Writing tip #1: Write stuff down

On a scale of 1 to earth-shattering this probably doesn’t raise a tremor at first glance. Great advice numb-nuts! How else do you propose to write anything if you don’t write stuff down?

A fair point well made internal-dialogue-person. But allow me to retort.

I’m not limiting this to actually writing a story – in fact that’s the least important part of the writing stuff down routine. I’m talking about all the weird fishes that swim into your brain in the small hours. The pithy one-liners that jump out at you just after you could have used one to win an argument. The scenic gems, the character names…write them down.

Sixty minutes...tick...tock...

What are you waiting for? Forty one minutes...tempus is fugiting old boy...

It was supposed to be an hour. Hard to believe how easily you can toss away nineteen minutes without even thinking. Make some coffee. Open email. Sit and stare.

Hemingway once said that writing is easy. You just sit in front of the typewriter and bleed. So here I am decades later. Living the dream. Sitting in front of the iMac. Sweating.

Somewhere, somehow it all got difficult. There was a roll and then there wasn't. Words that poured out now stick under my skin like broken arrow heads needing to be plucked free. Be as delicate as you like. It's still going to hurt.