Lessons From My Writing Journal

Ten things I learned by keeping a writing journal:

1. Employ emotional manipulation on the reader

2. Eliminate boring scenes, especially in the middle

3. Write in your style of prose, no matter if it's seemingly pretentious

4. Re-typing each word of a chapter or passage can help you feel the work again, get amazing ideas, and improve as you go

5. It's okay to edit as you go

6. I call my style of writing "excavator" I usually write at least 20K words before I start employing a story structure or formal logic and character development. I am like an explorer, mapping a world as I walk through it

7. A distraction-free device can work (but it can also be a distraction in and of itself)

8. Fast drafting is a wild ride and for me, really depended on my daily habit (same time, same place every day) - fast drafting is writing without looking back at your prior work: a process of only moving forward while resisting the urge to edit or modify even if you identify issues, until you have finished the first draft at which point you go back and do several rounds of edits

9. Fast drafting really benefitted from writing down 15 very brief story beats from the Save the Cat story structure

10. Every time an idea for a story pops in your head, write it down immediately