The Write Thing

Here are 5 writing lies that you tell yourself. When you hear them running through your thoughts, stop, realise what they are, and take appropriate action.

1. I’ll write more tomorrow

No, you won’t. This has been proven time and time again: procrastination kills productivity. The human brain is great at tricking itself in a variety of ways. One of them is thinking that you’l be able to catch up tomorrow.

This is a lie for two reasons. One, you won’t catch up tomorrow. Two, you’re letting yourself fall out of a habit or pattern you’re deliberately trying to ingrain yourself with. If you’ve set yourself a goal of writing an amount of words per day, then you need to stick to it. This is why I suggest using a 30 day trial to see if you can manage a certain output.

Build willpower and writing habits by taking small, manageable steps. You may not be able to write 2,000 words a day, every day. Most professional writers can’t. You can certainly write 500 words a day. 500 words a day is more than one full draft of a decent sized novel per year.

Don’t write more tomorrow. Write enough today.

2. This edit is good enough.

It’s not. If you’re not sick of seeing your words, then you haven’t read over them enough. If you catch yourself saying ‘Yeah, this is good enough‘, then your brain is being lazy and trying to get out of the hard work of editing nd revising your work. This is especially true if you’re trying to edit for length. Killing words is hard. Doing so is worthwhile.

How will you know when your edits are good enough? When you don’t have to tell yourself they are. When your bones are full of the deep-rooted knowledge that you’ve polished and revised. Your words will be the best they can be.

3. This is a totally original idea!

No it’s not. If you think you’ve had a totally original idea, you haven’t read broadly or deeply enough. And if you’ve Googled the idea and can’t find a single other instance of it anywhere in written history, don’t get your hopes up. The Chinese invented it three thousand years ago and it’s sitting in a scroll in the Imperial Archives.

Don’t worry, though. What matters is not so much the idea but the execution. How you execute an idea is entirely yours. Borrow, steal, misappropriate, remix, mash-up and hybridize all the ideas you can. Ignore the false hope of coming up with a perfectly original idea. Find something that excites you and concentrate on doing it well.

4. The editor will see past that.

Have a penchant for referring to people’s hair color every third sentence? Use too many adverbs? Don’t know how to use a semicolon, but feel like throwing one in anyway? “It’s OK,” you think, “That’s what editors are for.” Then you send your submission off to wherever it’s going, and wonder why the results are always so negative.

Editors – the ones you submit your writing to – are not there to tidy up your work. They’re there to pick diamonds out of the thousands and thousands of lumps fo coal that get sent their way. Do you think your writing is in the top 0.03% of submissions that end up getting published? Great. Submit it.

Poke-in-the-eye, wake-up-and-pay-attention fact time: if you make an editor blink by dropping punctuation, misspelling something, or not following their guidelines exactly, you’re giving them an excuse to drop your work and move onto something else. You are not the exception to this rule. Arrogance is a virtue only when used for good. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking the creative writing world will make allowances for you.

5. This is a guaranteed bestseller!

You can secretly think this if you want. But don’t say it to anyone, ever. Not your grandmother, who’s read everything you’ve written since you were three and shows all the ladies at lawn bowls. Not your partner, who’s suffered through months of your ups, downs, temper tantrums and delirious bouts of optimism.

Definitely never say it to your agent, editor, marketers or publishers. Don’t even think it loudly around them. Do you know how many people say this? All the time? And what percentage of those actually go on to be read, let alone considered, let alone published? Few. Very few. Don’t make your innocent optimism mark you out as a gormless amateur.

Your writing may be a success. It may be a rampant success. You may end up with journalists and screaming fans camped outside your door, day and night, as you work on your next multimillion-dollar-advance-book.

It’s unlikely, though. The difference between healthy optimism and blind ignorance can be measured in precisely how many times you say this in your writing career. Here’s a hint: more than zero is bad.

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
There are other little writing lies that you tell yourself. Tell me them! If you think of a writing lie that I’ve missed, please let me know in the comments section below.