WRITING TIPS: THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR UNTIDINESS

Many writers, especially the young ones often think they can walk around unkempt and get away with it, they think being creative means being dirty, almost uncouth. How stupid. Walking around without a sense of organization presents mental turmoil that contributes to your writer's block.

If you have not been able to write much of late, if you are one of those people that strangely believe that genius should walk around wrapped in junk, it may be time to grow up.
Take your time and groom yourself, take your timer and arrange everything on your desk. That dust, those hanging cobwebs in your study, and the multiple yet to be shelved files that you keep around you all the time are not required.
All you need are concrete writing plans and schedules. Decide on the projects you want to work on in the next few days or weeks and get down to business. Forget how everyone else with genius behaves and just be yourself for a single day, stop finding influence in the wrong company by thinking that only by drinking alcohol like fish would water can you get your act together.
you can write pretty good stuff if you put your mind to it. But part of the discipline required in becoming a great writer is organizing yourself physically, mentally and emotionally.

WRITING TIPS: DEVELOP A WRITING SCHEDULE

Many writers loath the idea of planning their writing projects. My challenge has always been the same. If you are a writer, you should write, and that means setting writing goals and accomplishing them.

If you know what you want, then you must go for it by developing a feasible plan or writing schedule. If you decide on writing at least 300 words a day, make it some kind of routine and write the 300 words. If you fail for any reason to write 300 words, make it an obligation to write 600 words on the following day.
It is only be developing such a routine like schedule that writers can jump from being amateurs to professionals who are proud of their work as writers, its only by sticking to such professionalism that writers can build their portfolio and earn from their writing.
You should ask yourself how some people were able to write 500 novels and didn't die of exhaustion - Strategy and nothing else. Those writers had a well developed writing schedule that they stuck to until they succeeded.

WRITING TIPS: WRITING WITHOUT READING IS DEAD!

You have heard it said that faith without action is dead but I think writing without reading is all the more dead. Do not hope to produce quality writing if you don't ever read. What you read in the course of your writing has a great impact on your writing.

If you are writing a novel, it will help a great deal to read not only great novelists but aim to read critical appraisal of their works as well. If you are writing a short story, read great short stories. Its all the same for articles and poetry too. Find out what Maxim Gorky had to say about Leo Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoevsky. Find out what Tolstoy said about William Shakespeare.
Reading is the essence of writing. If you read shoddy works of art, be sure to produce shoddy work as well. If you read uninspiring work, you may end up writing uninspiring work as well or never writing at all. Need I say more? Writing without reading is the number one cause of a writer's block - Dead writing!

WRITING TIPS: WRITING THE BEGINNING OF YOUR NOVEL CAN COME AT THE END!

Yes, you got me right. Writing the beginning of your novel need to come when you are starting the novel. Many a times, we have a great story to tell but don't know how to start. Great writers will start at any point and then when the novel has matured, when it has gained some flesh, they go back and look at how it started. This beginning can be changed many times over until it is as great as it should be.
As a writer, you know better than worry over that start, for worrying often delays an otherwise very important project. I know of a friend, a literature professor who kept working on his novel for 20 years because he couldn't get that magical start. Wrong! None of us is perfect. Start whichever way and write on and when you feel you have that magical touch that is needed, go back and take a fresher look at where you started. However, brooding over the beginning of your novel will delay you for nothing and contribute to what most writers dread, a writers block!
All the best in your novel writing but remember, that great beginning was not always written at the start. Read other writers and you will understand.