1. Cut the boring parts
   

   I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~Elmore Leonard

2. Eliminate unnecessary words
   

   Substitute “d***” every time you’re inclined to write “very;” your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain

3. Write with passion
   

   Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

4. Paint a picture

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~Anton Chekhov

5. Keep it simple
   

   Vigorous writing is concise. ~William Strunk Jr.

6. Do it for love
   

   Write without pay until somebody offers to pay. ~Mark Twain

7. Learn to thrive on criticism
   

   You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance. ~Ray Bradbury

8. Write all the time
   

   Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed. ~Ray Bradbury

   The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn’t behave that way you would never do anything. ~John Irving

9. Write what you know … or what you want to know
   

   If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

   Learn as much by writing as by reading. ~Lord Acton

10. Be unique and unpredictable

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite. ~G.K. Chesterton

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. ~Oscar Wilde

Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto. ~Ray Bradbury

I found this post at writerbynature.com and I thought this was a good way to determine which to use — who or whom?

This is one of those tricky rules that if you get it wrong, it makes you sound stuffy or pompous, but every once in a while you run across a place where you need to use the word whom, so I found this really helpful:

Who/Whom falls into my pesky words category.

I spent years reaching for my style manuals whenever confronted with these words. Until I learned a couple of neat tricks.

In the past, I might have told you to use who when you mean the person taking action and whom when you mean the person is having something done to them.

But there’s an even easier way to deal with who and whom:

Try substituting him or he (her/she) for who or whom.

For example: Who/Whom do you admire? Test: Do you admire him? Do you admire he?

Do you admire him? Is correct and as luck would have it, him and whom both end with the letter m.

Who/Whom broke the vase? Test: Him broke the vase. He broke the vase.

The answer: He broke the vase.

Try practicing with these sentences:

Who/Whom stepped in the mud?
Who/Whom do you trust?
Who/Whom is going to the concert?
To who/whom should I address this letter?

Use this test when in doubt and you will be able to see whether who or whom is the right word. (~ jj_murphy The Writing Life)

I really like this, since I have always used a similar trick to decide when to use I or me when saying for example “My mother and I went to the store.” Instead of “My mother and me . . ” If you can drop off everything and say I went to the store, then you would use the ‘___ and I’ form. But if you say, for example “Give that to your father and I right now!” “Give that to I” doesn’t work, so in this case it should be “Give that to your father and me . . .” (I once had to correct the principal at the first school I taught at in front of my whole class because he came in and told them wrong . . . I don’t know why he was doing it to begin with, but wow! LOL talk about choosing my words carefully!)

1. Make a list of all the teachers you have ever had.
2. Make a list of all of the teachers you have ever had who were not at school or who did not carry the official title of “teacher.”
3. Make a list of all the teachers you have ever had that are animals.
4. Make a list of all the teachers you have ever had that are objects or things.
5. Make a list of all of the strange or unusual people that you have known.
6. Make a list of any strange or interesting creatures that you have met or seen.
7. Make a list of all of the places where you learned something important.
8. Make a list of all of the interesting or unusual places you have been.
9. Make a list of any interesting problems you have faced, or any weird or uncomfortable situations you have ever found yourself in.
10. Make a list of any interesting, quirky, accidental, brilliant, or just plain stupid ways that you or other people you know have solved problems.

Now publish list 9 to the internet with your name, address, and a photo of yourself. (Ha ha, just kidding)

If you like, you can add illustrations in the margins (this is a great excuse to doodle) Obviously some lists will be much longer than others, and some of these lists may be quite short, but each item on these lists is a story all by itself. It can get really interesting though if you choose a few from different lists, for example choose a setting from list 7; characters from lists 1, 5, and 6; a problem from list 9, and so forth.

Now, here is the next step, which is optional: get a small drawstring bag and choose a small object — a unique stone, a really small toy, a coin, a marble, slips of paper color coded for character, plot, and setting, etc. — to represent each item from these lists. Put all of these in the bag and then when you are having writers block, or just want to give yourself a fun writing experience, pull one out and write the story that goes with it. Or you can randomly pull out a few and mix it up a bit.