Participation is Key

A lot of writers tend to forget that sometimes you need to actually have done something or to write about it effectively. This isn't the usual "you need only write what you know"; it's more of a "do your research". In this day and age, we can actually spend on actually looking at how people actually do things between YouTube, the History Channel, and 27 zillion different sources, we actually take advantage of those who actually do things. So if we can't do something we can find someone who has done it and take advantage of that experience.

However, the best stories are not just a matter of actually doing the research and getting out there and actually doing it. because people are going to be able to tell if you're just writing about something, if you've just done a lot of research on it, or if you've actually done it. It's going to show in all that extra detail. There's a lot of difference between the actually setting off of an explosives versus just simply telling, going through, and describing everything you read out of the instruction book. There's going to be a certain level of adrenaline there, there's going to be a certain level of, "Oh my gosh, did I do this right or am I going to totally blow myself up?" in there that you're not going to have if you just took followed the instructions of a YouTube video or even the world's best instruction book on building bombs 

Yeah, I know, this is going to put me on yet another watch list. 

But you have to realize that when it comes to doing things like dancing, or fencing, or climbing mountains, there's a certain level of experience that you need to have in order to write about these things effectively. I don't care if you've even gone up the wall at the local gym, at some point in time you actually have to climb things in order to basically experience that and make that into a much bigger experience. You need to know the stretching of muscles as they look for a handhold, the feel of gravity pulling against every move up the wall, and the stress of not knowing if the next handhold is going to give way and you'll end up falling to the ground. 

That little bit of wall climbing you as a gym is gonna actually be able to be exploded into climbing mountains because you're going to have some sort of analogy. You can then actually build on that when it comes to your writing. You need to realize that you as a writer actually need to get out from behind the keyboard and actually do this really weird thing called "actually participate in life." Trust me, the more participation you do, the better writer you're going to be. So just keep in mind that if you're not sure how to do it, then find an expert and go actually do it. Participation is key for the best possible stories, so go out and do things.

Critique Everything

One of the things you need to realize as a writer is that you can't always be nice if you're going to learn. You can't always be what other people view as the good person. This is the easiest way to become a horrible writer. You have to know when you're actually watching or reading, and why this is good, or why this is bad. Or you need to realize that this has got some really cool stuff going on and it's also got some really bad stuff going on. 

You need to be paying attention to what's going on. 

If you tried to read a story and then go back and try to figure out exactly what happened because you've got this really horrible train wreck and you're trying to figure out how all this stuff came together and just went BOOM. And you're trying to basically do this after the fact. It's the only way you're going to find out it's not going to work all that well. There are just going to always be those missing pieces and it's because you weren't paying attention so you missed it completely. 

However, if you were paying attention in the first place, you'd be able to see where the train wrecks are going to happen. You could either figure out how to stop it or decide this is a train wreck ahead of time. Now, this obviously would apply this stuff you don't like; so you definitely want to read a lot of stuff you don't like as you're going to learn a lot from that stuff. You need to tear it apart, figuring out how you can make it better, and how you can save it. 

You need to figure that kind of stuff out. 

But at the same time, you need to realize that when you start reading stuff that you do like you're basically flipping the script a little bit. That is, all of a sudden you're going to try to figure out why all this stuff came together in just the right way and why all this stuff rocked and why you love this stuff. You're going to try to emulate that in your own stuff. 

You see you're going to try to avoid all those other train wrecks, but at the same times, you're going to try to figure out how to create recreate these glorious train wrecks. Yeah, there's a difference between the train wrecks that you try to avoid and then there's the glorious pile ups that you want to cause. Trust me, you're going to want to figure out how to do that. And you can do that if you critique everything.

So, have some fun, be judgmental. It's actually not a bad thing to be if you want to be a better writer.

If You're Serious About Your Art, Take A Business Class

As a writer you are essentially running a small business s a sole proprietor, Your product is your writing, and you're trying to market to the masses. Only by doing so will you see some sort of profit from it. Given that, knowing how to actually run a business is definitely not going to be a bad thing. 

So while you're in there doing classes for your writing major, you're should be looking at taking some classes in business. It's a cool thing to actually have a minor in business. You don't have to set yourself up as a big huge Chief Executive Officer of some sort of major corporation, but you should at least debate taking a few basic classes; knowing what you're doing is definitely not going to hurt. And think about this for a second: Even if you plan on a hiring accountant at some point in time, knowing how to do the actual business math is not going to be a bad thing. Knowing how to deal with your taxes, how to deal with depreciation on your equipment, and what actually does apply to you in some areas is not a bad thing as it allows you to plan ahead better. 

Knowing how to run the numbers is definitely not a bad thing, especially when you start looking at the numbers of your returns. 

Knowing how to market yourself effectively is always a serious plus, especially today where knowing how to market yourself is definitely a serious skill even if you're just messing around on social media. And let's not forget the knowing business is always a good thing. Yeah, I know a lot of you are already studying law as part of your major because knowing how to do proper journalism also means knowing how to do copyright and how to avoid things like libel and slander. It's definitely going to help. You definitely want to take some accounting classes, some business classes, and some marketing classes, even somesome basic business law. It can only help you out in the long run. 

So definitely think about taking some business classes if you're serious about writing. It can only help you in the long run.

Crowdsourcing Helps

I can definitely see why somebody be intimidated by crowdsourcing. For a lot of people, this is going to be the most amount of money they've ever had to deal with in their entire lives and be responsible for it. On top of that, this is definitely going to be taking the first step towards doing some hardcore business for a lot of people. 

That's fine. 

Don't get too intimidated and dive straight in. For you, as a writer, there's going to be three major advantages here:
1) You're going to be able to figure out who is your audience. 

2) You're going to figure out just how much you have to print to make people happy.

3) You're going to level up as a marketer.

Let's take that in reverse order. First off, as far as marketing goes, you're going to have to figure out new ways to increase your marketing of your book somehow, because obviously you need this to be a success. You're talking about selling a lot of these to your local bookseller, even selling a lot of these online, and just getting rid of a lot of these books. That's a major step for some, and that's something you're going to have to embrace. 

Another part is that you're going to establish what your audience is. This is an important part in and of itself. You need to figure out just how many people are interested in your book, and the only way to really do that is either by polling everybody or by sending out your materials to various sources; "Here's my book, I'm doing pre-sales, are you interested?" Crowdsourcing is definitely set up well for that. That's pretty much the major advantage to it, especially with doing a multiple-issue comic where you want to get a general feel for how big the numbers are going to be. This is gonna help you a lot more than print on demand sites. 

It's also going to tell you exactly how many books you need to print and you'll be able to get a general idea when you actually start seeing a response. This also the supplemental materials and postage. There are a lot of moving parts to keep in mind. But at the same time, this is something you're going to need to establish yourself as an actual business to use your capital in order to actually do something big, and crowdsourcing is how you do it. 

Make Some Time For Yourself

You should never get too caught up in your writing that you forget that you yourself have some basic needs. Sometimes those basic needs are just simply not being met, nd you need to take time out for them. You need to have some sort of hobby, some sort of interest, some sort of way to easily get away from things, and actually enjoy a little bit time by yourself. 

Of course, for some people, this time for you alone means time with friends, family, even fellow gamers, and that's fine. Wherever you want to find that particular time that you can read, rest, recharge, and enjoy some downtime. 

That's up to you. 

Sure, you need to be getting projects done. You need to basically be doing some hardcore work. But don't forget what happened to one jack Torrance and a hotel: All work, no play makes Jack a psycho. He wrote an entire book on the subject. It's not a very lively read and you don't want to check it out. But there is a lesson there in that this guy was too hardcore in his writing, got a little overboard, and ended up trying to kill his family. 

That's not where you want to end up. 

If you want to have a little bit of sanity, a little bit of peace of mind, some sort of way of occasionally returning to you, you need to have some way of just escaping from what you're doing. You should not have any guilt from doing so, even though you'll probably feel guilty the first time. Nonetheless, you always need to make a little bit of time for yourself. Just don't get too crazy with it; if you're doing an hour's worth of work and then two days' worth of relaxation, you need to seriously debate what you're writing. But if you take a little bit of time for yourself, where for five days of work you take one day off, you're good to go. Have a little bit of a mini-vacation if you want. 

Just remember that you need to take some time for yourself or you're going to go crazy, and it's not going to be the good kind of crazy. 

Put In The Cool Scenes

Too many writers are too worried about appearing erudite, educated, and literate; they want to write something that critics going to love and thus let them into the Hall of Classics, a form of literary immortality.  

However, many people forget that when you start writing, you have to hook the readers so that they will join you for an exploration of your thoughts about some sort of existential crisis in terms of nihilistic transformations. You don't a lot of our readers going, "Wait, what the heck am I reading?" That's something you want to try to avoid at all possible cost. 

This is why you need to remember that part of what brought you into the project wasn't necessarily the characters or the plot or anything like that. It's usually because you had a lot of really great scenes that you wanted to see on paper at some point in your life. And you've realized that if you don't do this, then nobody else will. This is your chance to write those really cool scenes you've always envisioned.

Better yet, those really cool scenes will hook the readers and give them a reason to stick with you through the boring parts.

I don't care if it's having a strip poker game from beginning to end. I don't care if it's having somebody go off a cliff with a rocket pack. Everybody has a huge number of really cool scenes that they want to see realized, that they want to see done in their lifetime. Better yet, those cool scenes are probably something that your readers want to see as well. So give the readers something really interesting and put stuff in that you think will be the really cool scenes and go for it. 

You're gonna have to get through this mess anyway so you may as well as have fun with it. Put in those scenes you want to see and odds are good your readers will thank you for it.

If it doesn't work, you're gonna know you're gonna know why it doesn't work, but at least you got it out of your system, or you created something for the darlings file. But the bottom line is that when you're doing all this huge amount of writing with these characters, you're going to want to have fun with them. So remember put in those cool scenes. 

Ultimately, don't worry about the critics. Have some fun, and put in those really cool scenes. 

Be Your Own Worst Critic

Let's get real: No writer like edit. No matter how short or how long your story is, editing your story is like going after the Amazon rainforest with a six inch machete. You need to get rid of all that undergrowth that will cause some major problems later on. And there's going to be a lot of hazards in there. 

The problem, of course, is that nine times out of ten you don't know where to really begin, even if you dive right in. There's going to be a lot of weirdness and you know where a lot of that weirdness is on some level; it's that weirdness that you're dreading having to deal with. 

That's fine. 

Everybody goes through that. Be aware of that. But you need to go and dive in there anyway. While you're in there, be harsh. Treat it like this is somebody who you absolutely hate and you want to destroy their lives and you now have an opportunity to do. I know that's sort of a weird way of looking at it, but you need to go in and find all the bad stuff and either correct it, delete it, or make it into something that's not so bad. If you don't do it, somebody else has to, and when they go after it what you're going to see coming back is a lot of red. 

And the only way to avoid seeing all of that red is to go in there and deal with it yourself. I don't care what version of editing you do but you need to go after it. Some people will go straight off digital copy, some people like printing it out and going after it themselves. Some people will even go after it with a pair of scissors. Whatever method works for you. Go for it. Just realize that the person you need to be is your own worst critic. You're not going to get any better as a writer if you're nice to yourself. And this is definitely a time where that part of being a writer where self loathing comes in handy; this is where you get take it out on yourself. Get in there have some fun. 

Look at it this way: Either you do it, or someone else does, and if someone else does it you will still need to make the actual changes. May as well as do it yourself and get a start on it.