Writing Advice

I’m back in the saddle again.
Slowly, but surely, my health is returning. Well, enough that I can spend a little time behind my laptop. I don’t like to go more than a day without writing, even when I don’t have a set of deadlines staring me in the face.

I think the one piece of advice that seems to come up the most frequent and is probably the most accurate is that if you want to be an author, you have to write everyday. You have to treat it as a job and you have to write even when you really, really don’t want to. I’ve had days like that, where the idea of putting words down on paper seemed like the most painful idea, but you still hammer out 500 crappy words just so that you don’t get out of the habit.

I think sometimes that’s the other half that people sometimes forget to mention. You have to give yourself permission to write crap. Everything that flows from your fingertips can’t be gold. Sometimes, you’re not in prime form or your mind is distracted, or your personal life is getting in the way, but you still have to meet your writing goal for the day. So you write, and you hate everything that you typed that day. But at least you met your goal, which is an accomplishment in itself. Also, there’s always the edits. There’s a good chance that something can be salvaged from the crap or at the very least, it could spur an even better idea.

Trust me, if you put pressure on yourself to be amazing every time you sit down at the computer, you’ll never type a single word.


In other news, I’ve gotten another positive review. This one is from Romance Junkies.

The review said that:
“Jocelynn Drake’s NIGHTWALKER is a phenomenal debut paranormal novel. Drake exhibits a talent far surpassing that of a typical new novelist. Her intricate plot pulls the reader into the heart of the story from the opening lines. The characters inhabiting Drake’s creation are full-bodied and multifaceted with many hidden layers. The layers are slowly exposed over the course of the entire complex novel.”

To read the full review, click on the link above.