Advice on becoming a writer

Since I have well embraced my life as a hermit, my list of funny anecdotes that happen in the world is again severely lacking. Fortunately, I have also mastered the art of living life vicariously through others. I am once again inspired by some useful advice for the employment challenged over at Lady or Not … Here I Come, resulting in the following bit of my own advice that some might find helpful. I would also like to thank her for reminding me that today is not actually Saturday. It might have been a while before I caught up with the rest of the world if she had not.  She is my one official fan so I do wanna keep her happy.

OK enough of the mushy stuff. I have been income free for quite some time now, so I have taken to calling myself a writer. It tends to make the frowns turn into looks of awe when answering “What do you do for work?” Having put a couple of years in now as a “Writer” I figured I would once again share some tips based on my own experiences for others who aspire to such a career:

  1. Become a hermit who does nothing. This will make it much easier to follow the always sage advice to “Write about what you know”.
  2. Don’t actually write anything.
  3. If you find yourself slipping up and writing something, make sure you rewrite it a few thousand times because you know it is horrible and nobody would want to read it.
  4. Don’t let anyone read what you write.
  5. When three months later you come across that piece of crap you were working on three months ago and reading it realize it is almost ok, post it on a blog that no one visits.
  6. Don’t EVER submit anything to anywhere that might generate an income for you.
  7. If someone comes along and says they enjoy something you wrote, vehemently deny it is any good whatsoever.
  8. Make sure you tell EVERYONE about the two novels you are working on, but if they ask what they are about be very vague.

There are probably other ideas I could share based on my extensive experience, but these stand out. As usual, if you totally ignore what I say … in fact do pretty much the opposite, you will no doubt be on the Best Seller lists in not time!