5 Myths About Writers

1. For good writers, writing is easy.

Actually, the opposite is true. Writing doesn’t get any easier with time or talent. If writing is easy for you, you’re probably still learning the craft. You haven’t perfected your style or landed upon your “voice.” You haven’t learned to analyze your writing with a critical eye, to rip it apart and figure out why it isn’t doing exactly what you want.

Once you learn to do that, to step back and scrutinize your work, to delve deep into the meaning behind the words, it will get both easier in some ways and harder in others. Either way, you need to practice everyday. You will probably get faster with time, because you learn to do this instinctively, and the writing may flow better on some days more than others, but it doesn’t get easier. And if you aren’t writing everyday, you are doing yourself and your craft a disservice. Writing is a habit. Get into the habit.

2. Real writers are born knowing how to write well. It comes naturally to them.

Um, no. If you read my work from a decade ago, you’d know just how far I’ve come. Writing is a craft. It is learned and good writing, for lack of a better phrase, comes from practice. Again, and I can’t stress this enough, writing is a habit. Not a whim. If you want to be successful and stay that way, write everyday.

3. The characters control the story. I just write what they tell me to.

This is one of my favorite myths. It makes it all seem so magical. So effortless.

No writing is effortless. I’m not saying you can’t have a good day where the words just kind of flow, but even those words have to be edited. Probably more than once. And I’m not saying a character hasn’t somehow gone in a different direction that I wanted her to go, but that was me, not her. I let her get away from me. I let her roam free and nine times out of ten, the result is not good. I have to go back and start over because she veered off the path of my book. She changed the vision. And I did that. Not her.

4. Real writers write when their muse speaks to them.

Another favorite, and if you believe this, I have some land for sale in Florida.

Real writers write. Period. No, the muse does not come to visit everyday. She’s a lazy, precocious flirt. You cannot get into the habit of being “in the mood” to write. No writer on Earth is in the mood to write everyday, but the good ones do it anyway. They fight through their fatigue, their stress, their doubt, and they write. They get the words on the page. Period.

So stop waiting for your muse. Trust me, she sleeps around.

5. You would write a book if you just had a really good idea.

Bye-bye. Nice knowing you. But if you are waiting for that perfect idea to strike like lightning during a dust storm (I live in New Mexico), you could be waiting a long time. Ideas are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. I can’t walk to the bathroom without being hit with another idea. It’s what you DO with that idea that matters.

Here is your mantra: BICHOK, BICHOK, BICHOK

Translation: Butt in chair, hands on keys. Just write. Every stinking day.

Note:  This article was first posted during the Darynda Jones blog tour at Paranormal Haven.  Check out this super site.