Hey'a, all! As y'all are probably aware, there's a lot of writing advice out there — in fact, depending on how many blogs and newsletters you follow and what kinds of things you search on Google, you probably can't open your email or your internet browser without running into someone telling you how to write better. A lot of that advice, especially in the area of tips and tricks, is pretty standard stuff, but there's some more unusual material out there too — and some of those more unusual tips work far better than you expect when you read them. I've been meaning to make a post for a while about some of the odd tricks that've helped me the most, and since I've spent the last several months Writing (and rewriting and editing) Like Mad, I felt like this was a good time to do just that.

Writing Tips and Tricks
(That Shouldn't Work as Well as They Do)

Write in a non-serious font. The original version of this advice was to write in Comic Sans specifically — why? Because traditional serif and sans serif fonts (at least the readable ones) are, well, traditional. Serious. Clean. Meticulously shaped. They pump up the pressure to produce perfection. Comic Sans? It's chill. Relaxed. A little messy. It breaks past the block that makes you revise a sentence over and over again and just lets the words flow. And it works. It has a major benefit of handwriting (lack of pressure) paired with the major benefits of digital (speed and editability). It's wonderful. To be fair, though, any readable handwriting font will work in a similar way. I drafted more than a few college papers in Comic Sans, but I like more scripty fonts for fiction. For example, the Bastian Dennel, PI novels were drafted in Ink Free, and my Super Secret Mystery Project is in Segoe Print.
Don't end your writing session at the end of a scene or chapter. Some people even say to end in the middle of a sentence, but I think that's a bit extreme. The point is to avoid the paralysis of figuring out how to start a scene before you even get your writing muscles warmed up — sort of to give yourself a runway for the next writing session. I confess that I haven't always used this one, especially when my inspiration doesn't extend beyond the chapter I just finished, but I'm making a point of doing it in my current project, and I think it's helping a lot.
Write your way into a scene. When you don't have a runway from your last writing session . . . make one! It's a draft, you're going to edit anyway, so if you need to, just start writing with a messy description of what's going on as the scene opens and maybe where you're going with it and keep going until you can transition into the real prose. Then go back and delete all the leadup. I've only used this one a few times, but it does help — it's a little like the Draft Zero concept that Deborah O'Carroll has told me about or the similar method that Sylvia Mercedes uses to rapidly draft her books, just on a very small scale.
Having problems with a scene? Change the weather. This is one I actually used in Gilded in Ice. (Chapter 15, to be exact.) The exact advice doesn't work for every scene, but the general principle does: if you're stuck on a particular scene, change some detail about the setting or situation and you might just find the words flowing more readily. Changing details like this — whether it's the weather or the time of day or the whole location — helps you pull away from the idealized version of the scene in your head and actually write the version that can exist on paper.
If your story feels off now, the problem is probably about ten lines back. This one goes along with the previous tip, especially since I find this also tends to happen when you're trying to force the story or characters in the wrong direction. While it can be risky to engage your inner editor during a writing session, if you're stuck, it may be worth looking back at what happened earlier in the scene (or even earlier in the book!) and trying to find the cause. It's definitely better to look in the moment than to push on with the book and end up having more story weight resting on a cracked support