77 Rules for Writers to Live By

Rule #64 — You have permission to be a freak

1. Don’t waste your readers’ time.
2. Write something every single day. Do not take weekends off.
3. Die every single day. It doesn’t matter what you wrote yesterday. It doesn’t matter what you will write tomorrow.
4. Be honest every single day. The more transparent you can be, the better your message.
5. Do stream-of-consciousness writing every single day for at least 10 minutes. (Do nothing with this work. It’s the equivalent of stretching.)
6. Enjoy your obscurity. It is an opportunity to find your voice while nobody cares about you.
7. Everyone who is anyone started where you are now.
8. At the beginning of your career, consistency beats quantity. Find a schedule that works for you and stick to it. Slow momentum is better than no momentum.
9. When the initial excitement wears off (and it will), keep going. There is a reward on the other side of that valley.
10. Writing even 100 words is progress.
11. Writing even 10 words is progress.
12. Checking notifications, however, is not progress. Turn off anything you get from Twitter, Medium, WordPress, Facebook, or Quora.
13. When you don’t know what to write about, write one sentence.
14. Assume the first draft will be the laziest, most boring thing you can write. (That’s why we invented editing.)
15. You will run out of stories to tell. At that point, go do other things.
16. Your environment determines how well you write. Ralph Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman — these people all knew each other. Your response to that should be, “Duh.”
17. Your environment (still) determines how well you write. Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot — these people all knew each other. Your response to that should be, “OK, time to make some new friends.”
18. Here’s all you need to know about SEO — write as many posts as possible. Link them to each other as often as possible. Continue forever.
19. (By the way, until you have written 100 posts, don’t even think about SEO.)
20. Your website is just a resumé. The majority of your content can live elsewhere (like here on Medium).
21. Ultimately, every word you write down will be obsolete. The ideas you leave in other people will not.
22. Don’t check your statistics until you have at least 5,000 readers.
23. Even at that point, don’t check them more than once a week.
24. Speaking of statistics, most of the “little tweaks” to improve them don’t matter unless you have tons of readers.
25. And people who constantly tell you about the little tweaks, like how a post does at 8 a.m. on Thursday vs. 6 p.m. on Monday, are typically selling you products that help you check your statistics more.
26. Use the free time you get from not checking your statistics to write more.
27. The road to improvement is 2,000 words every single day. (It’s more complicated than that, but also it isn’t.)
28. In the middle of your career, quantity beats perceived quality. You will be in the top 3% of writers if you reach the middle. Keep writing.
29. In the established stage of your career, your passion beats all the rest. You have the attention. You have the social proof. Now you can write what you want. People will listen.
30. Your choice of writing software matters less than zero. Anything which allows you to make letters into words is fair game.
31. All you have is your time. Use it as efficiently as possible.
32. Don’t use the delete key. Cut lines, and paste them into a separate document. They’ll inspire you later.
33. Carve out designated screen-free time often. Your hands and eyes give you different ideas than your computer.
34. Movement is magic. When you are stuck, walk away from your work, take three laps around the building, then come back.
35. It’s fine to watch television. You can get new ideas there. Don’t let anyone guilt you into thinking otherwise.
36. Learn how to write a good bio. Nobody will tell your story better than you will.
37. Your inner editor is a nag — put it to bed until the time is right.
38. When the trolls are silent, enjoy it.
39. When the trolls get loud (opinions), ignore them.
40. When the trolls are wrong (facts), correct them.
41. You can set a business up around your art. Just don’t do it the other way around.
42. Respect your audience enough to edit your work. (Remember rule #1?)
43. Use half the words you think you need to. (Again, rule #1.)
44. Never, ever, ever, ever edit your work as you go.
45. Feel free to pursue a book deal. Advances still happen. A friend of mine recently locked down one for $200,000 dollars.
46. But that guy has over 100,000 email subscribers. You have to choose yourself before anyone else chooses you.
47. Don’t be afraid to self-publish. There is much less stigma (and more money) around it now.
48. Operate as if publishing your book is inevitable. The only question is which label will be on the cover.
49. Make a deadline for your book launch. If you don’t have a publisher by then, go it alone.
50. Writing a book is like describing a building. Look at the first brick and write all about it. Repeat this process for every brick.
51. Don’t write a book from scratch. Take the best stuff from your blog and start there. (Austin Kleon calls this “turning flow into stock.”)
52. When you finish your book, spend at least two weeks away from it before the first rounds of edits.
53. Create a memorable structure around your book (because of rule #1). Here are some options:
54. Use an acronym. (Think Tim Ferriss’s “DEAL” in 4HWW, or any of the books from the Heath Brothers.)
55. Use an alliteration. (My book uses “Discovery, Discipline, and Destiny.”)
56. Use the journey analogy. (Use Jon Acuff’s START as an example.)
57. Use a numbered structure. (At the very least, use “Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.”)
58. Even if you even have a little bit of money, outsource things in this order:
59. Outsource proofreading — you don’t want to spend hours looking for where you may have written “then” instead of “than.”
60. Outsource cover design — generally the more money you can spend, the better it gets (don’t forget to ask your designer to format one cover for audiobook dimensions).
61. Outsource content review — if you have even one beta reader, you get double the insight you could possibly pull from yourself.
62. Outsource Kindle formatting — it’s too cheap to do it yourself.
63. Outsource narration for the audiobook (maybe) — recording takes a long time, and editing probably takes three times longer (if you already know how). The “maybe” is not necessarily a stipulation of money, but preference. Does it matter if readers hear your voice?
64. You have permission to be a freak (we all are).
65. You have permission to be terrible at first (we all are).
66. You have permission to be clumsy (we all are).
67. You have permission to copy other people’s voices until you find your own (we all do).
68. You have permission to sell us what you wrote (we all have that right).
69. You do NOT have permission to insult yourself.
70. You do NOT have permission to sit in writer's block.
71. You do NOT have permission to do nothing.
72. You do NOT have permission to give up.
73. You do NOT have permission to let comparison destroy you.
74. You can deal with doubt, teasing, fear, and insecurity. But do not step into THE CAGE.
75. Write about your experiences. They are the one thing you have that nobody else does.
76. Someone can be half the writer you are, and if they are twice as good a marketer, they will get more attention than you. Devote yourself to the craft anyway (see rule #1).
77. You only need one person to believe in your work. That would be you.