Brian K. Vaughn offers some advice for aspiring writers on his MySpace:
WRITE MORE, DO OTHER STUFF LESS.That’s it. Everything else is meaningless. You can take all the classes in the world and read every book on the craft out there, but at the end of the day, writing is sorta like dieting. There are plenty of stupid fads out there and charlatans promising quick fixes, but if you want to lose weight, you have to exercise more and eat less. Period. Every writer has 10,000 pages of shit in them, and the only way your writing is going to be any good at all is to work hard and hit 10,001.
(And this isn’t just some tired cliche, I believe that’s a provable mathematical equation. I started writing five pages a day, every single day, when I began my senior year of high school. That means I hit 10,001 roughly a year after I graduated NYU, which was exactly when I pitched Y: THE LAST MAN to Vertigo. It took a lot of lousy writing to get there, but I’m glad I stuck with it. And don’t worry, if you were busy actually having a life in high school and college, it’s never too late to begin your march towards 10,001. Most writers don’t do their best work until they’re in their thirties and forties, anyway. Still, the clock is ticking, so maybe you old-timers should consider writing seven pages a day?)
More at the link, including bonus secondhand advice from Neil Gaiman.
January 3rd, 2007 at 5:57 pm
It reminds me of how John Irving wrote the NOVEL Son of the Circus after hitting some plotting problems in a screenplay called Son of the Circus (or maybe vice versa). Back in the days when I wrote a column (for Pop Thought and elsewhere) I would stumble across other column subjects while in the midst of the one column. Writing is a great mental exercise, no doubt, and it’s a muscle that can be honed like no other or something like that. And just the exercise of writing the most mundane things might lead to something better (if that’s what you want).
January 3rd, 2007 at 6:11 pm
When using quotes with in a quote, you’re supposed to use only one quote mark (’) at the beginning and the end.
Example: “I like to make love two ways: ‘chunky style’ and ‘all over the face’.”
If you’re in Britain, you use double quotes (”) for quotes inside quotes and single quotes (’) for the main quote.
Example: ‘I like to milk cows tow ways: “heavily lubed” and “all over the face”.”
And the guy is totally right about writing. I need to get off my lazy ass and finish my damn book.
January 4th, 2007 at 8:03 am
I did about three thousand words yesterday between the column and the blog. It felt good. The trick, though, is in doing it again today. THAT’S the scary part.