A quick Google search titled, how to be a writer produces thirty-two pages of results, which equates to some 320 articles. Right at the top of the page are twenty-two lessons from Stephen King, the author of fifty-four novels and hundreds of short stories. Here's a quick glance at some of the advice offered by Mr. King:
1. Stop watching television. ...
2. Prepare for more failure and criticism than you think you can deal with. ...
3. Don't waste time trying to please people. ...
4. Write primarily for yourself. ...
5. Tackle the things that are hardest to write. ...
6. When writing, disconnect from the rest of the world. ...
7. Don't be pretentious…
There is wisdom in that list and throughout the entire article. King also is hardly the hack writer and has earned the right to wall himself off in a corner desk to write ten pages a day and complete a draft in three months. But we shitty hack writers don’t have that luxury. We have kids and pets and laundry and a thousand other things before we even get to the day job.
Additionally, when it comes to writing even the clearest, most concise advice has an abstract quality to it. You have to apply principals to inconsistent variables that have no agreed upon modus operani. For instance, King says limit distractions while I, the author of a single published work, say break as often as seems necessary. Distractions serve as a mini reboots when you’re working a sentence or paragraph and just can’t get it right. Turn away from it for a minute or two, watch that a new cat video someone just put up on Facebook, The little break will alleviate the grinding frustration and help you look at your work with a fresh perspective.
As you can see all of this is subjective. There is no YouTube video that shows you how to write like there is for learning the tabs to a song or how to operate a gopro camera, In parts, How To Be A Hack Writer Like Me… aims to remove the abstraction and give you an in-depth, behind the scenes look at how a hack author gets it done…
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