5 Fun Tips to be a More Writerly Writer

Real writers use a quill and wear glasses. Then they take pictures of them.

So, you think you’re a writer do you? I suppose you sit quietly at your desk, diligently knocking out 2,000 words a day, scouring the internet for tips to improve your prose? Pah! That’s not the way of the true writer. There are writers, and then there are writerly writers. Allow me to enlighten you…

1) Carry a notebook.

It should be leather-bound – the more expensive, the better. For maximum effect, wait until a friend is mid-way through a sentence, then whip it out and start making notes, laughing quietly to yourself. Then refuse to let them see, claiming that they wouldn’t understand.

2) Own at least 4 different colours of pen.

These are for editing. Red can be used to draw attention to plot inconsistencies. Green is for additions and amendments to the prose itself. Blue should draw attention to the sections where you deliberately missed out whole paragraphs to come back to later, then forgot about. Black has no special significance – it’s just black.

3) Work in the local cafe.

There is absolutely no point in being a writer unless everyone knows about it, so find a prominent public place and write there. Remember to invest in an oversized laptop with a particularly noisy keyboard, thump the table in consternation at the end of each sentence, and stare absent-mindedly at other patrons to freak them out. This is how most writers attract the attention of agents.

4) Wear a bow tie.

Another top tip to let everyone know you’re a writer is to wear a bow tie. Only writers wear bow ties – anyone wearing a bow tie who is not a writer is an impostor, and must have their bow tie confiscated on the spot. It is legal to do this. If you are uncomfortable wearing a bow tie in public, start slowly with a cravat and work your way up.

5) Get yourself all worked up.

The natural-born writer can only be truly creative when pacing up and down and ranting loudly to themselves, ideally under the heavy influence of coffee or alcohol – or both. Try to remember to write down some of the things you rant about for later use. Combine this with strategy 3 for maximum writer points. Top score!

Are you a writerly writer, or merely a writer? How many bow ties do you own? Click ‘comments’ below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk

Image © Simon Howden

3 Ways to Survive the Twitter Tidal Wave

Twitter repeats itself – like a parrot. This is a parrot. See what I did there?

Image © Elwood W. McKay III

As I’ve mentioned numerous times, Twitter is an amazing resource for writers. In fact, it’s an amazing resource for any creative, any professional, or indeed any creative professional. Never before has so much up-to-the-minute, field-specific information and advice been so readily available.

That said, Twitter does have at least one major flaw – sometimes it’s just overwhelmingly big. Where once we had to seek out the elusive stream of writerly knowledge, we’re now bombarded by a continuous tidal wave of information. It’s easy to be swept away.

If you’re not completely turned off by the information overload, you may be giving yourself an aneurism trying to keep up with it all. I’ve suffered from both in the past, so here are three strategies I’ve come up with to make sense of it all.

1) Don’t click on every link you see.

I’m an unpublished writer. If, like me, you follow hoards of other writers, journalists, agents, publishers, and so forth, then you’ll be receiving a steady stream of fascinating blog links every second of the day.

The question is, how much of that information is useful to you right now? While it may be tempting for me to read up on techniques for writing agent queries, the fact is I’ve still got the better part of a novel left to write! Writing tips are the only thing that have practical value to me at present.

My advice is to only check out links that might be of practical use to you right now, or in the very near future. People will still be tweeting the other stuff when you’re ready for it. It’s not going anywhere.

2) Don’t repeat yourself.

The nature of Twitter and the blog-o-globe means that there are at least 50 people posting essentially identical advice, at least 50 times a day. But there’s no need for you to read it more than once. The cunning blogger will find creative new ways of presenting old information, but don’t be fooled!

If you see a link that appears to cover a topic you already know about, don’t be tempted to click on it just for the sake of self-assurance. There’s some security and satisfaction in being told what you already know, but don’t give in to the instinct – it’s a time waster.

3) Know when to stop.

I used to have Tweetdeck loaded in the background all day every day. Every few seconds a notification would appear with a potentially interesting link, and I’d instinctively check it out, just in case I risked missing out on the most important piece of writerly advice ever. I didn’t get much work done.

The whole point of Twitter is that it’s a never-ending stream of information. It’s not going to turn itself off. You have to do it.

Sometimes it can be tempting to give in to paranoia, and think that you’re going to miss that crucial piece of advice or information, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few months, it’s that Twitter repeats itself.

Yes, you may miss that information, but the good stuff never goes away. People retweet. Others incorporate the information into their blog post, and tweet the link. Weeks later, completely different people stumble across the blog posts, and tweet the links again.

Limit your Twitter use, and have faith that the truly useful links will find you.

Do you have difficulty surviving the Twitter tidal wave? Were these suggestions useful to you? Do you have any other advice for dealing with the information overload? Click ‘comments’ below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk