I realized recently that most of the advice on this blog is geared towards people who’ve been writing for a while. I didn’t start to seek out advice like this until I had been immersed in this hobby for many years, so in my mind that tracks. But today I want to do something a little different, and talk about advice for new writers – writers who haven’t even started writing yet. And what better time to do it than on the first day of Nanowrimo, when so many people are embarking on this beautiful journey for the very first time? So if you’ve always wanted to get into creative writing but have never been sure where to start, welcome – this one’s for you.

From what I have observed, most advice for brand-new writers seems to fall into one of two categories. Either it’s geared at way too high a level and seems designed to intimidate people out of ever starting, or it’s the usual “just start writing!” drivel. And let me just say, a more useless piece of advice has never existed. I, who have been writing for as long as I can remember and penned my first trash fire of a novel at the age of 14, cannot even “just start writing.” And neither can anyone else I know. If it were that simple, nobody would be seeking out advice in the first place.

What I didn’t see a lot of was practical, actionable advice, so that’s what I’m going to aim for here. And please, feel free to leave your own tips and advice in the comments! What advice would have helped you on your very first day sitting down to write? What do you wish someone had said?

Start with exercises

This is what people should tell you to do instead of “just start writing.” No matter how fully formed your ideas are, consider starting your writing journey with a few warm-up sessions to get your brain into gear. Freewrite. Write from prompts. Do flash fiction. Journal. Work on small, manageable pieces that are designed to get your creative juices flowing, and work your way up to the big stuff, following the lead of your own inspiration.

Another benefit of exercises like this is that they give you the opportunity to practice specific skills or techniques. Here’s a few I think you should try:

• Pick a setting (if you’re stuck, use the scene outside your window) and write two different versions of its description: one from the POV of a character who is happy, hopeful, or excited, and another from the POV of a character who is angry, scared, or heartbroken. This will help with, well, descriptions.
• Think about an important person in your life, like your partner, a mentor figure, or your best friend. Write a scene about how you met. This will help you with character introductions.
• Write an argument. Use only dialogue – no description, minimal dialogue tags, no introspection between spoken lines. Make it like something you’re overhearing from another room. This will help you to work expression and feeling into your dialogue without needing to spell it out explicitly.
• Write a conversation between two characters that involves no dialogue at all: a completely wordless exchange using only body language. This will also help you with dialogue, since it doesn’t always need to involve words.
• Pick two books you love. The main character of one of them has been dropped unexpectedly into the universe of the other, and has to be quickly brought up to speed by the in-universe characters, in the midst of a tense situation where there isn’t a lot of time to talk. By the end of the scene, the POV character from the other book needs to have all the information they need to survive whatever is going on. Write that scene. This will help you with the trickiest aspects of exposition: focusing on what really does matter to the story, and doing it efficiently.

Above all, all these are fairly straightforward exercises that don’t require an abundance of mental energy or heavy brainstorming to write. When you sit down to “just start writing,” start with one of these. The skills and inspiration you gain from the exercise will help propel you forward while improving your craft at the same time.

Try lots of different things

Writing is a minefield of trial and error. Simply put, you won’t know what you like to write or how you like to operate until you try a few different things. Probably lots of different things! One of my favorite things is to pick a random genre from a list and try to write a short story or a piece of flash fiction in that genre. You might find you click with something you never imagined you’d enjoy – something you might not even have read much of. Creative hobbies are about giving your brain the outlet it needs to express something that can’t come out any other way, and sometimes the way in which our brains gravitate towards expressing something can surprise us.

This goes for your setup and process too. Are you a typing person or a handwriting person? A morning writer or a night writer? A Times New Roman stan or a Comic Sans heathen? (By the way, this is totally unrelated, but some people swear by changing your font to Comic Sans to cure writer’s block. I’ve tried it on mild cases and… y’all, it kind of really, really worked.) What do you like to outline, and what do you prefer to make up as you go along? Follow your instincts and experiment with various changes, big and small, to see how they impact your creative energy.

And never stop doing this! Writing is a process of constant refinement, both in terms of stories themselves and the way you write them. The way I write is not the way I wrote things six months ago, or a year ago, or five, and it won’t be the same in another six months either. For me, that’s part of the fun.

Don’t get too caught up in progress tracking

While I am a strong proponent of events like Nanowrimo for getting people into writing and showing new writers how much they’re capable of, outside of those events, I strongly recommend you step away from the word count graph. Writing is one of those pursuits where closely tracking your progress can quickly become demotivating, especially when you’re first starting out. This is because it’s a hobby that depends on the natural ebb and flow of creativity, which… well, sometimes ebbs. Taking breaks from writing is a normal and necessary part of the process, but seeing the evidence of those breaks laid out quantitatively can be deeply depressing.

If you are the kind of person who is strongly motivated by tracking your progress, I recommend setting yourself a different writing-related goal every day, rather than honing in on one metric like word count, page count, or time spent. At the very least, expand your idea of “productive writing time” to include things like outlining, brainstorming, staring at a wall thinking about your characters, talking to your writer friends, consuming writing-related content, drawing character sketches, making writing playlists… you get the picture. Just because you didn’t put any new words on the page doesn’t mean you didn’t get anything done. And on the days you need a break from all of it, give yourself credit for taking a rest. In our world, that’s a hard thing to do.

In fact, while you’re at it, just banish the word “productive” from your writerly brain. Yes, you are producing something. But you got into this because you like the process – the experience of writing, and the creative release of seeing your ideas show up on the page. Productivity in the traditional sense is not, and has never been, the point of any creative hobby.

Be self-indulgent

Eventually, you may have to ponder in passing what it is that other people want to read. But in the meantime, do try your best not to give a crap. It’s good for you.

Write things that make you happy. Write things that make you excited. Write things that help you cope. Don’t worry about whether it’s cliché, been done too many times, isn’t selling well at the moment, or is full of cringey self-inserts and cheesy dialogue. Who cares? It’s yours, and you will always get something out of putting it down on the page. Release yourself from the sometimes crushing pressure to share your work with others or seek out feedback and critique if it doesn’t feel right. Establish whatever boundaries you need in order to give yourself permission to write what brings you joy and satisfaction. I think this should always be true, personally, but it’s especially important to keep in mind when you’re first starting out.

Bottom line: every story has a purpose, and a place in your writing journey. For most stories, I truly think that purpose is simply to bring happiness to the person who wrote it.

On a related note…

Be prepared for peer pressure

The writing world is full of peer pressure. There is pressure to write in certain genres, to use certain tropes, to follow a certain path to publication (or to work toward publication at all), to adopt certain methods or styles or tools, and a million other things that may not work for you or that you may not be ready for. This can feel very overwhelming when you first dive into it, and can intimidate new writers to the point of freezing them in their tracks.

Work to stay aware that this is happening, and try to minimize it in your mind. Remember that trends change. That genre you hate won’t be dominating the market forever. That trope you can’t stand will be replaced by something new faster than you can blink. Remember, also, that these changes are usually driven by new releases – in other words, by authors deciding to buck the trend and put something new on the shelves. Why not you next?

Above all, remember that none of this is as big of a deal as you make it in your head. Maybe some of those trends really do inspire or motivate you, but give yourself permission to recognize the ones you don’t, shrug, say, “neat, but not for me,” and move on.

Practice your pitch skills, whether you like it or not

Nothing brings out well-meaning nosiness like telling people your hobby is writing. It’s one of those things that if you bring it up, even if you only do so when directly asked, people will automatically assume you want to tell them everything about it. Sometimes, these questions are fine – it can be fun, after all, to chat with people about something you love. But writing can also be excruciatingly personal, especially when you first start out, and sometimes being asked about it feels akin to being asked about the results of your last Pap smear.

I recommend having prepared responses, tailored to your preferred level of privacy, to the following questions:

• What do you write?
• Ooh, can I read it?*
• That sounds really cool – you’re going to publish it, right?

*Somehow, the enthusiasm with which this is said is always inversely proportional to how ready the book is for public consumption. If you are pitching a finished novel, expect mild enthusiasm. If you are reluctantly describing half a chapter you wrote at 2am and might abandon tomorrow, expect tearful pleading. And if you know why this phenomenon occurs, call me, and send help.

Now, that being said, pitching your book is a critical skill for authors who want to publish someday, whether that be through traditional publishing or self-publishing. You will need to pitch your book all over the place: in query letters, at conferences, on social media, and to anyone and everyone who will listen. You will need to be utterly shameless about it. Worst of all, you will need to write a blurb, which I am convinced is the hardest part of writing anything at all.

If you feel comfortable, take every chance you can get to practice your pitching skills. Much as being asked about my writing still sometimes makes me cringe (especially when I’m very focused on a first draft that is in no way ready to be described or pitched to anyone), I’ve learned that it’s actually a gift from the heavens, and one we would all do well to embrace.

So, welcome, new writer! I can’t wait to have your book on my shelf one day. In the meantime, I hope this advice was helpful, and that you’re feeling excited about starting down this road. You’ve got a whole wide world of stories ahead of you, and you’re going to have so much fun discovering them.

Happy writing!