I SEE a lot of writing advice flying around online.

Some of it good, if a wee bit obvious, like you should try and write something, even if it’s only 100 or so words, every day as well as reading as much as you can.

Some of it terrible like the guy I saw on a forum a couple of years ago who said that being in airports and on aeroplanes is the optimal place to write so you should book the longest flight you can find and then get a return ticket and fly back home as soon as you land.

Just absolutely deranged stuff.

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However, I received a bit of advice a few months ago that’s really stuck with me which was: “Whatever people think of your work, it’s none of your business.”

It’s quite a liberating thought. Whenever you write something and send it out into the world, it has to stand on its own two feet, so to speak.

Reading something, whether it’s a short story, poem, novel, article or whatever, is quite a personal experience and one that the reader will almost certainly be doing on their own.

You can’t spend too much time fretting over how it’s being received, you’ll get bogged down by it and won’t really grow as a writer and person if you do.

It’s done, it’s out there and that means it’s time to write something else and make it better, in your opinion, than the last thing.

Let people engage with your writing on their own terms without letting criticism get you down and without letting praise go to your head.

It’s this aversion to receiving criticism that I think holds a lot of people back from trying their hand at something creative.

As humans, we seem to be hard-wired to have a desire to create.

Whether that’s stories, art, music, daft videos or physical things like furniture, sculptures or mad contraptions.

If you made life so that money would never be a worry, I think everyone would be getting up to all sorts and producing incredible things. But as it is now, people are a wee bit scared to put themselves out there or just can’t find the time.

There will always be people who don’t like or appreciate what you do but there will also always be others, more, who like and get what you do.

But, more importantly, if you like it then just keep doing it.

I definitely let stuff like bad reviews and cheeky tweets at me online get me down when I first started writing.

It’s the easiest trap in the world to fall into.

Seeking validation from others to make yourself feel good doesn’t help anyone.

Now, I’m not interested in trying to convince everyone on the planet I’m a creative genius or the best writer who has ever lived, I just want to be better than I was yesterday.

It’s as cheesy a bit of advice as you’ll ever see but it works.

Just try and be better than who you were yesterday and you’ll be alright.

I’ve written this column every week for about two and a half years now, starting in 2019, and it’s quite mad to think how the world has changed in just that short space of time.

2020 hit us all like a ton of bricks and all of our lives were upended.

Most of these columns have been written under the dark cloud of the pandemic and while it was often difficult to find something interesting and entertaining to write about while the world was on fire and I was just staring at four walls all day long, filled with dread and anxiety, it was a welcome distraction and challenge.

Some weeks, the words and stories would just come tumbling

out.

I’d reach blindly into the deepest recesses of my mind and there I’d find something from my childhood I’d long since forgotten about.

Something daft I did, something funny that someone said to me, that I’d think would be worth spinning into 800 words that might get a laugh from a handful of people.

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Other times, where a week had gone by and I’d done nothing of note and the well of inspiration had run dry, I’d be floundering for something, anything, to write about.

I still loved writing it all the same.

Sadly, my time here as a columnist at the Glasgow Times has come to an end.

I just wanted to sign off by saying thanks to everyone at the paper for supporting me and to anyone over the last couple of years who’s had a read of this column.

I hope it at least helped you kill 10 minutes or so as you skived at work and maybe even gave you a laugh here and there.