Mandy Khoshnevisan
(Edit: I guess my advice for aspiring writers is pretty similar to my earlier-penned advice for conquering writer's block! But I do believe it's true: getting out of your own way will help you move forward. Put your critical brain in a box somewhere and let your delighted brain steer the writing process. Let yourself surprise yourself by the thing you made. And don't let your critical brain erode your perspective and cause you to believe that any one piece of writing is precious, magical, and in constant danger of being ruined. Have a fun time writing, and fix it in post.)
On the act of writing itself:
My advice would be to just write something. Using your favorite writing tool (computer, pen-on-paper, finger-in-ketchup, whatever), put some words down. Don't know exactly how to word the thought in your head? Just write the most obvious things down. Write a lot of dumb sentences down. Fix them later and just keep going. When you're done, call it done. Congratulate yourself on writing a thing!
Produce a piece of writing. Then produce another one. (Or maybe get unstuck from the middle of a piece of writing by writing another piece of writing instead!) As an improvisor, one thing I've learned is that creativity leads to more creativity; you're not going to "use up" your brain power by writing too many things. The act of creation may feel scary, and creating a product and calling it "finished" may be even more terrifying—but once you've finished one piece, you're free to start another one.
If you write one thing in your entire life, that's gotta be one darn amazing thing. But if you write two things, that's 100% more things than you had before! The more you write (or maybe even just the more you imagine that you'll one day *have written*), the less scary and precious each individual piece becomes, and the less dangerous it feels to finish it.
Don't be a Mr. Casaubon!* Finish that "life's work" and keep going on past it! (Says the person who's only published one book, so far ... but I've also written a lot of dumb sentences in my life.) Good luck!
(*See "Middlemarch")
On the act of writing itself:
My advice would be to just write something. Using your favorite writing tool (computer, pen-on-paper, finger-in-ketchup, whatever), put some words down. Don't know exactly how to word the thought in your head? Just write the most obvious things down. Write a lot of dumb sentences down. Fix them later and just keep going. When you're done, call it done. Congratulate yourself on writing a thing!
Produce a piece of writing. Then produce another one. (Or maybe get unstuck from the middle of a piece of writing by writing another piece of writing instead!) As an improvisor, one thing I've learned is that creativity leads to more creativity; you're not going to "use up" your brain power by writing too many things. The act of creation may feel scary, and creating a product and calling it "finished" may be even more terrifying—but once you've finished one piece, you're free to start another one.
If you write one thing in your entire life, that's gotta be one darn amazing thing. But if you write two things, that's 100% more things than you had before! The more you write (or maybe even just the more you imagine that you'll one day *have written*), the less scary and precious each individual piece becomes, and the less dangerous it feels to finish it.
Don't be a Mr. Casaubon!* Finish that "life's work" and keep going on past it! (Says the person who's only published one book, so far ... but I've also written a lot of dumb sentences in my life.) Good luck!
(*See "Middlemarch")
More Answered Questions
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more