I often daydream about time travel. I imagine a lot of people do as they get older. Like me, they think about what they would do if they had a redo. What would they change if they could relive their life? What would they say if they had a chance to talk to their younger selves?

That’s a huge topic. I’m going to limit the topic down to something useful: advice for young people starting out in writing. I haven’t written about writing yet, despite that being part of the reason I started this blog. So this is as good a time to do that as any other.

Am I qualified to give this advice? As I’m not published, and it’s arguable whether I’m a professional writer or even an expert, I don’t know. But a lot of this advice can apply to other fields, with a little manipulation, maybe even to life in general. And I’m no less qualified to give advice about life than most other middle aged adults.

You Might Not Be Smarter than Them

You have a 4.0 GPA. You have a 150 IQ. You’ve been writing since you were two years old. Your primary school teachers proclaimed you gifted. Your English teacher says that you wrote the best short story they’ve ever read. You know more about writing than all these other pompous artistic snobs in your writing workshop¹.

But someone who’s been a professional writer for thirty years likely knows more than you do about writing. If they say you should write in a certain way, don’t assume that doesn’t apply to you because you are an artistic rebel. If they tell you to work on symbolism and themes, don’t ignore them because you never noticed those things in the works you enjoy reading.

I’m not saying they’re right. One could argue that said sage is following old rules that don’t apply anymore. Perhaps they are speaking from a perspective of a genre that you aren’t interested in writing in. Maybe they don’t know what they’re doing, but only got where they are because they were lucky.

But it would be idiotic not to play around with their suggestions. If it doesn’t work for you, fine. But at least you can say you tried it and failed, instead of continuing to fail doing it your way.

Start Small

You sit down at the computer to work on your first project. You want something big and cool to draw attention to yourself. You want to write something unique and innovative. You want to do something no one else has done before.

Rein yourself in. Do you want to see what that dream project will look like from the hands of a first-time writer? Wouldn’t you rather see that project done by someone more experienced? You need to hone your skills before you get to that level.

I’m not talking about the physical size of the work, I’m also talking about that avant-garde project that will make you the next Kafka. But mostly I am talking about the physical size. That 300 thousand word epic is going to take at least six months of your life to complete, before you even get to editing and selling it. And how likely is it going to be that someone will buy that size of a work from a no-name writer?

Put that project aside for now. Write something simpler: a cozy mystery, a humorous little fantasy quest, or a romance that follows every single trope and formula known. Don’t write it to sell, write it for practice. And then, maybe, try to sell it.

And once you’ve written a few small things, go back to that big project. Do you still believe it’s as innovative as you thought? Or have you grown as a writer and now you see how cliche it would be? Do you still think it’s worth spending the time to write it?

This doesn’t apply only to picking the project. It can also help you through the project. When you finally do start that epic novel, don’t write the whole novel, start small. Write the outline first, or whatever you call your planning process. Then write the first chapter, and the next, until you’ve written enough chapters to make it a book.

You Must Copy

Other writers and artists have said, “don’t be afraid to copy.” I say, “you must copy.”

I am not encouraging you to plagiarize. Although plagiarism isn’t bad if you’re practicing. A painter can learn a lot by trying to reproduce someone else’s work². A musician can’t even learn an instrument without playing things that other people have written. If you start out writing by typing out a favorite book of yours, you will probably learn a lot. I should try that myself sometime.

But what I’m talking about are tropes and formulas. If you like the plot of a popular story, there’s nothing wrong with borrowing it, while changing the names, the setting, and the words. If you like a character, give them a new name, add a quirk that wasn’t in the original source, and put them in your own story. Mix it with other plots as subplots, until its less recognizable.

But it goes deeper than reusing what you like. There is a reason why tropes and plot formulas exist. Although you could argue statements like “there are no original stories”, that’s not why they exist. Tropes exist because people like to read them. Which means, if you want people to enjoy your work, you have to use them. Twist them a little, rename them, even deconstruct them, but use them.

Try Outlining

There’s a lot of argument among writers over whether it’s better to outline or write without a plan. I’m not going to argue that one is better than the other. No matter how well I can argue that outlining is better, its still an opinion and there’s no right or wrong answer.

But I have an untested hypothesis that a lot more people would do better if they did outline. I expect a lot of writers out there have this belief that writing is pure art, and adding an outline or plan is going to ruin that art somehow. Rather then try it and see if it might help them, they make up excuses as to why it won’t work for them.

Just because all the great authors you know about get away with it, doesn’t mean it’s best for you. Those people are also veteran authors who know how to spin and structure a story. This may seem to contradict what I said before about not being smarter than them, but that statement only applies if you refuse to take their suggestion. I’ve tried both ways, and it turns out I do better with planning. Maybe you could, too. It certainly made the editing phase a lot easier.

Part of it depends on what you are trying to do. I have to go back to the painting analogy again. If you’re writing like Jackson Pollock paints, you may not want an outline. But if you want a Mona Lisa, you’ll need a sketch to lay it out before you put the color on the canvas.

Perfection is the Enemy of Done

This one was the hardest lesson for me to learn. This isn’t only about knowing when to stop, it’s about looking ahead and not despairing at the work you have yet to do.

What I mean is this: when I start a project, my first thoughts are the excitement of a new idea. But when I sit down to figure out what I’m going to do, then I begin to see the scope of it. This is true whether it’s my initial outline or the first scene of a book without an outline. And once I see how much work I have to do, I regret my decision to start the project.

Normally, “perfection is the enemy of done” comes in at the end, when you’ve already done five passes at editing and you’re still finding things you want to change. And that’s an important time to keep that phrase in mind, because it’s never going to be perfect.

But it can also come in at the beginning, when that scope drapes over you and starts that dread of another unfinished project. If you remember perfection is an enemy, then you can remember that it doesn’t matter what you write. It doesn’t even have to be complete.

You might say this is a different set of advice: “Never Starting means Never Finishing.” But I say that one is a corollary of the other³.

All you need to do is tell yourself that this first pass, the actual writing, doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s okay if you never finish this project, but if you don’t start it, you never will. It’s also okay if you rush through it, mark the stuff you know you’ll need to go back and work on later. Get the thing written, and fix the problems in the next pass.

Back to the Future

I know a lot of this advice is repetition coming from some nobody out on the internet. I don’t care. This isn’t supposed to be new advice, but it’s important advice, and repetition is necessary for important advice.

Besides, it isn’t intended for you. I told you, it’s intended for my younger self, who didn’t hear it when he started writing, or at least didn’t listen to it. Maybe if he hears it from someone he knows then he’ll listen this time. I’ll leave the job of sending this message back through time to someone else.