1. Show Don't Tell

If you are not writing visual scenes or giving the reader a visual experience, then you are failing; this is a lie. The truth is you need a mixture of both: you have to tell and show. Telling is called exposition. Showing is giving a visual expression to character behaviour. The implied sub-lie here is that a huge explanation of the scene is not your friend, so you should avoid it as much as possible. This is not true. A good description of a scene is a great tool, but you have to learn how to wield it effectively. Showing is not always the best solution. For example, a teenager is put under the tutelage of the martial arts master, whose job it is to turn him into a ninja killer and he has 15 years to do the task. The 15 years that pass cannot be shown to the reader in detail. It would take an entire book to show how he transforms into a killer. You have to tell it in exposition and cut it down to a manageable amount of prose. Showing, in this case, would be pacing, which is death to any story. You have to use telling exposition to economically reduce the 15 years down to a few paragraphs, or maybe a few pages, and then move on to the main story with the minimal digression.

 Writers tell all the time, in fact, we have to tell a lot, sometimes more than we show. The key is knowing when to do one versus the other. You have to discern the context, assess the purpose of the chapter and make an informed decision which best serves your purposes as a writer. If you are on autopilot, you will blindly follow the myth and miss the opportunity of writing the best scene possible.

2. The Blank Page is the Enemy

The lie: when you sit in front of the blank page (or screen) you are in for pain, anxiety and angst. The blank page will resist any attempts to fill it and it is your biggest obstacle.

The truth: it's just a piece of paper. It's just a word processing document. The 'obstacle' is not the blank screen, the obstacle is your head - or more correctly, how your inner voice sees it. The blank page and writers' block are less to do with the writer having no ideas in their head and more to do with the jumbled mass of ideas and no sense of the order in which they must be written. You are so jumbled and crowded with ideas that you can't fathom the order in which to place everything. Clear your mind and the ideas will flow, because they are there - you just have to get out of their way. 

3. Write What You Know

The lie: if you can only write what you know, then you will be limited and constricted in what you can write. Writing what you know is restricted by your own life experience and if you only know your life, then how boring will your writing be?

The truth: this is actually a very good piece of writing advice, but people get the purpose of it all wrong. Writing what you know isn't writing about events that have happened, it is about the emotions you have felt during certain periods in your life. If you felt abused, write what you know about that. If you felt loved, write about that. If you felt afraid, write about that. The actual events might be part of that, but it's what's under the emotional hook that will grab readers and only you can write about that from your own emotional experience. This is what makes your writing relatable to readers, because those that felt abused, or loved, or afraid growing up will relate accordingly. The other truth here is that you can't write about stuff you don't know. In other words, you are forced by circumstance (for example, life itself) to only write what you know, because you don't know what you don't know. Even if you make everything up in a story, it can only be sourced from what you know as a writer because you have no other experience other than your own.

4. You Must Write Every Day

 The best way to be productive and accomplish success is to always exercise the 'writing muscle,' so that means never losing momentum - write every day; it's a lie.

The truth is, writers don't write every day. The truth is, you don't have to write every day. Other than eating, sleeping and breathing, there are few things we have to do every day. Writing is certainly not on that list. The fact is, most writers are not writing every day and because they believe they should be, they beat themselves up with guilt and negative self-talk. But they are probably thinking of storylines, plots and creating good characters so they are actually investing in their creativity on a daily basis. This happens when we writers stop writing and just mull over ideas in our heads. We're thinking about the story all the time (I certainly do).

This is actually more important than writing because it is what gives fuel to the writing process. It's called story development and this is something writers do almost daily and certainly more often than physical writing. The danger of this myth is that it might make a writer discount their internal story development process as less valuable than physical writing. Just the opposite is true. If you write every day, fine, have at it, but know that doing so doesn't make you more of a writer, or even make you more productive as a writer. The writer that thinks and ponders more than physically writing is probably going to produce more useful work than the one that blindly writes every day hoping for real productivity.

5. Storytelling and Writing Are the Same

 Writing is storytelling and storytelling is writing. There is no difference and any perceived difference is just semantics. This is a lie because storytelling and writing are two different things and they have nothing to do with one another. Storytelling is about story. Storytelling is about people in certain situations and the journey they travel on. A story is what we tell ourselves about what it means to have human emotion. Writing is about language/rhetoric; it is about the rhythm and musicality of using language to convey meaning, thoughts and ideas. There is nothing that intrinsically connects writing to storytelling. Storytelling preceded writing and a story doesn't need to be anywhere near the written word in order to be told. Think about it; stories can be danced, mimed, painted, sculpted, sung, spoken, or written. Stories need storytellers, not writers. This is a hard one for people to wrap their heads around, especially if they think writing is storytelling. No, writing is just one way to render a story.

In addition, writing and storytelling, because they are different, also represent separate kinds of talent and separate kinds of skill sets. Because you are good at one does not mean you will be good at the other. In fact, most writers are good at the writing side, and poor when it comes to storytelling. Storytelling is usually not the strongest skill for most writers. This is why learning story structure and plot development craft is so critically important for creative writers. The danger of buying into this myth is that writers will assume that because they can string two sentences together and turn a nice phrase, they can tell a story properly. The myth gives them a false sense of security in their own skill sets and talents. Writers have to learn how to do both well, and that means learning the craft of plot development and the craft of creative writing.