Happy New Year! Time for January’s Insecure Writer’s Support Group.
Join us! Sign up at creator Alex Cavanaugh’s website.
How’s your writing? I decided to re-edit my debut novel, With Good Behavior. It’s taking me a long time because it’s so bad! Adverb abuse abounds.
JANUARY 4TH QUESTION: What writing rule do you wish you’d never heard?
Since I got into this writing thing as a lark, I haven’t been big on rules.
One rule I wish I followed more was to limit adverbs. *see above*
But one rule I wish I’d never heard?
My day job as a psychologist doesn’t leave me the time or energy to write every day, and all this “rule” does is to jack up guilt.
I agree that writing is a muscle–the more we write, the better we get. But we each need to find our own writing schedule.
I mostly write on weekends, and that works for me.
Thank you to today’s Co-Hosts:
Jennifer Lane Books 
Ooh, yeah, good one – I definitely don't follow the write every day \”rule.\”I'm a recovering adverb addict as well. Hm, maybe a subset of IWSG can be the AASG??Happy new year!
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Ignore that rule. I don't follow it either.Happy 2017!
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Whatever works for you is part of your writing path; at least that's what I believe. I say do what you can and ignore the rest!
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Thanks for the validation, Nicki, Alex, and S.A.! Let's continue to do our own thing.
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Yep, I don't write every day, either. Well, except the video keeps playing in my head, and the characters are always lurking nearby. My nemesis is the passive phrase. I wish I had never learned the word 'was.' LOL
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Maybe the rule should be to write regularly. I try to write daily, but there have been times when that just doesn't happen and then I write on weekends like you do. Happy 2017!
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Amen to this. This rule just gives me anxiety. I didn't realize how many rules I hate until I started hopping around and reading this month's posts LOL.
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Feather, that's true that even if we don't write daily, our characters are never far from our minds. And I hear ya about that passive phrase business! One tip of many my awesome editor has taught me.Cherie, writing regularly is good but I think occasional breaks work well for me, too.Ha ha, Julie! I'll need to check out more posts to see all the rules I hate. 🙂
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I didn't realize you were a psychologist. That must be an interesting fit for writing fiction! When I had a day job, I did the \”100 Challenge\” You have to write at least 100 words a day for 100 days and if you broke the chain, you had to start over. I was always surprised how easy it was to squeeze in 100 words, even on my busiest days, and often I wrote more.
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Stephanie, there are many pleasures of being a psycho author. 🙂 The 100 challenge sounds great! To be fair, I do write clinical notes every work day, and those are like stories about my clients. Thanks for stopping by!
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