This could be from pros both big names and whose names we don't know of, school teachers whose lessons you can still remember, an editor or agent or just someone who did you a favour and read some of your work.
For me, one of the best pieces of advice I've found online was from Neil Gaiman. He's advice was to treat it like building a dry stone wall, you put one stone down, then another and another and so on until it's done.
There's been times I've found myself too distracted by anything else around me to write, and then I've forced myself to sit and keep writing and the next thing I know I have five pages looking back on me. Maybe not in the best condition spelling and grammar wise, but I can easily edit later.
One of the worst pieces of advice was from Stephen King. He said he doesn't keep notes of his ideas because he can always remember the good ideas, or the good ideas will always come back to you. This is not good advice for someone like myself who has a terrible memory, not so bad that I can't recall where I parked my car in an otherwise empty car park, but I can easily think up an idea, then forget it five minutes later if I've not made a note of it.
And yes sometimes it can come back if I really fight to do so, but that takes time and exhausts me. I've got the Dictaphone app on my phone and it's files are full of me working out ideas out loud, whether it's characters traits and motivation, plot ideas or what the town the characters are visiting will look like.
One of my school teachers once told the entire class to always make sure you correct any spelling or grammar errors before you move on to do any more writing on the PC. This was in the days of the 386's and windows 3.11 and yes, the software did have spellcheckers, but I found two things happened if we actually followed this advice.
For me it ruined the flow of writing, I wasn't putting down the ideas in my head as quickly as I wanted to when I was at my most creative and felt like I was losing something doing this.
Secondly, when I saw my friends following this advice and they had typed a line with just one typo, they would delete it all and re-write it just the same as before minus the typo, which just seemed odd.
For me, one of the best pieces of advice I've found online was from Neil Gaiman. He's advice was to treat it like building a dry stone wall, you put one stone down, then another and another and so on until it's done.
There's been times I've found myself too distracted by anything else around me to write, and then I've forced myself to sit and keep writing and the next thing I know I have five pages looking back on me. Maybe not in the best condition spelling and grammar wise, but I can easily edit later.
One of the worst pieces of advice was from Stephen King. He said he doesn't keep notes of his ideas because he can always remember the good ideas, or the good ideas will always come back to you. This is not good advice for someone like myself who has a terrible memory, not so bad that I can't recall where I parked my car in an otherwise empty car park, but I can easily think up an idea, then forget it five minutes later if I've not made a note of it.
And yes sometimes it can come back if I really fight to do so, but that takes time and exhausts me. I've got the Dictaphone app on my phone and it's files are full of me working out ideas out loud, whether it's characters traits and motivation, plot ideas or what the town the characters are visiting will look like.
One of my school teachers once told the entire class to always make sure you correct any spelling or grammar errors before you move on to do any more writing on the PC. This was in the days of the 386's and windows 3.11 and yes, the software did have spellcheckers, but I found two things happened if we actually followed this advice.
For me it ruined the flow of writing, I wasn't putting down the ideas in my head as quickly as I wanted to when I was at my most creative and felt like I was losing something doing this.
Secondly, when I saw my friends following this advice and they had typed a line with just one typo, they would delete it all and re-write it just the same as before minus the typo, which just seemed odd.