“They’re fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.” –Lillian Hellman
“Know when to tune out, if you listen to too much advice you may wind up making other peoples mistakes.” –Ann Landers
“I always advise people never to give advice.” –P.G. Wodehouse
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I have a lot of pet peeves. Probably more than a reasonable amount. It’s a rare thing when I can watch TV, leave the house, or hop on the Internet without bitching, mocking, making fun of or simply pointing out something that I find annoying or idiotic. (Unless you’re reading this blog for the very first time, you already know this.)
Often, what I have to do is, I have to stop paying attention to whatever it is that bugs the shit out of me. I must ignore it completely. This isn’t always possible. Try ignoring the human race. It’s tough. Betcha can’t do it for very long. (I’ve tried. People start calling and coming to your house in a panic because they think you’re dead. It’s more irritating than just tolerating them.)
What I have to do then to maintain my serenity levels is, I have to filter out the bullshit to the best of my ability. I’m sure everyone does this to some extent. For me, this is especially true with the Internet because as we all know, the Internet is a never ending flood of bullshit.
However, I’ve been spending more time offline lately. Not having an Internet connection for 6 months sort of weaned me from the world wide teat. I check my mail, I make a few snide comments on Facebook or Twitter, like or retweet some shit, then I go about my day. Every now & then, I’ll get some free time & will spend it surfing around or reading a few articles online. Because I’m connected to several writerly type people and websites, I encounter a shit-ton of writer noise. Some of it is very good, very helpful & very interesting. Some of it is just utter crap.
Especially all of the fucking writing advice.
Advice is helpful. If I do not know how to do a thing, I’ll ask a more experienced person – or someone with a different skill set than I possess – how I should go about doing that thing. I will solicit them for advice. If I want to make my writing better — which I always want to do — I will seek out ways to do this.
So far, the ways I have found to do this are by writing… then writing some more & showing it to the members of my writing workshop. (A writing group works for me. It does not work for everyone. That’s okay.) Then I read books… followed by reading more books, then by writing more stuff.
I will seek out advice in one form or another. When I read a book that just blows the top of my fucking head off with its literary awesomeness, I’ll go out of my way to learn more about the author and their writing process.
I’ll read the occasional book, essay or article on craft. I almost always learn something new by reading these. The only catch is: all of this “advice” should come from a writer who has some serious writing chops. A super word-wrangling champ. If this “advice” is coming from someone other than an author I’ve already read and am familiar with, I want to see the proof in their pudding. Their writing advice essay (or blog post or whatever) should be written well enough to reflect that they know what they’re talking about. I don’t want to read some shit parroting some over-used bits of writer wisdom that we’ve all seen hundreds of times. I want to know what they’ve written. I want to know where their work has been published, whether it’s an essay or short story, or a novel.
Otherwise, I’m outta there. I’ll leave their blog or website, never to return again.
There is a lot of really bad writing advice out there. There’s a lot of advice that tells you that you can’t. Such as, “you can’t edit as you write”. Bullshit. You can if it works for you. Why not? Some advice tells you that you must. As in, “you must use an outline”. Please. Good books get written with and without outlines. Stuff your can’ts and musts. These are never good, in any situation. Especially anything that tells you that you can’t. Fuck can’t.
I want more than a blog from someone who just decided to open up a Blogger account and call themselves a writer. I want to see some kind of writer cred. It does not have to be great big massive bestseller writer cred. It can be a wee small mostly unknown indie cred. But for fuck’s sake – it’s gotta be something other than the tired old clichés on writing barfed out on a blog post by an “aspiring writer” who wants to talk about writing more than they want to actually write.
Show, don’t tell. Classic writer’s advice. (How’s that for parroting some shit?) Show me, don’t tell me that you’re a writer. Show me how you’re applying your own advice into your own writing. Advise me by example.
It’s not only the bad, over-used advice from “aspiring writers” with blogs who like to talk about writing and being a writer. Although, yes, I do often find talk about being a writer and “the writer’s life” to just be some boring, romanticized shit.
There is also the fact that one person’s ridiculous and useless piece of writing advice is another person’s magical wand of genius inspiration. It works for one person and for another, it does not and may be scoffed at or made fun of. That’s just the way it is. Not everyone has the same writing philosophy.
What I’ve found is that most writing advice is useless.
What I’ve found is, the more you actually write, the more you can filter the useless dung from the genuine gems of word wizards.
What I’ve found is, it’s better to write than it is to talk about writing and that the teaching should be left to the teachers.
But, you shouldn’t take my word for it. I’m just another writer with a blog… and a lot of pet peeves.
Great writing style. Subscribed
Damn. You all are just nailing it with your comments. You complete me.
There are 2 bits of advice that I’ve played over & over in my own head:
1) Read. Write. Repeat.
2) Always remember that no one wants to read your shit.
The first one is obvious. The second is quite liberating. Once I accepted that nobody wants to read my shit, I was free to write whatever I wanted. It works for me, because telling the story is more important to me than people wanting to read it. I write it. I share it. If nobody wants to read that shit, it doesn’t hurt me. Not writing the story – that hurts me.
I wish I could recall where I first heard either one of these. But, I can’t. Sorry for the lack of credit where it is due.
The worst advice I ever received: Stop writing. Do not show this work to anyone else.
Seriously. To hell anyone who tells you that.
François Busnel, of “La Grande Librarie” and French radio fame, did a special series for French TV called “Les Carnets de route de François Busnel” (http://videos.france5.fr/video/iLyROoaf2HKS.html) during one episode of which he went to NYC to interview Franzen, Auster, Easton, and Rick Moody, among others.
Having already read Stephen King’s assertion that the road to hell was paved with adverbs, more or less, I was gobsmacked to hear Moody pontificate that that same route to Hades was, in fact, paved with not only adverbs, but adjectives, too. Now, “sauf le respet que je lui dois” I already thought SK was full of shit because I love adverbs–in English, French, and Spanish. Now I have to admit that Rick Moody has far surpassed SK on the scale of arbitrary BS edicts and advice on writing.
Happy following your own prickly drummer, Ras!
When I write for my fledgling blog I’m not pretentious enough to believe that because I’ve put down a few words on a page and put them on display that I have any magic to share about writing. To me it’s an attempt to communicate a feeling, a thought, a vision… a creative endeavor. To think that I should follow a specific process to get ideas from my brain to paper is ridiculous. It would be like telling Warhol he’d never make it as an artist unless he cut off his ear. Just like any other artist, writers are unique and they bring divergent experiences and tools to their keyboards. Ms Massoud you are like no other and I find it refreshing that you choose not to use an axe because someone said you should when you’d prefer a saw. There is only one scrap of advice about writing that I try to keep foremost in my mind when the juices start to flow – “So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” I read that somewhere in a book..LOL Drive on young lady, you have done well!
I thought writers just wrote. I didn’t know there were guidelines, writers groups, methods or advice on how one does it. Thanks, I just decided I will never aspire to become a writer and I now have a deeper level of respect for those that do it. Note: This is not sarcasm, just so you know. If I was any kind of writer, I guess I wouldn’t need such a disclaimer so there ya’ go. I enjoy your work and hope you keep on doing what you do.
I’ve been a member of 2 or 3 writing groups and took a course in creative writing at the loal Community College and I came to the conclusion that most advice about writing is of very debatable value. So much of it contradicts other advice. When I look at bestsellers past and present , I can’t help wondering how many of those authors went to writers’ groups and writin gclasses befor ethey were published. Not a lot, I suspect. On the strength of two novels completed and one published, I was asked about 2 weeks ago for some advice about how to write a novel and I gave the only bit of good advice I could think of — just keep on writing until you finish it. Worry about the tweaks later.
Mildred, I’ve read your writing and I can’t believe there is ever any useless dung!