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#IWSG Writing Rules


Happy New Year! Time for January's Insecure Writer's Support Group.



Join us! Sign up at creator Alex Cavanaugh's website.

How's your writing? I decided to re-edit my debut novel, With Good Behavior. It's taking me a long time because it's so bad! Adverb abuse abounds.

JANUARY 4TH QUESTION: What writing rule do you wish you’d never heard?

Since I got into this writing thing as a lark, I haven't been big on rules.

One rule I wish I followed more was to limit adverbs. *see above*

But one rule I wish I'd never heard?


My day job as a psychologist doesn't leave me the time or energy to write every day, and all this "rule" does is to jack up guilt. 

I agree that writing is a muscle--the more we write, the better we get. But we each need to find our own writing schedule.

I mostly write on weekends, and that works for me. 

Comments

Nicki Elson said…
Ooh, yeah, good one - I definitely don't follow the write every day "rule."

I'm a recovering adverb addict as well. Hm, maybe a subset of IWSG can be the AASG??

Happy new year!
Ignore that rule. I don't follow it either.
Happy 2017!
Whatever works for you is part of your writing path; at least that's what I believe. I say do what you can and ignore the rest!
Jennifer Lane said…
Thanks for the validation, Nicki, Alex, and S.A.! Let's continue to do our own thing.
F. Stone said…
Yep, I don't write every day, either. Well, except the video keeps playing in my head, and the characters are always lurking nearby. My nemesis is the passive phrase. I wish I had never learned the word 'was.' LOL
Cherie Colyer said…
Maybe the rule should be to write regularly. I try to write daily, but there have been times when that just doesn't happen and then I write on weekends like you do.

Happy 2017!
Julie Flanders said…
Amen to this. This rule just gives me anxiety. I didn't realize how many rules I hate until I started hopping around and reading this month's posts LOL.
Jennifer Lane said…
Feather, that's true that even if we don't write daily, our characters are never far from our minds. And I hear ya about that passive phrase business! One tip of many my awesome editor has taught me.

Cherie, writing regularly is good but I think occasional breaks work well for me, too.

Ha ha, Julie! I'll need to check out more posts to see all the rules I hate. :-)
Stephanie Faris said…
I didn't realize you were a psychologist. That must be an interesting fit for writing fiction! When I had a day job, I did the "100 Challenge" You have to write at least 100 words a day for 100 days and if you broke the chain, you had to start over. I was always surprised how easy it was to squeeze in 100 words, even on my busiest days, and often I wrote more.
Jennifer Lane said…
Stephanie, there are many pleasures of being a psycho author. :-) The 100 challenge sounds great! To be fair, I do write clinical notes every work day, and those are like stories about my clients. Thanks for stopping by!