Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Real, serious and based on personal experience idea, but no previous practice. Where to begin?

I really don't have any special advice other than to just write. Don't worry about the quality of what you put onto paper, just commit it to paper. People will say "it's probably better than you th...

posted 11y ago by NotVonKaiser‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T03:04:03Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8830
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar NotVonKaiser‭ · 2019-12-08T03:04:03Z (about 5 years ago)
I really don't have any special advice other than to just write. Don't worry about the quality of what you put onto paper, just commit it to paper. People will say "it's probably better than you think it is" but the fact is that it will probably be pretty bad. That's okay. Everybody's first draft is bad. Writing quality prose is all about rewriting.

If you're worried about grammar I recommend the "Little Book" by Strunk and White (the White, by the way, is E.B. White, the writer of _Charlotte's Web_; this is not just some book written by an English prof that has no application to the real world). That being said, I have to go back to what I originally said: if you want to learn how to write forcible, meaningful prose, you have to just write prose.

Writing is hard. If it was easy, everyone would be writing and publishing their memoirs. There are no magic insights I can really impart to you outside of two maxims: 1. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. 2. If it's worth doing well, it's worth doing badly for a while.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2013-09-09T00:52:41Z (over 11 years ago)
Original score: 2