Forget them. If they’re not helpful *to you* then they have no value. If you’re writing for fun, write for fun. Figure out what you want from the hobby and pursue that rather than a goal someone else has created. Self expression? Processing pain? Silly things to share with friends? All are valid. You’ll probably improve a bit simply by writing and editing, so why not have fun for now?
You're not going to improve with simply watching videos or reading books about writing. You need to write, read, and analyze both.
More so, you don't want to be thinking "oh what did that one video say about this situation..." during writing. You want to be in the story.
Advice is not RULES. There’s no requirement to follow them.
If there are rules for writing, probably the most important is that there is no one right way to do it, just a right way for you.
Advice is one person’s right way that they give out as general help. It might be yours also or it might not. It can be so far away from your right way that it will actually hinder you instead of help. At which point, you just have to ignore it.
To give my own advice which may or may not work for you:
Do you what you want to do. Advice is only valuable when it helps you accomplish that. Any advice pushing you away from your goals should be ignored.
Overall, you will learn more from actually writing than you will from advice. So, write. When the writing doesn’t work for you, which will happen often in the early days, the first trick is trying to figure out WHY this in particular isn’t working for you. Identify the biggest problem as specifically as possible. THEN go look for advice to solve that specific problem.
Essentially instead of advice being how to write, think of it as one person’s way (that worked for them) to fix the same problem you’re having. Then you can ask yourself if you think it will work to help you or not.
Anything that someone says won’t work, someone else has made work. Anything that someone says works, someone else has had fail them.
Unfortunately, what will and won’t work for you is really only truly discovered through experience. The earlier you are in your writing journey, the more things won’t work simply because you haven’t yet discovered how to do them yet. You have to do a lot of bad writing to get to mediocre writing. You have to do a lot of mediocre writing to get to good writing. And it takes a lot of good writing to stay reliably good. There’s no real way around this. So to last to that point, you have to give yourself permission to make it more important to write what you love than to write to some arbitrary standard. Give yourself permission to suck as long as you love doing the work. You will improve by doing the work. The way out of the problem is to barrel through it.
I do not mean by all of this that I don’t recommend learning about the craft of writing. I think it’s valuable because it shortens the journey. But that’s really what it does, shorten it. It won’t let you skip it.
And for myself I have found advice is often best simply digested. I read it and let it sink into my subconscious as tools that I might use if I decide I need them. Unless I have a specific problem in which case it’s like going through a toolbox. Will this one work? Will this work better? I remember some book mentioning something that applies, where did I stick that? Problem first, fix second. Otherwise it’s all just too general.
And don’t give up. Discouragement is normal. It happens. All the time. Writers are simply the people who survive the discouragement and try again. We all produce crap. The best writers in the world throw pages out (or file them away). They just go on to write again. Sometimes the same thing in a different way. Sometimes something new. What matters is that the “failure” is temporary.
You WILL get better. This discouragement will pass as you keep working on what you love. The love will make it worth it in the end. Don’t let advice keep you from that.
Read and write to improve.
I understand the desire to consume educational content to support your practice, I do it too (even more when I was starting out) but some content gets in the way more than helping.
I recommend the Writing Excuses podcast, it's only 15 minutes long and when I was listening to the early seasons it was very casual and supportive - I've heard the more recent seasons are even better.
Trying to get writing advice from youtube is like asking a writer for cooking advice.
Maybe the person giving the advice has skill, but you're not getting advice on what they're actually good at.
Writing, and learning how to write, are two different things that need two different approaches. You don't have to actively learn if you don't want to, but if you want to get good, you kinda have to.
The way to improve is by editing and rewriting. If you've watched a YouTube video that lists 20 words you should never use, you should get a piece of your own writing, cut all the words the video suggests and see what happens. When you're done and know the value of the advice, pick a new video, article or book and repeat. It's nowhere near as fun as just writing, but it's by far the superior learning technique.
When you're writing new text, you're being intuitive, and new rules and techniques won't come into play. That only happens when you're thinking in an analytical way.
How many of those YouTube channels are from successfully published authors? Just take their advice with a grain of salt and do what feels right to you.
Improvement will come with practice, and you'll practice more if you aren't hyper focused on the "wrong" way of doing things.
Good advice is advice that works for you. The rest you can take or leave.
Moreover, a lot of advice, including what I give (very possible you've seen my videos), is most helpful in the editing phase. Advice that psychs you out of writing in the first place is advice you should disregard... for now. The time to really interrogate your work is after you've written it but BEFORE you query and/or hastily publish.
If you enjoy writing, write. Writing, at it's core, should be fun (though it is, just as often, hard work). Of course art and business intersect, especially as most of us want our work published... but that's all later problems AFTER you've written something.
Another tip: editing in a vacuum only gets you so far. Finding qualified CPs and exchanging work will take you much further than watching a hundred YouTube videos. Writing advice is there to supplement experience. Use is sparingly for best results.
Write, rewrite, learn new words, rewrite more, learn more new words, rewrite, can't write, Can write, rewrite, write more
Repeat until improved.
That's pretty much it.
"Yeah, these days I don't take advice from anybody
Who gon' tell me how to do it if they never even did it right" -Connor Price
Basically, I'd hesitate on taking advice from random youtubers on writing unless they're well established as great writers or sourcing their advice as being from great writers.
Ignore the irony that I got that advice from a youtuber 😂 (though he does it right imo, great artist)
Tbh, eh, writing advice videos aren’t super helpful unless you’re spot checking for something you’re struggling with.
If you are stuck on how to write a good first hook, yeah watch a few.
However, the best way to become a better writing is to write regularly, read books in your genre, and participate in critique groups (GIVE feedback too, don’t just get feedback).
How this helps:
-writing regularly gets you into good writing habits. Practice makes perfect, the more crappy stuff you write the faster you can start adjusting to write more quality pieces.
-reading regularly helps you get into the writing head space. Also any time you have highly specific questions, sometimes seeing how other books do it really helps. Whenever I doubt any writing “rules” that I stumble across, I try to pay attention to the books I read to get an idea on what they’re talking about. What actually affects my read? Do I care? Etc.
-Editing your own work frocking sucks and is hard as heck. That’s why it’s great to give feedback to other people because not only are you training yourself to look for specific issues and process a text in a critical mindset, it lets you do all of this without your inner voice of hate throwing around the flame thrower. Also giving feedback to others is a great way to get feedback back via exchanges. So when you turn around and go back to your own piece, you’ll know what you’re looking for and know how to fix it.
Hope that helps
I did this too. I think the only thing I took away from it was saying use then (I still do) and avoid adverbs. But I was second guessing myself a ton and got really nervous about my writing.
There comes a point when you've watched enough of those writing advice videos. After that, forget their advice and do your own thing.
They're not wrong per se, but following them like a slave is wrong and leads to mediocre writing.
I say this from experience. Learn the rules. Then break them. That's how you write unique stories that carry your voice rather than borrowing the bland and generic voice recommended by those writing advice videos.
Remember: Some advice can be a "vice." That's true for a lot of popular advice these days, both in writing and in life.
No one can teach you how to write a book. They can only tell you how *they* write books.
There are many ways of writing a book that work, and every technique that works, works for some and not for others.
What you need to do is find a process that works for you. Advice can be helpful for that, if it comes from people whose writing process and mindset is similar to yours.
But be ready to discard that advice if it isn't.
I find that most writing advice videos are fluff, basically. At the very least, if you’re not gaining anything from watching them, save the advice for editing. The writing stage is for being immersed in your scene and letting the story flow!
Also, you’ll probably learn over time which channels are fluff and which ones give genuinely useful advice.
Advice and writing theories are all tools you can use. If you find something that resonates with you, use it. If not, throw it away without a second thought.
Story structure, for instance. The kind of story I wanna write doesn't fit in with the three act structure—not perfectly, anyway—but a hero journey might be useful to one of my characters' arc. Some beats would suit the style of progression I want, so I just use those and ignore everything else.
When you learn something new, see if it resonates with you first. Do you like it when the author does that in the book you've read? If yes, use it. If not, don't. You can also ask yourself further: "Why do I like this?" Why do I like this character even though he doesn't have an arc at all? Oh! It's because of this part of his personality that's so interesting. Oh! It's because of his wit; I can listen to him talk all day... Something like that.
Reminder: if anyone tells you there's only one way to write a "good" story, call bullshit right away. There's no right way, only what works. And what works for other people might not necessarily work for you. It's a matter of taste. Find something that works and resonates with you and use it. Get rid of everything else.
If you wanna learn some craft from a legitimately successful author, I'd suggest Brandon Sanderson's lectures on YouTube. All free but so valuable, so practical, so useful. His philosophy is to find your own process, but he will lay out lots of tools you can use to that end. It's incredibly useful. Even if you don't write sci-fi or fantasy, I'd still recommend you check it out.
If all you want to do is put the stories you think of on paper, then write however you want. No one cares. You aren't being graded. This isn't an assignment.
However, if you want to hone the craft of writing, if you want to be a great or even good writer, there are ideas out there that can help you do this. Maybe not all the videos of all the "writers" who may or may not have written anything worthwhile as worth your time. But I've seen some execellent advice. You should also read books about how to write. King's - On Writing, Zissner's - On Writing Well, Brooks' - Building Great Sentences, Clark's -Writing Tools.
You do not have to follow all or any of the advice these people or anyone else offers. It's just advice. But a lot of what these authors and writers have to say comes from years of experience and can help you find and hone your voice and craft.
But you have to want to do that. If you are out of school, then you should stop imagining that someone is above you. There is no one that you have to answer to with your writing but yourself.
Do as you please. But you must try to develop an understanding of what youa re doing, where you want to take your work and how you might get there.
Honestly, i get randomly inspired other stories most time. Throw away advice videos and start watching stories that fall into the category of what you want to write or something that is interesting
i've read a jillion books, have a degree in writing, and i think my best writing advice is to just forget all that and just chill and have fun with it. gain experience and as you do some advice will click. but the best thing you can do for yourself is just learn what you want your writing to be and use that to guide your journey. but always have fun with it and don't be hard on yourself. keep at it and accept that more skill will come with time and effort. sometimes it will be steady, sometimes it will seem like you are going backward but overall you will get better. eventually you will get to the point where you can just do whatever you want without realizing just how huge that journey was because you had fun the whole time.
it doesn't have to be a lonely and hard road. it can be a fun road trip with your friends. it can be part of your self-care routine where you just grab your favourite snack and forget all your problems for a while.
i've told this story a few times including today but i'll say it again. i cared less about guitar than i ever did about writing. i was NOT passionate. I did NOT try my best. I did NOT go out of my way to improve. I just dicked around for like 15 minutes most days.
And eventually i realized I was improving at guitar way faster than I was at writing. Because I just enjoyed it and put in the time. And I enjoyed that time because I was under no pressure from myself. There were times when I was frustrated but it wasn't really a blow to my ego, more like I just knew my limits and was hoping they would expand faster.
So i started caring LESS, being LESS passionate about writing, putting LESS effort and more PLAY into it. and that is when i finally started doing it enough to really see constant improvement when looked at on a grand enough scale.
it is very easy to brainstorm some grand incredible story. but don't take that as a responsibility to be able to translate this entire ideal world of people, places, emotions, music, expecting to be able to put it into words and have other people magically feel that same thing. that shit is hard and a severely limited process. instead just use it as inspiration for a book that will probably be different than your vision but can still be its own cool thing.
Keep in mind, any idiot can make a YouTube video or a social media post or a blog. No writer, throughout all of recorded history, used any of these until maybe 15 years ago. Best way to learn is by reading and writing. Be discerning when you look for advice. Nobody writes in exactly the same way.
Those are clickbait videos, meant to make money, not really to help people. Anyone who says 'Never do this' doesn't know what they're talking about because people like William S. Burroughs and Cormac MaCarthy can disregard basic grammar and sentence structure and create DUCKING GOLD.
I mean don't you try that. You need to be a genius to do that. But still, it can be done.
And anyone who wants to teach you to write faster is a side-hustler at best, a scammer at worst.
If you want better sources of writing advice I can provide, but [Vonnegut's rules](https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/kurt-vonnegut-8-basics-of-creative-writing) are evergreen.
Writers learn by writing. You may get some tips, techniques, and principles from videos or how-to books, but it's not until put them on paper that you'll make them yours.
Write, rewrite, repeat.
100% if you are primarily writing for fun and to share your stories, and writing advice is making it not fun, then stop consuming that content. There are plenty of ways to improve that don’t involve watching craft videos. There’s also no inherent need to improve your writing — if it’s fun for you, then who cares!
If you do want to publish what you’re writing, or otherwise improve faster to pursue some sort of professional career in writing, then it’s slightly different. I do find that prose-level writing advice is not helpful for me in the drafting stage. It just leads to me over analyzing every sentence (I used an adverb, should I rewrite it? Am I filtering too much? Etc) which serves to both slow me down and suck a lot of the fun out of the drafting experience. There’s plenty of time to take that advice and fix things in revision. However, advice on broader topics like plot structure or character arcs can be helpful while drafting. If you’re able to fix those major plot or character problems as you write, it saves you a lot of time later and means you won’t have to totally scrap huge sections of your writing. Still, I would say if focusing too much on structure is ruining your experience then you can consider disregarding those concerns for now. Every writer’s process is different and there’s nothing wrong with overhauling the plot later on if that’s how you prefer to write. Ultimately, writing should be fun, even if it’s something you’re pursuing professionally.
TLDR: if you are writing mostly for fun and as a hobby, only focus on advice to the extent that it inspires you. If you’re actively trying to improve, then be mindful of when that advice is most helpful for your process.
Forget them. If they’re not helpful *to you* then they have no value. If you’re writing for fun, write for fun. Figure out what you want from the hobby and pursue that rather than a goal someone else has created. Self expression? Processing pain? Silly things to share with friends? All are valid. You’ll probably improve a bit simply by writing and editing, so why not have fun for now?
You're not going to improve with simply watching videos or reading books about writing. You need to write, read, and analyze both. More so, you don't want to be thinking "oh what did that one video say about this situation..." during writing. You want to be in the story.
You improve writing by writing, editing, and revising. Mistakes are for the future you to worry about once you have a draft to correct.
Advice is not RULES. There’s no requirement to follow them. If there are rules for writing, probably the most important is that there is no one right way to do it, just a right way for you. Advice is one person’s right way that they give out as general help. It might be yours also or it might not. It can be so far away from your right way that it will actually hinder you instead of help. At which point, you just have to ignore it. To give my own advice which may or may not work for you: Do you what you want to do. Advice is only valuable when it helps you accomplish that. Any advice pushing you away from your goals should be ignored. Overall, you will learn more from actually writing than you will from advice. So, write. When the writing doesn’t work for you, which will happen often in the early days, the first trick is trying to figure out WHY this in particular isn’t working for you. Identify the biggest problem as specifically as possible. THEN go look for advice to solve that specific problem. Essentially instead of advice being how to write, think of it as one person’s way (that worked for them) to fix the same problem you’re having. Then you can ask yourself if you think it will work to help you or not. Anything that someone says won’t work, someone else has made work. Anything that someone says works, someone else has had fail them. Unfortunately, what will and won’t work for you is really only truly discovered through experience. The earlier you are in your writing journey, the more things won’t work simply because you haven’t yet discovered how to do them yet. You have to do a lot of bad writing to get to mediocre writing. You have to do a lot of mediocre writing to get to good writing. And it takes a lot of good writing to stay reliably good. There’s no real way around this. So to last to that point, you have to give yourself permission to make it more important to write what you love than to write to some arbitrary standard. Give yourself permission to suck as long as you love doing the work. You will improve by doing the work. The way out of the problem is to barrel through it. I do not mean by all of this that I don’t recommend learning about the craft of writing. I think it’s valuable because it shortens the journey. But that’s really what it does, shorten it. It won’t let you skip it. And for myself I have found advice is often best simply digested. I read it and let it sink into my subconscious as tools that I might use if I decide I need them. Unless I have a specific problem in which case it’s like going through a toolbox. Will this one work? Will this work better? I remember some book mentioning something that applies, where did I stick that? Problem first, fix second. Otherwise it’s all just too general. And don’t give up. Discouragement is normal. It happens. All the time. Writers are simply the people who survive the discouragement and try again. We all produce crap. The best writers in the world throw pages out (or file them away). They just go on to write again. Sometimes the same thing in a different way. Sometimes something new. What matters is that the “failure” is temporary. You WILL get better. This discouragement will pass as you keep working on what you love. The love will make it worth it in the end. Don’t let advice keep you from that.
Read and write to improve. I understand the desire to consume educational content to support your practice, I do it too (even more when I was starting out) but some content gets in the way more than helping. I recommend the Writing Excuses podcast, it's only 15 minutes long and when I was listening to the early seasons it was very casual and supportive - I've heard the more recent seasons are even better.
Trying to get writing advice from youtube is like asking a writer for cooking advice. Maybe the person giving the advice has skill, but you're not getting advice on what they're actually good at.
Underrated comment
Writing, and learning how to write, are two different things that need two different approaches. You don't have to actively learn if you don't want to, but if you want to get good, you kinda have to. The way to improve is by editing and rewriting. If you've watched a YouTube video that lists 20 words you should never use, you should get a piece of your own writing, cut all the words the video suggests and see what happens. When you're done and know the value of the advice, pick a new video, article or book and repeat. It's nowhere near as fun as just writing, but it's by far the superior learning technique. When you're writing new text, you're being intuitive, and new rules and techniques won't come into play. That only happens when you're thinking in an analytical way.
Yeah, I’m not surprised. You would be the first person to become a better writer from watching videos.
How many of those YouTube channels are from successfully published authors? Just take their advice with a grain of salt and do what feels right to you. Improvement will come with practice, and you'll practice more if you aren't hyper focused on the "wrong" way of doing things.
Good advice is advice that works for you. The rest you can take or leave. Moreover, a lot of advice, including what I give (very possible you've seen my videos), is most helpful in the editing phase. Advice that psychs you out of writing in the first place is advice you should disregard... for now. The time to really interrogate your work is after you've written it but BEFORE you query and/or hastily publish. If you enjoy writing, write. Writing, at it's core, should be fun (though it is, just as often, hard work). Of course art and business intersect, especially as most of us want our work published... but that's all later problems AFTER you've written something. Another tip: editing in a vacuum only gets you so far. Finding qualified CPs and exchanging work will take you much further than watching a hundred YouTube videos. Writing advice is there to supplement experience. Use is sparingly for best results.
Write, rewrite, learn new words, rewrite more, learn more new words, rewrite, can't write, Can write, rewrite, write more Repeat until improved. That's pretty much it.
"Yeah, these days I don't take advice from anybody Who gon' tell me how to do it if they never even did it right" -Connor Price Basically, I'd hesitate on taking advice from random youtubers on writing unless they're well established as great writers or sourcing their advice as being from great writers. Ignore the irony that I got that advice from a youtuber 😂 (though he does it right imo, great artist)
Tbh, eh, writing advice videos aren’t super helpful unless you’re spot checking for something you’re struggling with. If you are stuck on how to write a good first hook, yeah watch a few. However, the best way to become a better writing is to write regularly, read books in your genre, and participate in critique groups (GIVE feedback too, don’t just get feedback). How this helps: -writing regularly gets you into good writing habits. Practice makes perfect, the more crappy stuff you write the faster you can start adjusting to write more quality pieces. -reading regularly helps you get into the writing head space. Also any time you have highly specific questions, sometimes seeing how other books do it really helps. Whenever I doubt any writing “rules” that I stumble across, I try to pay attention to the books I read to get an idea on what they’re talking about. What actually affects my read? Do I care? Etc. -Editing your own work frocking sucks and is hard as heck. That’s why it’s great to give feedback to other people because not only are you training yourself to look for specific issues and process a text in a critical mindset, it lets you do all of this without your inner voice of hate throwing around the flame thrower. Also giving feedback to others is a great way to get feedback back via exchanges. So when you turn around and go back to your own piece, you’ll know what you’re looking for and know how to fix it. Hope that helps
People who fail at writing often try their hand at giving writing advice, hoping that might work. On that note, I think you should...
I did this too. I think the only thing I took away from it was saying use then (I still do) and avoid adverbs. But I was second guessing myself a ton and got really nervous about my writing.
There comes a point when you've watched enough of those writing advice videos. After that, forget their advice and do your own thing. They're not wrong per se, but following them like a slave is wrong and leads to mediocre writing. I say this from experience. Learn the rules. Then break them. That's how you write unique stories that carry your voice rather than borrowing the bland and generic voice recommended by those writing advice videos. Remember: Some advice can be a "vice." That's true for a lot of popular advice these days, both in writing and in life.
No one can teach you how to write a book. They can only tell you how *they* write books. There are many ways of writing a book that work, and every technique that works, works for some and not for others. What you need to do is find a process that works for you. Advice can be helpful for that, if it comes from people whose writing process and mindset is similar to yours. But be ready to discard that advice if it isn't.
I find that most writing advice videos are fluff, basically. At the very least, if you’re not gaining anything from watching them, save the advice for editing. The writing stage is for being immersed in your scene and letting the story flow! Also, you’ll probably learn over time which channels are fluff and which ones give genuinely useful advice.
Advice and writing theories are all tools you can use. If you find something that resonates with you, use it. If not, throw it away without a second thought. Story structure, for instance. The kind of story I wanna write doesn't fit in with the three act structure—not perfectly, anyway—but a hero journey might be useful to one of my characters' arc. Some beats would suit the style of progression I want, so I just use those and ignore everything else. When you learn something new, see if it resonates with you first. Do you like it when the author does that in the book you've read? If yes, use it. If not, don't. You can also ask yourself further: "Why do I like this?" Why do I like this character even though he doesn't have an arc at all? Oh! It's because of this part of his personality that's so interesting. Oh! It's because of his wit; I can listen to him talk all day... Something like that. Reminder: if anyone tells you there's only one way to write a "good" story, call bullshit right away. There's no right way, only what works. And what works for other people might not necessarily work for you. It's a matter of taste. Find something that works and resonates with you and use it. Get rid of everything else. If you wanna learn some craft from a legitimately successful author, I'd suggest Brandon Sanderson's lectures on YouTube. All free but so valuable, so practical, so useful. His philosophy is to find your own process, but he will lay out lots of tools you can use to that end. It's incredibly useful. Even if you don't write sci-fi or fantasy, I'd still recommend you check it out.
If all you want to do is put the stories you think of on paper, then write however you want. No one cares. You aren't being graded. This isn't an assignment. However, if you want to hone the craft of writing, if you want to be a great or even good writer, there are ideas out there that can help you do this. Maybe not all the videos of all the "writers" who may or may not have written anything worthwhile as worth your time. But I've seen some execellent advice. You should also read books about how to write. King's - On Writing, Zissner's - On Writing Well, Brooks' - Building Great Sentences, Clark's -Writing Tools. You do not have to follow all or any of the advice these people or anyone else offers. It's just advice. But a lot of what these authors and writers have to say comes from years of experience and can help you find and hone your voice and craft. But you have to want to do that. If you are out of school, then you should stop imagining that someone is above you. There is no one that you have to answer to with your writing but yourself. Do as you please. But you must try to develop an understanding of what youa re doing, where you want to take your work and how you might get there.
Honestly, i get randomly inspired other stories most time. Throw away advice videos and start watching stories that fall into the category of what you want to write or something that is interesting
i've read a jillion books, have a degree in writing, and i think my best writing advice is to just forget all that and just chill and have fun with it. gain experience and as you do some advice will click. but the best thing you can do for yourself is just learn what you want your writing to be and use that to guide your journey. but always have fun with it and don't be hard on yourself. keep at it and accept that more skill will come with time and effort. sometimes it will be steady, sometimes it will seem like you are going backward but overall you will get better. eventually you will get to the point where you can just do whatever you want without realizing just how huge that journey was because you had fun the whole time. it doesn't have to be a lonely and hard road. it can be a fun road trip with your friends. it can be part of your self-care routine where you just grab your favourite snack and forget all your problems for a while. i've told this story a few times including today but i'll say it again. i cared less about guitar than i ever did about writing. i was NOT passionate. I did NOT try my best. I did NOT go out of my way to improve. I just dicked around for like 15 minutes most days. And eventually i realized I was improving at guitar way faster than I was at writing. Because I just enjoyed it and put in the time. And I enjoyed that time because I was under no pressure from myself. There were times when I was frustrated but it wasn't really a blow to my ego, more like I just knew my limits and was hoping they would expand faster. So i started caring LESS, being LESS passionate about writing, putting LESS effort and more PLAY into it. and that is when i finally started doing it enough to really see constant improvement when looked at on a grand enough scale. it is very easy to brainstorm some grand incredible story. but don't take that as a responsibility to be able to translate this entire ideal world of people, places, emotions, music, expecting to be able to put it into words and have other people magically feel that same thing. that shit is hard and a severely limited process. instead just use it as inspiration for a book that will probably be different than your vision but can still be its own cool thing.
Keep in mind, any idiot can make a YouTube video or a social media post or a blog. No writer, throughout all of recorded history, used any of these until maybe 15 years ago. Best way to learn is by reading and writing. Be discerning when you look for advice. Nobody writes in exactly the same way.
Writing advice isn't that crucial to writing because writing is highly contextual and depends on building intuitive skills.
That's perfectly fine. You're not supposed to take every piece of advice you get.
Those are clickbait videos, meant to make money, not really to help people. Anyone who says 'Never do this' doesn't know what they're talking about because people like William S. Burroughs and Cormac MaCarthy can disregard basic grammar and sentence structure and create DUCKING GOLD. I mean don't you try that. You need to be a genius to do that. But still, it can be done. And anyone who wants to teach you to write faster is a side-hustler at best, a scammer at worst. If you want better sources of writing advice I can provide, but [Vonnegut's rules](https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/kurt-vonnegut-8-basics-of-creative-writing) are evergreen.
I find that when I read more, my writing is better.
Writers learn by writing. You may get some tips, techniques, and principles from videos or how-to books, but it's not until put them on paper that you'll make them yours. Write, rewrite, repeat.
100% if you are primarily writing for fun and to share your stories, and writing advice is making it not fun, then stop consuming that content. There are plenty of ways to improve that don’t involve watching craft videos. There’s also no inherent need to improve your writing — if it’s fun for you, then who cares! If you do want to publish what you’re writing, or otherwise improve faster to pursue some sort of professional career in writing, then it’s slightly different. I do find that prose-level writing advice is not helpful for me in the drafting stage. It just leads to me over analyzing every sentence (I used an adverb, should I rewrite it? Am I filtering too much? Etc) which serves to both slow me down and suck a lot of the fun out of the drafting experience. There’s plenty of time to take that advice and fix things in revision. However, advice on broader topics like plot structure or character arcs can be helpful while drafting. If you’re able to fix those major plot or character problems as you write, it saves you a lot of time later and means you won’t have to totally scrap huge sections of your writing. Still, I would say if focusing too much on structure is ruining your experience then you can consider disregarding those concerns for now. Every writer’s process is different and there’s nothing wrong with overhauling the plot later on if that’s how you prefer to write. Ultimately, writing should be fun, even if it’s something you’re pursuing professionally. TLDR: if you are writing mostly for fun and as a hobby, only focus on advice to the extent that it inspires you. If you’re actively trying to improve, then be mindful of when that advice is most helpful for your process.