Diana's Writing Blog

So, I’ve been listening to the podcast I Should Be Writing by Mur Lafferty since September of last year. Last November, I even went back and downloaded all her previous episodes and listened to them marathon-style to keep me inspired during NaNo Wrimo.

The name of the podcast says it all and is my general life philosophy. Since listening to her podcast, I’ve added another tag line to my "Sit-Down-and-Write-Dammit!" philosophy, which is "You’re allowed to suck!" Mur is big on this: as long as you’re putting words down on paper and advancing your story, you’re allowed to suck. Don’t sit there hemming and hawing about the perfect word choice for a whole hour. Just put [better word for dark-ish brown] if you can’t think of the perfect shade. And move on! It’s never going to come out perfect, and you can’t fix it in the editing stage until you get it onto the paper.

Aside from delivering nice little doses of encouragement and inspiration, Mur also has loads of practical advice for people trying to get published and/or find an agent. What’s great about Mur’s podcast is that she’s still figuring it all out to some extent herself. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a heck of a lot further along in the Professional Writer career path than I am, but she’s not at the lofty level of authors like Stephen King just yet, and so she’s in a great position to sympathize with aspiring writers and to offer really useful advice.

For me, the main piece of advice that I’ve really taken to heart from the ISBW podcasts, aside from being allowed to suck, is the fact that you HAVE TO read to be a good writer. There’s no getting around it. You have to read within your genre to see what’s being done already, and how. You have to read writers you admire and figure out what it is you like about their writing style or characters or themes. You have to read the how-to and advice books from writers and editors.

I was skeptical at first, because–really!–who has the time to write 500 words a day AND read a chapter in someone else’s book? But I started jotting down the writing books Mur recommended and the novels that her intervewees had written and getting them off of PaperbackSwap or Amazon. And I made a two part discovery: a) I’ve really missed reading since I graduated from college. I’d forgotten just how much I love sitting down with a good book and checking out of the real world for a few hours. and b) Your writing gets so much better when you read other people’s stuff. It doesn’t even have to be GOOD. I tried reading Twilight (morbid curiosity, okay.) and the fact that a book with such abysmal writing, plot line, and characters got printed spurred me to say, "Hey! I can do better than THAT!" and then sit down and prove it. But just reading anything at all seems to give me inspiration for my own stories. I’ll get flashes of a character or a premise or even just a setting.

So, I highly recommend checking out the I Should Be Writing podcast, as well as Mur’s creative writing projects, which she generously posts for free. I especially like Playing for Keeps.