Bad Writing Advice: 16 Terrible Writing Tips to Disregard

There’s a lot of bad writing advice floating around. Have you bought into any of it?

By Natasha Khullar Relph

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There’s a lot of writing advice floating around these days. So much, in fact, that writing for writers has become a whole industry.

How much of this writing advice is solid? And how much of it should you ignore?

I looked at some common writing advice doled out to writers and found the following to be suspect.

1. You must write every day

Must you? Why? What happens if you only write every other day? Do the writing police come and take you to a re-education camp where they burn all your published work?

Look, I’m all for consistency and the amazing benefits it provides. When you’re working on a project, coming back to it regularly ensures you stay connected to it and don’t lose steam when it gets difficult.

Equally, if you’re just beginning to create a writing habit, working on building a streak helps you stay motivated.

Writing every day is good advice, but use it as a tool, not a rule.

2. Write what you know

This is a good starting point for new writers because it gives you access to material that you’re already comfortable and familiar with. Further, if you’re a beginner writer, it’s easy to go down the rabbit hole of research and use that as a way of distracting yourself from the actual writing.

So yes, this advice works. But only to a point. As you grow in your career, you’ll be a better writer, one who can spot good story ideas and knows which questions to ask and the clichés to avoid, and it’s what you want to know that will be more of interest.

Write what you know when it’s relevant, but more importantly, write what you want to know. That’s where the real magic begins.

3. Good writing is rewriting

Sometimes, for some writers, sure. When I first started writing fiction, my first drafts were terrible. They required help from editors and second reads from beta readers.

For my first novel, good writing was rewriting.

But then I wrote the second half of my second novel in one draft all the way through, and my editor didn’t touch a single word. It was the best writing I’ve ever done. By going and rewriting what was vulnerable and powerful writing, I would have taken out the rawness, the thing that made it shine.

I’ve written all eight of my nonfiction books all the way through in a single draft.

Rewriting makes sense when a piece of work doesn’t work the first time. But if you’re rewriting as a rule, all you’re doing is giving in to the instinct of perfectionism and becoming increasingly precious about your writing.

4. Write first thing in the morning

No, thank you. I write after midnight when my family has gone to bed and I have three solid hours ahead of me to write in peace. I sit in bed, the cat at my feet, and I make myself a cup of tea (or pour myself a glass of wine), blast some tunes and write. It’s heaven.

I feel more creative after midnight when the world is quiet and I feel like I’m the only one up. Practically, too, there is more time and space. (This is why I do my journaling and morning pages at night, too.)

When I’ve forced myself to wake up early in the morning to write, I’ve been miserable, writing has felt like pulling teeth, and I’ve been no fun to live with. Why would I want to do that to myself, my family, and my creativity?

I understand why people give this advice, but forgive me for not drinking the miracle morning Kool-Aid. There is no one good time to write.

Figure out what the most creative times are for you and then build your writing schedule around that.

5. Join a critique group

I’m going to get so much pushback for saying this but someone has to, so here goes: Most critique groups are full of unpublished writers regurgitating advice they’ve read online but have no experience with.

I think critique groups and beta readers can be extremely helpful—and I’ve been part of some amazing ones—but only if they’re run by an experienced moderator who can guide the conversation.

If you’re going to join a writing or critique group, check out the members, look at their publication history, and make sure that when someone offers you a critique on your work, you regard it as one opinion and not the final verdict on your work.

6. It’s about the journey, not the destination

I’m a journey person. I am, I promise. I truly believe you need to enjoy the act of writing. Show me a writer who says “I hate writing but love having written” and I’ll show you a writer who is secretly miserable and wondering why they’ve committed to a lifetime of this.

Loving the journey is great. But you know what? The destination’s pretty important, too, because if you didn’t care about the destination, why are you even doing this in the first place?

Now, your destination doesn’t have to be the same as my destination. The destination may also change as you move forward in your career.

For my first novel, the destination was just being able to finish it and proving to myself that I could do it. The destination, or the thought of it anyway, is what kept me going when the journey was anything but fun.

The destination for my journalism pieces was always national and international newspapers and magazines. And good thing, too, because do you really think I was going to report thousands of stories and just sit on them, having them read by no one? Who does that serve?

Enjoy the journey, for sure. I’d say you almost have to if you want to be in this game long term.

But let’s not belittle the destination. It’s essential to your progress.

7. Write 1,000 words a day

The life and career of a writer are, we’re all fully aware, full of chaos and uncertainty. I believe this is the reason so many of the “rules” we’re sold are so incredibly specific. If, in the uncertainty of publishing and sales, you could have this concrete target to hit every day, then it makes you feel more in control.

The problem is that this arbitrary number has become a gold standard in the writing world. If you write less than this, it becomes a stick to beat yourself up with. If you write more? Other writers will cast shade on the quality of your work.

Not only are we all different writers with different energy levels, life situations, and goals, but your productivity and writing process changes over time and with different projects.

Word counts are a great way to measure productivity and how quickly you’re getting a project done, but there is no right number to which you must aspire.

Some days you write 200 words and some days you write 10,000. That’s the beauty of a creative career. Roll with it.

8. Write to an eighth-grade reading level

This is relatively new advice, mostly given to bloggers and writers publishing online. It makes sense, too. You don’t want your readers to run to the dictionary every few minutes because, of course, instead of running to the dictionary, they’ll be running to a different writer’s story.

That said, let’s stop acting as though readers are one homogenous group, okay?

I enjoy a brief article on productivity as much as I enjoy a long, thoroughly researched story on climate colonialism in the New Yorker. I don’t want the New Yorker to write to an eighth-grade writing level. That’s not what I read them for.

This piece of writing advice, like much of what I’m discussing, comes from a good place. Writers often try to look smarter than they are in print, and this often has the opposite effect.

Don’t make your writing sound smarter than it is. But don’t dumb it down either.

The trick is simple: Write what you like to read. Find your natural style and build on that. Then, experiment with it based on what you’re writing and who you’re writing it for.

9. Write a “shitty first draft”

The term “shitty first draft” comes from Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird. In it, Lamott offers the advice that you should “romp all over the page” and allow the writing to not only be bad, but to be terrible.

Here’s the problem: Most writers assume this to mean that they should aim for terribly written first drafts that they will then clean up.

Aiming for a badly written first draft is a very different concept from allowing for a badly written first draft. When you’re allowing for an awful first draft, you’re getting rid of the perfectionism and letting yourself write from the gut without judgment at every step, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But aiming for a bad first draft is nonsense.

When you’re a new writer, lousy first (and second and third) drafts are almost a fact of life. You do the absolute best you can and it still ends up barely readable. That’s how you learn. But when you’ve been writing for two, three, four, ten years, you don’t write terrible first drafts anymore. Ask any journalist who has been writing for over five years and they’ll tell you that while sure, they struggle with a piece of writing every now and again, if you told them they had a deadline of three hours and a story to report and submit, they’d get it done and they’d get it done well. Their first draft would be their final draft, and they’d have no trouble with it.

(Want to learn how to write faster? Read this.)

I suggest you allow for shitty first drafts. If you write something and it’s terrible, that’s fine. Just don’t go intending to write one because if you do, that’s precisely what you’ll end up with.

10. Show, don’t tell

Ever heard this advice? That you should always show and not tell because you want the reader completely immersed in the scene rather than to feel distanced from the action? Want to know what I think?

Show, don’t tell is bad advice.

You need to show and tell.

You need to show when you want the reader to connect deeply.

Tell when you need to inject pace.

Both are important.

You show when you want to immerse a reader in the experience of your character or to be placed in the middle of an action scene. This is exactly the technique you use when you want to heighten the drama of a swift and devastating event, like a car crash, a shooting, or a tsunami. It may be the right thing to do when a main character is proposing to their love interest, or a love triangle is being revealed. It slows the pace down and lets the reader connect to the action.

However, if you read pretty much any published novel, you’re going to see a lot of telling in there. Because if you want to increase the pace of a certain chapter, write a short prologue, or get through several years of history in one go, you have to tell.

11. Don’t write for money

This is the awful advice I’ve spent most of my career railing against.

Listen, if you’re writing for fun or as a hobby, that’s totally cool and there is no need to think about money.

However, if you’re a professional writer or want to be one, then please, yes, think about money. Get paid for your work.

Now, I’m not saying write for the market. Especially if you’re a novelist or short story writer, you don’t want to write in genres only because you think they’ll sell. But you should definitely write for the money, by which I mean write whatever you want, however you want, then make sure you go out and sell it to get the best possible price.

That we don’t talk about money or demonize it is the reason the “starving artist” myth is so prevalent in our industry. I’ve been making a living from my writing for almost two decades, right from the very beginning when, as a nineteen-year-engineering student, I decided I wanted writing to be my career.

It wouldn’t have been my career if I’d made no money from it or if I hadn’t thought about how I was going to sell what I wrote.

If you want to do this professionally, you must, too.

12. Build your social media following

New writers spend a lot of time on social media, downloading video apps and editing images in an attempt to grow their following. It’s not their fault. They’re told, firmly and repeatedly, that in order to succeed as a writer in today’s world, it’s important to build an audience.

And it is.

But someone with a large audience and no work to promote or sell is not a writer; they’re an influencer.

Yes, authors can definitely benefit from social media followings, but not at the expense of writing their books. Yes, freelancers can benefit from inbound inquiries, but not at the expense of knowing how to land a client.

“Start an Instagram account” or “grow your YouTube channel” is terrible advice for a writer who is just starting their career and hasn’t yet figured out what they offer to freelance clients or published books they’re ready to sell.

13. Charge what you’re worth

This is one of the most common pieces of terrible writing advice and I admit, I’ve given it.

It comes from a good place, but even bestsellers like Hemingway or Stephen King wouldn’t be able to charge $100 for a book or $10 a word for a short story.

Plus, worth and market value are two separate things.

Advice to “charge what you are worth” is flawed because your worth cannot be valued in a dollar amount.

Charge based on your financial needs, goals, and desires.

And understand that your personal worth should never be part of the equation.

14. You must outline your books

If you’re world-building or have complex plotlines, backstories, character development and multiple POVs (points of view), then sure, outlining can be extremely helpful.

Indeed, for genres such as science fiction, urban fantasy, anime, and dystopias, it may not be a bad thing to list out major tropes, plot points, and scene outlines. It may indeed make your life easier.

But not all minds work the same way and not all writers have the same process or writing style. Just as outlining can simplify the process for some writers, it can cause writer’s block for others.

If you prefer to outline, then do that. But if you prefer to write by the seat of your pants, then that’s okay, too. Neither choice makes you a bad writer, and anyone who claims that there is only one way to write or one method that will work for everyone is full of shit.

I’ve had a different process from book to book, and while I now love outlining and teach my process, it’s never a requirement.

In fact, it’s important to remember that no one process or writing tool is a requirement.

Want to use adverbs? Go ahead. Get rid of dialogue tags? Your choice. Write by hand instead of using word processors? Whatever works.

15. Write only when you have something to say

This is excellent advice if you’re a hobbyist, but belongs straight in the trash can if you’re a professional writer—or aspiring to be.

I’ve been a journalist for 20+ years without thousands of bylines online and in print and I can tell you one thing for sure: If I had waited for inspiration to arrive, if I’d waited for know what I was going to say, if I’d waited until I was feeling confident and articulate, or if I’d waited for me to believe in myself before I sat down and started writing, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

And I can guarantee nor would the writers you know and love.

Write frequently. Write often. Write as much as you can.

Get rid of this perfectionist tendency to only show up when the stars are aligned.

If what you’ve written works, keep it. If it doesn’t, throw it away.

Don’t be precious about your work. Whether that’s ideas or words.

16. Keep submitting until they publish you

I am all about persistence. I wouldn’t have a career without it. But I think it’s important that we understand the difference between being stuck because your skill set needs improving and being stuck because of gatekeeping in the largely white world of publishing.

This is the biggest mistake I made in my career and advice I wish I hadn’t followed. Because it always assumes a failing of skill for the writer’s lack of progress.

I once read a story about a novelist who wrote 13 novels, all of which were rejected. The 14th wound up being acquired by an American publishing house and rising straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

A success story, right?

Perhaps, if you consider getting a novel published and achieving bestsellerdom as the measure of success.

I don’t.

I think of the 13 books that didn’t sell, that were probably as good as the book that sold. The years wasted. The income that was left on the table.

There’s no question that this is a good writer with books that have sales potential. What if she had indie published them, put them up on Amazon, and put all her time and effort into promoting them rather than fielding rejections?

Would she have the same status in traditional publishing? Probably not.

But would she have made more money, more regularly? I’m almost a hundred percent certain that she would have.

When I started my career, I didn’t want magazines and newspapers to bestow publication upon me. I pitched them, yes, and I got published in some of the top newspapers and magazines of our time. But it all started with me and my WordPress blog, publishing without permission.

Indie authors are publishing dozens of books while traditionally published authors are worrying about whether their publisher will buy their second.

That was the template of success yesterday.

It is note the template of success today.

A lot of advancements have been made in technology, in publishing, and in the way we reach our readers. Make sure to understand all of them, and not get left behind because you’re waiting for permission from gatekeepers.

Final thoughts

Remember, any advice you receive (including mine) is what worked for that writer at that time. Your experience will be different and your learnings will be, too. Don’t forget to trust your instincts and do what is best for you, regardless of how other writers approach their work.

If you learn to trust yourself, you can almost never go wrong.

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