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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Friday, March 6, 2015

Fortune Cooke Wisdom IX


Even Staler Fortune Cookies

Proper grammar that muddies meaning is like proper manners that make your guest uncomfortable–both deeply, profoundly miss the point.  
Unfortunately most writers need to have a run in with bad criticism, a scathing review, multiple publishers' rejections, or horrible sales of their self-published work before they're ready to get help or take advice. Perhaps more unfortunately most writers never get to that point. They simply exist in a never-challenged state of believing their own abundance of talent.
It's tough for those on top of social hierarchies (white, men, heterosexual, etc...) to write about the marginalized groups. Listen to their stories with empathy instead of incredulity and treat them (as a character) with humanity instead of as a stereotype.

In almost every meaningful context, "talent" is functionally no different than hard work over time.

Hard work is vital to a writer's success, but downtime and relaxation is important too.
Irrational font hatred is so chic. So you should go ahead and have extreme feelings of rage over Comic Sans. It makes you look cutting edge and extremely balanced.

Let that %#@$%ing dress be a lesson to writers that different people LITERALLY perceive the world differently and will work very hard to get their perception validated, and that your characters should reflect that. Having every character be a reflection of you is critically untruthful writing.

Remember that not everything that is "generally true" about writers and writing needs to make you personally defensive. It's okay to be a notable exception. But do consider the possibility that it might be itching your brain because it struck a little too close to a nerve.

Bloggers beware: making every sentence its own paragraph is as mentally coherent and emotionally impactive as writing one big paragraph. The only advantage is that it's slightly easier to read.

Normal people just don't toss each other into walls as part of conflict resolution.

I'm going to do that "Year of Non Cis/Het/White/Male authors" exercise. Except I'm planning on giving myself one or two "cheat" books each month, and then extending the exercise by 30-40 years.

I need more fortune cookies!!

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