Ernest Hemingway’s 5 Surprisingly Easy Rules for Writing

1. Kill adjectives
2. Murder your darlings
3. Slaughter long sentences
4. Exterminate repetition
5. Whiskey, but only after s̶l̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶b̶l̶o̶o̶d̶l̶u̶s̶t̶ writing

But what do you think life will really be like in 100 years?

One of the best writing exercises I ever did was in college.

We were asked to distill a 10 page scientific paper on the relation between the dodo and a plant that went extinct along with it... into 100 words.

That plus the 10% Solution by Ken Rand are deeply ingrained.

Really helpful as I summarize these book chapters into a proposal. 150 words per chapter? PLENTY.

Writers – you can get around your local café's "no laptops" policy by writing your first draft by hand.

You might be surprised by how it changes your thought process and inspiration.

Bonus: typing it all up then adds a helpful step to the editing process. Adapt your handwritten lines as you type!

Am new here guy please follow and I will follow you back I'm new here! Follow me, and I'll follow you back. #Authors #WritingCommunity #AmWriting

I find that I have characters raise one eyebrow rather often. Perhaps because I can only raise both at once myself. #AmWriting

Paper sent to co-authors for final comments. Aiming to submit by Monday. And now it's time to go home.

Have a photo of some ice melange (Because that's what I've been working on this evening...)

#AcademicChatter #AmWriting #LifeOfaScientist. #glaciology

#amWriting a post on lazy language design. The hardest problem is not to write it—I can churn out a lot in a relatively short time. (Despite being lazy.)

The hardest problem is to build a (preferably acyclic) graph of all sections so that there's not too many dependencies and the flow is least interrupted by back/forward links.

Uuuuuuuugh. Now I get #Zettelkasten folks—having my writing as a bunch of "cards" would be nice indeed. But oh well—we have no reasonable visual/graph code editors, and I doubt we'd have these for writing either.

No, but where do you get your ideas from?

Non-writer: Where do you get your ideas?

Me:

So glad my headache has eased up. It's been with me for most of the last two weeks. I was able to get some revision work done on my novel today. I fleshed out a chapter this morning. I really want to finish revisions and start querying this year. #AmWriting #ChronicPain #migraine

Ciao, Fediverse! Time for an updated #introduction.

I'm a fiction writer, public librarian, and online diarist. If you guessed that I am a mildly pedantic, vaguely recursive thinker who appreciates a tidy structure while also dabbling in the chaotic arts, well, cite your sources.

I post about #libraries, what I #amwriting, #analog delights like fountain pens and ink, building #community, and whatever else I feel like.

Follow me, unfollow me, just don't walk beside me. My neck hurts.

#fedi #askmastodon

so what's the email newsletter equivalent? for the fediverse?

Im not happy with Substack, I know i will probably have to pay something for the newsletter I do at some point, I don't want to code and it needs to be really user friendly for recipients. and not look rubbish.

ghost.io and beehiiv have been suggested.

Ain't gonna get rich writing technical books, kids. #amwriting

Me: oh no, now I've read this Terra Ignota fanfic, I feel the lure of the re-read rabbit hole again

My brain: or you could write a fanfic! Look, here's an idea!

I wrote a whole new short story today. I think it's my first time featuring dragons. It was a lot of fun to write, and I'll workshop it next month. I called it "Rosalyn and the End of Everything." #AmWriting #SpeculativeFiction #dragon

Reading and writing, both worth celebrating. #books #booklovers #amreading #amwriting