The most valuable writing advice I've ever received

There is a quote from a piano composer that I read somewhere, possibly in a book about productivity or goals. The composer (Schumann? Shubert?) was asked where he found his inspiration. Was it by walking through the silent woods at midnight? Was it when he gazed out at the garden and all the joyous riot of color? His answer: “At the piano.”

It is so easy to wait until you feel like you have something to write before you sit down to write. It’s tempting because you actually like you’re doing yourself a favor in waiting until the whole scene or plotline or whatever is played out in your head before you start recording it. Don’t want to waste time, right? It’s a mistake, though. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down to write with nothing more than a snippet in my head - and I mean something really small, like a fragment of a conversation or an image from a scene - and in the process of writing it, the next scene or conversation or whatever unfolds as I go. It’s not always perfect and there have been plenty of times (so. many. times.) where I have cut out literally thousands of words from a book because I thought they were great before but now they simply don’t work anymore. But I wouldn’t have reached that point of knowing what I want to write and really refining it over time if I hadn’t just made myself start.

The next big piece of advice I have is to keep everything. I mean literally everything. Were you completely in love with an idea for a book, and then two pages in realized it was actually half-baked and has zero potential whatsoever? Keep that file. I have almost two decades of complete garbage saved in a folder on my computer because I refuse to delete anything. That folder, innocuously titled Book Stuff, is the home of every writing attempt I’ve ever made, from brainstormed word vomit to polished manuscripts. Also, whenever I start a new book, I start a separate document called “[working title] extra stuff” so that I have a specific dumping ground for anything I need/want to cut. Very often the text that’s cut stays cut forever, but not always! When that happens it’s good to know you’ve tucked it away in a safe place so it’s ready in case you need it again. It can also come in surprisingly handy for future books. C. S. Lewis gives similar advice in one of his essays, and I’ve experienced the same in my own writing. I imagine it’s much easier for me, what with word processors and all, than it would have been when dealing with typewriters and such. I am just about the least techy person I know, but even I know that text files take up almost zero memory space, so keep those files. Your future self will thank you, I’m sure of it.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve heard?