Anne and Ellen's Top Tips for Young Writers

photo by Anne MazerWe've been giving a lot of writing advice over the last few years, so this week we put our heads together to come up with some of our top tips for young writers. Here they are. Hope you find them helpful! -- Anne and Ellen 

Anne Mazer:

Get out of your reading comfort zone. 

If you’re serious about writing, every writer will tell you to read as much as possible. If you love paranormal romances, dystopian novels, or science fiction, you are probably gobbling them down like popcorn and thinking that, as an extra bonus, this will help your writing. True. Whatever you read will feed your writing. But it’s important to stretch a little now and then.  If you only read one kind of book, your understanding of books, writing and language will be limited.

When my mother was young, she had to memorize poems and passages from Shakespeare, among others. By the time I was in school, we weren’t reading Shakespeare, much less memorizing him. Imagine having that language in your blood as a young child. It would never leave you. It didn’t leave my mother; it gave her a lifelong love of words and literature. Even if she only understood one word in ten, she still had the rhythms of his speech in her head. What a great training for a writer! I envy it.

Not that I’m telling you to memorize Shakespeare - unless you want to, of course. But once in while, crack open a book you wouldn’t normally think of reading. Tackle fiction that challenges you, or that seems out of your league. You’ll build your reading and writing muscles.

Take it s-l-o-w-l-y.

 Over the last few years, Ellen and I have noticed that many of the kids who write to us seem to want – or even expect – success as a writer to come immediately. Before they’re even out of their teens, they want to produce professional quality work. Hey, everyone, what’s the rush? Writers take a long time to develop. In fact, if they hatched in the wild, they’d have one of the longest gestation periods in nature. Not only that, but ideas are slow hatching, too. I’m working on one right now that I’ve had for over twenty years. Many writers begin to hit their stride in middle age or even later. So if you’re not an international success by the time you’re eighteen, there’s still hope for you. Nice thought, isn’t it?

Do lots of things other than writing

 If you want to be a writer, you have to write. But if you only write, will it make you a better writer? In my opinion, no. It won’t make you a happy camper, either, to shut yourself in your room, taking breaks only for meals and the occasional shower. Living a full life can include writing, but it shouldn’t exclude anything or anyone you love.  Like friendships and family, or following your passion for tai chi, raising llamas, clay ovens, permaculture, ancient languages, or volleyball. Everything that you do and love and experience will flow into your stories and make them richer.  Nothing is wasted in writing. Which makes it one of the most eco-friendly activities around.

Ellen Potter:

 Treat your story like a birthday wish 

If you tell someone your wish, it won’t come true, right? When you are writing a story, try to keep it to yourself.  When you tell someone your story before you write about it, it can take the excitement out of working on it. Also, you open yourself up to negative reactions, or the wrong kind of responses, which can discourage you from writing.  If you need to show your work to someone before it’s finished, be very picky. Choose someone who is sensitive to the fact that your work is still in a rough stage. Choose someone whose opinion you trust and who has your best writing interests at heart. Give your story a chance to “come true” just like that birthday wish.

Don’t worry about getting published

Write because you love to write. Really, it’s that simple. Write because you can’t get that certain character out of your head. Write because you want to take readers on a wild joyride of an adventure. Write for any reason at all . . . but don’t write because you just have to get published. It will paralyze your creativity.

True, seeing your name in print is thrilling. But when you are worrying if your story is publishable while you are writing it, you are getting in your own way by preventing yourself from being totally immersed in your story. You’ll keep second-guessing yourself, as in “Has this been done before?” “Will editors think the storyline is exciting enough?” It’s hard enough to write a story without your inner voice pestering you every three seconds.

Once you have finished your story, and if you still feel a burning need to publish, you can submit it to magazines or web sites that specialize in publishing the works of young writers (have a peek at the Inspiration Library on our web site for some ideas: http://www.spillinginkthebook.com/inspiration-library/)

Or enter a writing contest for kids. Here’s the latest Spilling Ink contest posted on our site: http://www.spillinginkthebook.com/contests/

The Art of Finding Time (To Write, of Course!)

Les Montres Molles by Salvator Dali

Ellen Potter:

 Though I’m embarrassed to admit it, I am a self-help book addict. I just love the way they take your tangled, unruly life and comb it out, arrange it prettily, and send you on your merry way. Of course, your poor life gets knotted up again after a few days, but still, there’s always the hope that one day the pretty life will decide to stay for good.

Here is my attempt to help comb out a few of you Parent/Writers:

How to Find Time to Write with a Young Child in the House

Wait for it . . . wait for it . . . Zzzzzzzz

Lots of people told me to write when my son was napping. That seemed obvious enough, but it never really worked. Half my brain was upstairs in my son’s crib, obsessing over every twitch, and you can’t write anything decent with half a brain (although your sales might be spectacular).

  But one day I noticed something interesting. I had woken up at 4 am to check on the baby. He was in that limp stage of sleep. No twitching. Just deep, deep R.E.M sleep. Suddenly I felt released. He was drifting through his own dreamscape, so I was free to drift through mine. I hurried downstairs, booted up my computer, and put in two hours of solid writing before he woke up and lassoed my brain again. After that, 4 am became my writing time. So that’s my first bit of advice:  Notice when your child sinks into that deep, limp-limbed sleep, and hightail it to your computer.

Buy a smoking-great stroller

Zombie Moms. You’ve seen them in the supermarkets and playgrounds. You may even have seen one in the mirror. They have bloodshot eyes and they look like their brains have been sucked out of their skull with a breast pump. When you have babies or young kids in your house, thinking about anything becomes a struggle. Yet, so much of writing is thinking. What’s a writer/parent to do?

 My solution was to find a fabulous stroller. It had all the bells and whistles. It kept my son happy and it kept me happy. We were able to take long walks and, miraculously, I began to think again. I’m not even going to pretend to know how this works physiologically, but as I walked I felt my brain limbering up. Before long it grew semi-coherent. Then, gasp! The story ideas began to pop.

I’m going to quote something that my friend always used to tell me when she bought something pricey. “It’s an investment,” she’d say. I used to poo-poo that, as in “Do you really think those $500 heels are going to pay off in dividends?” But now I’m going to make the same suggestion about strollers. Buy a great one. It’s an investment.

Finally, I have one word for you. Babysitter. Get one.

We’re not talking Nanny here. No big bucks involved. How about hiring the teen next door who will play with your baby for an hour or two? You don’t have to leave the house. I never did.  You probably won’t be totally off-duty, though, so you might want to use that time for the less strenuously creative work, like revisions. Or sleep.

Anne Mazer: 

Writing in Time

The Eye of Time by Salvator Dali

 As the daughter of two obsessed writers, I grew up with a skewed view on time and its uses. While most people try to fit writing in with their crowded, busy lives, my parents squeezed their lives into their writing schedules. Want to talk to your parents? It better be something serious: arterial bleeding, mangled limbs, or at least a police car waiting outside. If you wanted serious attention, it helped to have insights about books and writing. So when I grew up and decided to become a writer, it was either a minor miracle, or the most obvious thing in the world to do.

For many people, figuring out how to manage their time as a writer is a titanic struggle. But for me, I assumed that writing was a priority to which all else took second place. This eliminated messy, uncomfortable questions about relationships, work, or what I wanted out of my life. At the time, I wasn’t married or a mother, so happily, no innocent bystanders suffered in the practice of my art. My “office” was a small round dining room table in the corner of my studio apartment (craning my neck while looking out the window, I could almost see the Hudson River) and every night after work I sat down at the typewriter and wrote for at least an hour. In fact, I don’t remember ever eating at that table. It seemed like a no-brainer to me; if you wanted to write, you sat down and did it. I dimly realized how lucky I had been to get writing habits hard-wired into my DNA. 

 When I got married and had a son and then a daughter, the first cracks appeared in this “perfect” system. As a child, I had often spoken to my mother through a locked door. It’s an almost archetypal image  – me on one side of the door, begging to be let in; on the other, my reluctant, suspicious, and annoyed mother. Now both a mother and writer myself, I knew I wasn’t going to shut, much less lock the door on my children. But writing with constant interruptions was no easy task, either. My former husband helped out by putting our children to bed every night so I could write. Unfortunately, I was usually brain-dead by 7:00 p.m., and reduced to scrawling the same three sentences over and over for an hour. But it was better than not writing at all.

When my kids were growing up, I was constantly scrambling to find writing time. It became much more complicated when I found myself a single parent. I felt not only clever, but also downright heroic as I surfed the waves of illness, summer vacations, and school events. I snatched eagerly at every opportunity for a few quiet hours to write. There were no locked doors and my son and daughter became a part of my writing life, rather than an obstacle to it. Now that they’re adults, however, I find myself reflecting back on those days and wondering whether it was so important to always prioritize writing? Maybe not. It’s an ongoing struggle to balance relationships and writing. I'm still surfing those waves!

The Best of Ask Us Anything

Over the last year, we've answered hundreds of writing questions on our Ask Us Anything feature. Because it's no fun to scroll back over dozens of pages in search for answers to questions you might have, we decided to repost some of the highlights here. Enjoy! And... keep those questions coming! - Anne and Ellen

WHAT DO I WRITE ABOUT?

 I am 10, and I keep a writing notebook. The problem is, I don't know what to write about!!!!!! i don't have a spilling ink book, (yet!) so I have no idea. HELP!

  Well, for starters, you could write about not knowing what to write about.... Or you could write down your dreams, a conversation with your best friend, a fight you had with your sibling, something you've always felt strongly about, an strange thing you saw on the way to school, the best/worst joke you've ever heard, or a story based on your favorite book character. Take a look at some of the I Dare You's on this site for more ideas (under Teacher's Kit), or enter our contest. The possibilities are endless. Don't worry; just start writing. You'll be surprised. Happy writing. –Anne

My English teacher gave my class an assignment to write a personal narrative but nothing exciting ever happens to me, I'm stuck.

  You don't have to have earth-shattering drama for your life to be interesting. Sometimes, the most interesting thing about someone's life is the way they think about everyday events. Anne told me about this cool exercise where you re-examine what has happened to you over the last 24 hours. Give it a try. Remember what you thought about different events--people you met, conversations you had or heard, the bus ride to school. Take your time and really delve in.
 Or you could write a narrative on a very emotional time for you. It might be something as simple as a friend moving away or how you felt on the first day of school. Your life is much more interesting than you suspect!
--Ellen

MOTIVATION

 When you write do you wait till you get an idea or do you sit down and force yourself to work?

 Great question. The answer is yes and yes. Sorry if that's confusing, but really I do a bit of both. Sometimes I wait (a little) for an idea. But if no ideas are stepping up and waving at me, I force myself to sit down and work. Often, just the act of putting words--any words at all--down on paper will get my motor running and the ideas will appear.
--Ellen

Do you ever do "warm-up" writing exercises before you begin writing on your story? Does it help you "get into" the writing? I often want to write but can't seem to make my hand pick up the pen and start. Do you have any advice to help me with this?

 A warm up is a great idea. Use any of the "I Dare You's" or Story Starters on this website, for instance. Or put a bunch of words in a bowl, pick one out, and write a paragraph about/with it. I used to write poetry before starting work on my novels. Sometimes I write down dreams, or write a letter to get my brain going. Another thing that works for me is to read over what I wrote the day before. Then I start re-writing, and before I know it, I’m deep into my story. Hope one of these suggestions works for you! –Anne

ROADBLOCKS

 I have written the first paragraph to what seems like an incredible story. I can't seem to get any further. How do I pick up where i left off?

 Ideas always seem great in your head, but it's just plain hard to write. The only way to get past that first paragraph is to make up your mind to keep writing. Don't worry if it doesn't seem to measure up to your visions; just keep going. Having a real, but not so incredible story on paper is WAY better than having an incredible one in your head. How else will you get stronger as a writer? This is everyone's #1 problem; you're not alone! -- Anne

 Have you ever gotten stuck right at the beginning of a story? Like you just don't know HOW to start it? I just don't know where to start! Help?

 Yes, that JUST happened to me with my latest book. You can try to change the narration (from first person to third or omniscient) or try a different setting. Sometimes I just step back and give myself time to rethink things. I try to get a very strong mental image of my setting and that often helps me to anchor the story's beginning.
I hope that helps!
--Ellen

I have a bad habit of getting really excited about an idea, writing a few pages with everything going great...but I lose interest and I just can't keep writing it as soon as I get a new idea. Any ideas to help with this? Thanks!

 A lot of people have this same problem! My advice is to commit to one idea at a time. You have to LOVE it. If you get enticing new ideas along the way, simply write them down in notebook for later use. Then finish your story. It might be hard, but I think you'll feel really good when you're done. Anne

JUGGLING!

I'm in the middle of writing 4 books- 3 by myself and 1 with my friend. Do you think that's too many? Whenever I get ideas for one book I write in that book, and I feel like I balance the books pretty well... but do you think 4 books are too many?

  Wow, I'm in awe of writers who can handle several books at once. I think that's great. Each writer works differently, and some are better multi-taskers than others (I am NOT one of those types of writers). You'll know if 4 books are too many if you see that none of them are getting finished. 
Happy book juggling!
--Ellen

 My mind has, somehow, been churning out ideas at a record pace--for me, anyway. I'm juggling writing two different stories and have a third idea--a thing I'm usually short on--that I could pen several chapters on at any time. What should I do?

 First, if your mind is churning out ideas, be sure to write them down, because sometimes those fertile periods end - and sometimes you can't remember your ideas a week or two later! (I can't at least.) Write down ALL your ideas, in rough form. Don't worry about polishing them or making them into anything "good." Just be sure to get them all down. Then choose the idea you're most excited about to work on. If you get more ideas while you're working on your story or book, keep writing them down in a separate notebook or journal or file. Then go back to your story... Good luck! Enjoy the ideas! –Anne

SHOWING YOUR WORK TO YOUR FRIENDS: YES OR NO?

 Ellen & Anne, Whenever I write a poem, story, draw, ect, my friend just makes fun of me, and just comments on how "bad" it is and how it could be WAY better if she did it. What should I do? I'm really nervous to stand up to her, because then she gets all

 Personally, I only show my works-in-progress to a few select friends. You don't need to show your work to everyone, especially if you know someone is not going to be kind and supportive of you. If you want to share your work with people, choose those people carefully. Writing takes a lot of guts, and you don't want a few unkind words to discourage you.
--Ellen

STAYING ORGANIZED

 I have tons of writing notebooks for different stories, different ideas, etc. How do you recommend I organize these writing notebooks? Or do you just keep one big notebook?

  I'm smiling because I have the same problem. If you saw my office, there's a mess of notebooks on the top shelf. What I do is try to copy everything into computer files. That kind of keeps me organized. If you keep files on a computer, be sure to back them up. Or, keep them all in one place, so you can easily find them. You can file them by date or by category of idea. –Anne

 FINISHING

 I love to write and I do every day. However, I never finish a story I have started. Do you have any advice or tips for me?

  Starting a story is always so much easier than plowing through the middle of a story. I find that keeping my interest in the story is key to finishing it. When I start to lose interest in what I am writing, I'll try to write a scene that is really juicy; one that reconnects me to the sense of excitement I had when I first started the story. Or sometimes I spend some time thinking about my characters and if I am forcing them to do things they wouldn't really do, just to keep the storyline going. Let your characters do things that surprise you, and it's impossible to get bored with them.
--Ellen