Books on Writing

I've read so many books on how to write a novel, how to improve writing, how to build characters, and so on.

It started with a book about writing from the middle of your story. There were a lot of helpful tricks in that one, but most of them didn't work for me. I then moved on to the next book, this went on for a while. Me, buying books on writing, filling up my ebook reader. Jumping from one helpful tip to the next. Searching the web for blogs on writing, absorbing everything I could get my hands on.

It ruined me. It killed my creativity. I used to LOVE to write, but all the rules mentioned in those books, ripped out my love and replaced it with dread. It's come to the point where I fall asleep every time I open the document of my "closed to finished" draft. This is literal, I've tried to finish that draft for over 6 months, but as soon as I see the first word, my eyes grow heavy, my brain shuts down and I can't stay awake. So I gave up.

A dear friend made me promise to not read any more books on writing, and just write. That's why I started this project. I changed my writing process. I turned off spellcheck. I forced myself to just write the bare bones of the story, and not try to "show" everything. Getting that draft down is so important. From start to finish I have to be a runaway train or it won't get done. I have to not care about Deep POV, or filler words, or arcs, or adverbs. There are an abundance of rules surrounding writing, and the best authors don't care.

One of my favorite authors used three adverbs in the first page of her NYT bestseller. So why do I care about these things? Why should I,who's just writing a draft, even care about pacing?

This mindblock is being dealt with. It takes time, but I'm stubborn. I've given myself some exeptions. I'm allowed to use Autocrit, but only after I've finished my revision. I'm allowed to use The Emotion Thesaurus and it's sibling books. And last, but not least, I'm allowed to use One Stop For Writers. That's it. No more reading about acts, or "how to's".

You can't edit an empty page. Someone really smart said that, and I'm slowly learning to live by it.