Found Objects: Writing Advice from Joe Hill

Scrounging through the internet, I found the following words of wisdom from bestselling author Joe Hill:

Write a minimum of one page, every day. The earlier in the day you do it, the better. We’re talking 250 words. Though even more would be better.

Focus on writing one good scene at a time. If that’s too intimidating, get even smaller. Focus on writing just one good sentence, something modest but with a little charge in it. As a rule, a short sentence has more punch than a long one. Bluebottles thrummed. That’s a great sentence.

Read every day, for at least a half an hour. Though even more would be better. Feed your brain a broad diet of words and ideas.

When a scene is complete, set it aside for a couple days. Then revise, from scratch. Don’t cut and paste in Word. Force yourself to manually retype every single sentence. You’ll be surprised how much you can tighten it up.

Dialogue and action > description.

Words to live by.  I also found this great conversation between Hill and John Scalzi.

I needed this stuff archived, because it’s important to me.

JM