galaxy, far, far away? It is sensible advice, but also disheartening. So let’s try and understand it a little better. You know a lot of things. You know how to be you. You know your family. You know your friends. You know what it is like to go to school. You may even know what its like to have a job. You have experienced joyous moments in your life, and you may also have experienced tragic moments. All of these are fuel for your writing. Then there are your hobbies and special interests. All those of hours sitting in-front of the television watching Netflix, all those movies, videogames and books that you have poured a chunk of your life into. All of that can feed into your stories and characters. For me, this advice is about starting with what you know and then add to your knowledge. As Brandon Sanderson says, you have literal libraries of knowledge available to you through the magic of technology. You can become ‘expert’ enough in a subject to write confidently about it. You don’t have to have a PhD or Masters in a topic in order to generate a believable illusion for your reader to accept the reality you have painted. So write what you know is really a speculative leap from what you know well enough to the convincing enough illusion of what is believable.

Read LoTs

Lots and lots and lots. Not bad advice at all. As a new writer, you are likely going to mimic the style and tone of your favourite author. Anyone who has read my work will be able to identify my influences from my writing. Its taken a long time for me to develop my own voice, but I am probably still influenced by what I have enjoyed reading, playing and watching. One antidote for writing too much like your writing heroes is to read more widely. Read more authors and genres. Someone who doesn’t read will struggle to understand the conventions of writing, the tropes of their chosen genre and importantly, what has already been written.

Write Lots

Sometimes a person comes along and the first thing they write is accepted by an agent or publisher and they go on to become bestsellers. I can’t name you a single person like that, but there probably is one out there. Most writers spend years perfecting their craft before ever getting published. The more you write, the better you get. Why do you think I blog?

Read Books On Writing

I still read books on writing. Here are some of my recommended books to read:

• Stephen King’s On Writing
• Brian McDonald The Golden Theme: How to Make Your Writing Appeal to the Highest Common Denominator
• Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style
• Robert McKee’s Story

Write Every Day

Again, good advice but not always doable. I suggest setting yourself some time that you can write every week and then sticking to it. Not everyone can come home after work and knock out a 1000 words. Set yourself a goal and try and achieve it on a weekly basis. Somewhere between 200-1000 words a day is a good goal to start off with, but it will vary depending on your capacity and ability to churn out writing. So a write a minimum of 1400 words, to 7000 words a week. Don’t worry about the quality of the writing. That’s for second and third drafts to sort out.

Writer’s Block

Its something that we all have to grapple with at some point. The easy answer is to work on something else. Just make sure you write. The hard answer is that sometimes you just have to step away from it and go do something else. Inspiration normally comes when you are doing the dishes, sitting on the toilet, taking a walk, or in my case, driving home from work. If it doesn’t come, then work on something else for a while. That grappling with sentences, words and ideas is what makes writing worthwhile. Some of the best stuff comes from that feeling of verbal constipation.

Develop Thick Skin

Not everybody is going to like your writing. Every writer (other than the mythical one I mentioned earlier) has a pile of rejections. Famously, Stephen King has a railway spike stacked with rejections. Find a writing group or join Critters to help you get feedback on your writing, it is so important especially at the early stages of your writing life to have those critical friends. Don’t expect impartial and unbiased feedback from family and friends. Either they will be too nice or too evil.

Do A creative Writing Course

I mean … it can’t hurt, right? I did Creative Writing as a minor pathway for my degree. It probably made me a better writer (because I was writing regularly and trying out different stuff), but not to the point that it made me more publishable. If you don’t want to go to university (and even if you have been to university) I highly recommend watching Brandon Sanderson’s lecture series on Writing Fantasy Fiction (here’s a link to the first in the series: https://youtu.be/-6HOdHEeosc?feature=shared). Its 13 lectures on the different aspects of writing fantasy fiction. I’ve watched and found it very useful. He also has a webpage with writing advice: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/pages/writing-advice.

I will be posting more in the future on writing. You can also explore some of my earlier (much, much, earlier) blog posts on writing. As always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. If there is some advice I’ve missed, please feel free to add it in the comments section.