Wake up, search for the pulse.
Write as much as possible, until you die or are so severely crippled that you’re unable to continue.
Read as much as possible.
Read everything. Read outside of your genre. Read medical journals and Wikipedia articles. Read death certificates and Reddit forums. Read people’s critiques on other people’s posts on Reddit and Steemit forums. Read billboards. Read those Facebook posts that make you so angry you can feel your throat swallowing your heartbeat. Then keep reading.
Never be without a book, or a tablet, or an phone with a Kindle App. Being stuck with nothing to read on a bus, or in a waiting room, or one of those crowded bourgeois white people restaurants, is spiritual death.
If you don’t know the answer to something, research it. ‘I don’t know’ is never a good enough answer, except in a temporary capacity.
Always have a good pair of headphones.
Don’t talk so much about what you’re writing. Save all your energy for the page, release dopamine through the fingers on the keyboard.
Recognize the cycle of consume, produce, consume, produce. Everything flows inward and outward and you cannot escape its cycle.
Fucking relax. Surf the stream. Relaxing is part of the process.
Eat well. Exercise. Stop being hungry as a method of punishment.
Don’t drink and write. You’re sapping oxygen off the page.
Okay, you can have one drink if you’re already feeling stuffy and compressed. But only enough to get the blood flowing.
All experience can be disseminated, analyzed, dissected, resewn. All experience is a learning lesson and a product to use.
Always edit your writing when it’s ready. Editing is a part of writing, not a punishment for messing up, and can elevate merely good writing to a lightning precision.
That blood in your ears and the quickening of your heartbeat? That’s the fear. Follow it.
Find your voice. It is the crux of why you specifically write, and not just anyone off the street. Your unique perspective is what you bring to fiction. Anyone can write a story, but no one can write a story like you. When the sentences feel dull, go back and rewrite. When a sentence makes your heart feel tight and your throat close off, you should probably keep it. That is your voice escaping.
You are working even when you are making dinner, in a swimming pool, having a nightmare. It’s all about processing everything so that you’re ready when you get to the blank page. Leave your mind and heart open for the story.
Take lots of notes. Save everything. The intersection of ideas, notes, will eventually coalesce into something great.
Listen to the spaces inbetween silence
Don’t forget that writing is about experience, not an escape from it. If there was no experience, writing wouldn’t exist. It would serve no purpose. Continue to leave yourself open to experiences no matter how tired and hurt you are from them. Otherwise the writing may suffer.
You’re going to die. That’s okay. Remember that it’s okay. Writing isn’t about leaving a legacy, it’s about that brief intangible moment connected to every other moment.
Go to sleep open to nightmares as well as dreams.
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