Don’t take my word for it either. I’m not published. I write 300-500 words a week. I eat breakfast burritos the size of small children. I text and drive. I can’t remember the last time I shaved my legs. I don’t even like avocado.  But here’s my piece. Every time I try and look for advice about writing on the interweb I get 10 different answers. And then I need advice on deciding which of those ten answers is the best advice. And before you know it I’m feeling like I’ve been doing everything all wrong, I’m a failure, I’m a know-nothing writer, I’m tired and I might as well just make good use of my time vacuuming my room and scratch the whole damn thing.

Now, maybe you have a different perspective. Maybe surfing the net for writing tips really is your cup of tea. And I’m okay with that. But me? I don’t even like tea.

I’ll be honest, I had you in mind. I was looking online for some good tips I could put here on my blog, that might inspire whatever audience I may or may not have to get inspired to start writing. I googled “advice for writers” and “writing a novel.” I’m not going to say I was bombarded with results, but I was annoyed looking at them. What I got was semi-published authors writing pages and pages on what works for them, and minutes and minutes of my time reading them and countless others, trying to decide what works for me. Which is ultimately something I have to work out for myself.

Biggest discovery of my frustratingly tedious search for writerly wisdom? Your are your best advisor. You don’t really need advice. If you want to do something you’re passionate about, do it the way you want to see it done.

For me, writers inspire me to write. People, places, fish, my dirty room, bums on the street, facial expressions, smart people with witty quips. Sometimes I get my best advice by accidentally stumbling upon it, like this quote by John Steinbeck I “accidentally” stumbled upon while looking for “advice”.

“Don’t think of literary form. Let it get out as it wants to. Overtell it in the matter of detail—cutting comes later. The form will develop in the telling. Don’t make the telling follow the form.”

Now I’m no literary critic, but these words are deep. The form will develop in the telling? How fucking true is that? How many times have you sat down to write one thing, and after a few minutes of writing come up with a completely different other thing, told a completely different way that sounds ten times better than what you sat down to write? It was after reading this quote that I thought, you know what? I’ll write what I want. I’ll proofread, I’ll dot my t’s and cross my i’s (I know, but it’s funny right?) I’ll follow some grammatical rules, I’ll play the game. But sometimes, following the rules gets you nowhere. Now a days, you can do whatever the hell you want. You can write what you want to write, sell what you want to sell in this godforsaken e-book era, to whoever the hell you want to sell it to, and make tons of money if you play your cards right.

It’s just that advice can sometimes have the opposite effect, like it did with me tonight. The intent might be good, but the effect can be horrifying. Sometimes, you’ll hear about all sorts of things that are great for this or that and you’ll wonder why the hell you’ve been doing it wrong all this time and soon enough start worrying that you’ll never be doing it right. You’ll feel inept, sign up for a class at a junior college, start stealing other people’s voices instead of finding your own (take Ursula for instance, things didn’t end well), start listening to Radiohead again by yourself in the car. Nice Dream.

I’m just saying. Don’t go there. I mean, go wherever you want with Radiohead, I always advise that, but don’t get down and out. Just do your thing, and you’ll be fine.

In other news, I wrote 550 words tonight and I am officially on page 10. Reporting live from My Side of the Screen. Back to you Bob.

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Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

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