Being a Better Writer’s Summer of Cliche Writing Advice: In Late, Out Early · 10:40pm Oct 7th, 2019
Welcome back readers, to the final entry in Being a Better Writer‘s Summer of Cliche Writing Advice!
Yeah, quick catchup for this, our final entry so that I can jump right to the meat of today’s topic. Being a Better Writer is a weekly series on how to improve one’s writing, from exploring various nuts and bolts and how to use them to addressing common questions. Running for almost six years now, there are hundreds of articles on it at this point, updating each and every Monday (save some holidays here and there).
So then, if that’s Being a Better Writer (or BaBW), what’s the Summer of Cliche Writing Advice? Well, it’s a feature we’ve been running all summer for BaBW focused on the cliche phrases of “writing advice” that follow authors around like ants follow a picnic. All authors, young and old. I wouldn’t at all be surprised at all if Tolkien came back from the grave and went on a speaking tour about his books, and somewhere at his first stop, was cautioned by a non-writer, non-reader to remember that “there’s nothing new under the sun.”
Yeah, that kind of advice. Quick and easy to remember, but as we’ve learning this summer … maybe not that great at expounding or teaching its original intent. Some, as we’ve discovered upon breaking them down and taking a deeper look, really aren’t very useful, the easily remembered cut down versions missing key information to the degree that they can harm young writers. And annoy experienced ones.
That’s what the Summer of Cliche Writing Advice has been all about, and today, we end with a real titan of advice. Because today’s cliche? Well, it’s really only a cliche saying from one particular set of folks and their followers. Because this week’s saying, by request, is from Writing Excuses. That’s right, the podcast that I link on my very own links page. Starring a collection of quite talented writers talking about (what else?) writing.
As I said, it’s by request. Because the hosts of Writing Excuses often repeat a phrase that one of my readers wanted to hear my own analysis on. That saying?
In late, out early.
