Early Wednesday Post: Writing advice

This should be going out Wed, but I have a booger of a day job and will likely be hard at it all day.

So. I know you'r expecting the next installment in filing off the numbers of fanfiction.
Instead, we're giving Writing advice.

Tonight, Jonathan Maberry, well known writer of zombies, asked us on Facebook if we outlined our books or went with it. I'm a pantser until the story presents itself, then I come up with a rough outline to get me through all the events.

A young man friended me, asking for writing advice.  So here is my accumulated collection:


" A magic trick is:
Pledge: Establish the ordinary.
Turn: Events reveal the ordinary to be extraordinary.
Prestige: Pay off the Pledge and make the extraordinary meaningful.

A joke is:
Feed: Sets up the scenario.
Strait: Events affirm audience's assumptions.
Punch: Twists to reveal the assumptions were false.

If the story doesn't do one of those 2 things it probably isn't worth telling."
(A piece I learned just tonight on that very thread)

"If anything can dissuade you from writing, it should." --Harlan Ellison

"Remember, only 2% of writers make a full-time living at it. Only 2% of them make more than $30,000 a year." --Poppy Z. Brite


"Write a story every day. Write it. Finish it." ~Ray Bradbury

"Write 2000 words every day. Some days I am done and about my errands by 10 AM. Some days, I am still at 1500 as Tabitha is calling me for supper." ~Stephen King

"Write. Put one word after another. Find the right word and put it down. Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it!" ~Neil Gaiman

"You can do anything for fifteen minutes." ~Flylady

"Write five words. Tell yourself only five. If after the five, you have the urge to continue, finish the sentence, maybe the paragraph, maybe the page. But start with five." --Victor Milan (author of 50 novels)

"Write it down! It does no one any good in your head!"--Schikaneder in Amadeus

"Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting." --Gurney Halleck, Dune Same goes for writing

I didn't manage all I was hoping to in the month of April, but I did get one short story submitted.
So, why are you listening to me?
Listen to them. Go write!