Writers: You Might Be Doing It Wrong If…

If you think of yourself as “aspiring,” you might be doing it wrong.

If you’re more interested in a book’s metadata than its theme, you might be doing it wrong.

If you’re more concerned about publishing the book than writing it, you might be doing it wrong.

If you talk, tweet, think or write about writing more than you actually write: doin’ it wrong.

If you always find an excuse why you’re not writing, then UR DOIN’ IT RONG.

If your writing life is filled with the blubbery carcasses of unfinished manuscripts lying about like dynamite-exploded whales and you’ve never finished a story, you’re doing it wrong, hoss.

If you keep cheating on your current manuscript by porking other, momentarily-sexier manuscripts behind the barn, yep, that’s some wrong-flavored wrongness with hot wrong sauce.

If you’d rather play video games or watch movies or masturbate to at twerking videos on Tumblr — in other words, if you’d rather be doing anything else but writing — you’re doing it wrong.

If you think that there’s one way up the mountain — and that you or someone else is the magical sherpa who will guide you up that mountain — oh yeah, you’re doing it wrong.

If you self-publish because you’re bitter at the traditional publishing establishment and not because of the very many valid reasons for self-publishing, you’re doing it wrong.

If you think any kind of publishing is a get-rich-quick-scheme lottery-ticket: YOU WRONG.

If you think writers or other artists shouldn’t get paid: YOU DOUBLE WRONG.

If you think you don’t need an editor: you are Mister Wrongyfaced Wrongypants, Esquire.

If you’ve inhaled the aerosolized horseshit and buy into the divide between literary and genre fiction, BZZT, that’s some wrong-ass shit, chief.

If you believe in any of the tribal breakdowns in writing and publishing (trad-pub versus self-pub, Amazon is god or Amazon is the devil, women don’t write as well as men), then let me spell it out with these Scrabble tiles, here… D O I N I T W R O N G

If you can’t make us care about your characters… drum roll please, doin’ it wrong.

If you’re not willing to try new things in writing — new characters, new POVs, new plotting or planning styles, new something, new anything — then you sure ain’t right.

If you rely on magical thinking and it hurts you more than it helps you: du machst es falsch!

If you let writer’s block win, you got it all wrong.

If you’re a writer who doesn’t read, ooh, holy shitkittens, you’re super-mega-ultra-wrong.

If you’re a writer who only reads for pleasure, who never reads non-fiction, who refuses to read outside a single beloved genre or medium, yeah, you’re probably pretty wrong over there.

If you hate bookstores, you’re Mayor Wrongdong of Wronglesburg, Population: YOU.

If you’re an asshole to your audience, you’re BIG SUPER CRAZY FACE WRONG.

If you spend a lot of your time getting into fights on the Internet, you’re a big bucket of wrong.

If you don’t like writing and yet you persist at being a writer: wrong, wrong, wrong.

If you’re not writing, then you’re motherfucking wrong.

So get right — and go write.