Writing advice.

1. Jay's Writing Points
Before I start talking about my writing points, let me first show to you some of the advice I got
from some of the world's most successful writers.
1) Alexander McCall Smith – The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, The Kalahari Typing School
for Men, The Full Cupboard of Life, many others
Dear Mr Jaboneta,
It was a very great pleasure to receive your kind and courteous e-mail. Thank you so much for
writing to me. I am very pleased indeed that you are enjoying my books and I do hope that you will
also enjoy those that are published in the future.
I was most interested to hear that you are hoping to become a writer and that you wish to use the
experience of your personal quest for truth in this. You asked me for advice on how to become a
writer. Really, I think the only advice that one can give someone is to encourage them to practice
and practice. I think that is the way in which writers become better at their work - practice and
then more practice again! So I suggest that you start writing perhaps short stories and then show
them to friends and colleagues for their comments. But the important thing is to practice as
much as possible - so once you have finished one story or novel, always move on to the next one.
When you feel that the time has come to show your work to publishers, then I think you should
look at the local market in your area - even newspapers and magazines that may publish stories,
and then send your work to the editors. I wish you all the best with your writing.
Warmest wishes,
Alexander McCall Smith
2) Salle Redfield – The Celestine Meditations, and Meditations for the Tenth Insight; The
Executive producer of The Celestine Prophecy Movie.
Hi Jay,
Thank you for your kind note, and thank you for the compliments on James's books.
Believe it or not, one of the best books I have ever read on writing is written by Stephen King-- the
same Stephen King who writes horror novels. The book is called Stephen King on Writing.
Hopefully this will help. Take care and good luck.
My best,
Salle Redfield
2) Sam Deep – ACT ON IT! (with Lyle Sussman)
Jay~
Grace to you and Peace.
I feel blessed by your comments. I am so glad that you have received such value from Act On It!
My journey in writing has been from hating it to enjoying it. That may be the secret. If you love
anything you'll find ways to do it well.
That said, I attribute my current, and only moderately effective writing skills, first and foremost to
the Lord. His help has come in the form of a number of blessings. These are but a few:
1. A college English professor--Pete Jones--who taught me much
2. A publishing house editor--John Bell--who taught me much

2. 3. A university professor/mentor/researcher who encouraged me to write by being my champion
in a number of ways.
4. The book "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White.
5. The gift from God to be able to read my own writing as a reader would encounter it and then
rewrite it to make it more readable.
I don't consider myself capable of teaching writing skills, so sharing these thoughts with you is the
best I can do.
Best regards,
~Sam Deep
4) William Poundstone – How Would You Move Mount Fuji?
Jay,
Thanks for the note and the kind words. It's always tough to give writing advice to others. Here are
a couple of tips that come to mind. They've helped me.
• Narrow the topic. Find the most interesting part of your topic and focus on that. With luck, the
most interesting part will have broad implications. It's better to write the definitive article or book
on a narrow-opic-with-broad-implications than to write just another treatment of a more
conventional theme.
• Cut out words. You can often say the same in 7 words as 20. The shorter version saves paper
and time and is usually more fun to read.
I hope this helps. Best of luck with your project.
William Poundstone
Probably the best advice I got came from Alexander McCall Smith, practice really makes perfect. I
am not saying my writing is perfect but it has improved a lot. Writing is as much a passion as all
the other “jobs” out there. The challenge is that we sometimes neglect this because we're
expected to know how to write. But writing is an art. We need to keep doing it to be really good
at it. All the great writers started from scratch. The really good stuff comes from years and years
of writing.
So that's it, my writing points is actually just a writing point – PRACTICE!
To master something, as Malcolm Gladwell found in his research for the book “Outliers,” you need
to be doing it for about 10,000 hours, give or take. That's how Michael Jordan did it. That's how
Bill Gates did it. And that's how Steve Jobs did it. Even Shakespeare.
10,000 hours is almost 4 years if you do it 8 hours everyday. Realistically, it takes more than that
because we can't guarantee we'll do it 8 hours everyday. So start writing. Or doing whatever
you're passionate about with.
Thanks for reading.
P.S.
One more thing, to be really good at writing, you need to read a lot too. That's how you can
internalize how good writers write.