Writers, by nature, are risk takers. We sweat and toil over our writing, with no guarantee of success. There are a lot of writers who will spend a year or more writing a novel that will never get published. It’s the nature of the beast.

I think the risk of failure is the biggest obstacle many budding writers face. I know I struggle with this every time I open up my word processor. But what is more important than taking risks is that if you don’t succeed, you learn from your mistakes and try again.

One of the biggest risk-takers is Sir Richard Branson who started a small company called Virgin Records and eventually expanded it into an airline, mobile phone service and dozens of other businesses. Branson has also risked his life (literally) in other ways, such as attempting to circle the world in a balloon. He’s been plucked from the ocean for several rescues.

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There is a myth that still prevails among writers and other artistic types: That in order to produce quality, creative work, one must be under the influence of drugs/alcohol. I don’t buy it. Rather, I believe that good writing is a combination of a little inspiration and a lot of perspiration. Hard work is often the key.

I’ve never written under the influence of any drug (except for the caffeine I get from my morning coffee), so I can’t speak from personal experience. However, I have talked to people who have written while high on marijuana and they say at the time, they think their writing is pure genius. But after sobering up and reading what they wrote while high, it’s mostly gibberish.

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Writing brief messages in 140 characters or less doesn’t seem like much, yet Twitter has built a social networking empire doing just that. I came to Twitter fairly late in the game, after much persuading by some other social-saavy friends/family. The more I use Twitter, the more I wonder: Is this improving my writing?

The most obvious answer, and the one I agree with, is yes, Twitter can improve your writing. You are forced to use words selectively and make you 140 character messages as concise as possible. A lot of writers have a problem of being too wordy. It’s a hard habit to break and writers don’t see it in their own work. They only notice their wordiness when someone points it out to them in a draft.

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Author Matt Bell is taking writing to a whole new level by making it a performance art. He is writing a story live online, so viewers can see every keystroke he makes, every correction and eventually watch a rough draft turn into the final draft. I stumbled upon this fascinating story on Mediabistro’s eBookNewser blog.

Writing is a lonely endeavor. Writers don’t sell out Madison Square Garden or have young women throwing their bras at them while on stage. The closest thing writers get to being in front of a crowd is on the book tour and panel discussions. As cool as those things are, readers only see the finished, polished product after a writer has done all the dirty work.

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Fan fiction (fanfic) is when a fan of a novel, movie or even television show writes their own stories using the same characters.  However, fanfic remains in legal and ethical limbo. Some authors maintain that fanfic is just innocent flattery. But other authors go as far as to say it’s illegal.

Personally, I’ve never been enthusiastic about fanfic, not because of its legal implications, but because I just don’t find it very exciting.

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One of the smallest, yet probably the most important part of character development is picking the right name. After all, your character’s very identity starts with his/her name. I’ve struggled with this ever since I started writing fiction before high school. In fact, I usually won’t even start a new fiction project until I have all the character names pinned down.

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The other day I wrote the post Giving it away for free: Obscurity vs. Making Money as a Writer. In it, I argued that giving books away for free is not going to hurt a writer’s career. In fact, free books can give writers (especially unknown writers) a boost and increase sales of future books.

The post was prompted by an article I read by Angela Hoy from http://www.writersweekly.com entitled Think Twice Before Giving Away Your Entire Book Online for Free. While I have a lot of respect for Angela and read her weekly newsletter every week, I have to disagree on this point.

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The debate about whether or not it’s a good idea for authors to provide their work for free (especially back titles) continues to rage on around the internet. I usually think of this in terms of ebooks, as they are easier to give away for free without the burden of printing and shipping costs.

The main argument in favor of giving your works away for free goes something like this: You provide an ebook or two for free, and it will give readers a sampling of your work, enticing them to buy future ebooks that they would, of course, pay for. This has worked for many authors who claim that giving their stuff away does increase their sales of other books.

On the flip side, the argument against giving your work away for free is that readers will expect it for free and will expect the same thing with all of your books, thus no one will want to pay. Why pay when you can get it for free, right? The other issue that comes into play here is that authors should be fairly compensated for their work.

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Writers can be a lonely bunch, which is why every writer needs a writing buddy. Mine just happens to be my cat, Kirby. This morning she made herself comfortable on my desk, behind my computer – trying to catch a few rays of sunshine coming in through the window.

What you don’t see in this picture is Kirby sniffing at everything on my desk (my writing tools must smell good) and batting at my pens, paperclips and anything else that’s easy for her paws to move. She also has a habit of biting at, and even eating paper, if it’s handy to do so.

Okay, maybe she’s not the perfect writing buddy, but she does keep me company and definitely keeps me amused as I work through the day’s business.

Who is your writing buddy?

Last week I wrote a post Meditate your way to better writing where I talked about how meditation can quiet the mind and give your brain a “rest.” I argued that when the mind is emptied out of all the distractions that life throws at us, it makes room to be more creative and improve your writing.

I’m continuing this theme of healthy ways to better writing (a theme I did not plan ahead of time, it just kinda happened) by talking about exercise and how it can have a positive impact on your creativity and writing. Exercise is obviously one of the most healthy activities one can pursue as it helps keep you in shape and reduces the risk of a lot of diseases.

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