Ten Bits of Advice Writers Should Stop Giving Aspiring Writers [Jan. 21st, 2012|10:27 am] Nick Mamatas Lots of these sorts of things going around lately. Some of them are even quite good, but they do tend to be of a type. To those interested in starving better (now a likely Stoker nominee) I've said most of what I've had to say, but here are a few things for writers in the advice game.





1. Don't Give Up

Consider your audience. Who are you telling not to give up? The illiterates, the douchebags, the certifiable graphomanics, the people who think watching a movie is the same as reading a book? Some people should give up. Most people should give up. Find out whether someone has any potential first before arbitrarily telling someone to waste years of their lives, and worse, moments of the lives of editors who have to look at their nonsense.



2. Show Don't Tell

Fuck you. Is this bit of advice really so precious that everyone has to say it over and over? Like pretty much any three-word utterance it is oversimplified to the point of inaccuracy. Some things need showing, some things need telling. Figuring out which is which is part of the spooky art.



3. Don't Overpromote Yourself, Especially on Social Media

This is actually good advice, but futile, along the lines of this other excellent piece of advice: "Stop molesting children." If you have to tell someone, they're probably already beyond hope. I've even seen very specific protocols suggested like, "Be sure only every fifth social media utterance is promotional" or "Have a change of topic prepared" for in-person encounters. I don't want to be stuck in a room with someone who can think of nothing to say that isn't a commercial for his or her own work, but I certainly don't want to be stuck in that room with someone who can think of something else to say...thanks to having prepared an index card for the topic. SO, HOW ABOUT THOSE CLOWNS IN CONGRESS? WHAT A BUNCH OF CLOWNS.



4. Watch What You Say on the Internet

Really, as long as you don't say, "And my Social Security number is..." or "But honestly Monica, the web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it!" you'll be fine in the long-term. You might lose a few weeks of productivity, or some "fans" (who likely weren't buying anything anyway), or even a minor market or two, but it is extremely hard to talk one's way out of a career. This is true for right-wing and left-wing opinions, as well as for generalized all-weather kookiness. Post nude photos of yourself! It's okay.



5. Aim For the Top

The top of what? The bestsellers lists? Award tallies? The "best" agent or publisher? In many careers, individual career paths are clearly hierarchical. This is not the case in writing. People with the best agents and publishers have flopped, or worse, have succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams, but remain unsatisfied with their critical response (e.g., Stephen King). Others make huge critical splashes and are incredibly important, but still go largely unread after their moment has ended (e.g., Norman Mailer). In the end, critical acclaim or award nominations or giant checks won't make you happy. You're either already happy, or you're not. Also, any advice about "the top" not given by, say, Charles Dickens, is advice that fails to be autobiographical and thus should be treated with even greater suspicion than most advice.



6. It's All Subjective.

No, it's all intersubjective.



7. Revise, revise, revise.

Lots of people don't revise and do just fine.



8. Write every day.

Lots of people don't write every day and do just fine.



9. Write that "million words of crap"; give yourself six years to get published; collect 250 rejections, etc etc..

This advice is much like another piece of bad advice—buy pants with a 36-inch waist. Well, the plurality of people wear 36-inch pants, so... Outside of the basic advice of "Try, and a significant number of times", any specific measure is foolish and leads to aggravation. Back when I was co-editing Clarkesworld, I'd get a story from a particular writer every week. She'd been published before, but the stories she sent me were usually half-formed and often terrible. Eventually, I found her blog and found out what was happening—she was playing some goal-setting game where she got points for doing various writerly things like finishing a story, and submitting one. So she just shat out any ol' bullshit and submitted to me once a week to get extra points. This is how the Soviet Union ended up making tractor engines so heavy they'd fall out of the machines—they measured factory productivity via tonnage produced per year. Any advice that involves anything other than "Write something publishable, attempt many times to get it published" can lead to artificial goals such as the collection of rejection slips or the production of unpublishable stories.



The same is true about other "advice" like—write short stories first, writer shorter short stories rather than long ones, join a writer's group, make sure your characters are likable, write/don't write for the "market", etc. All of this is "buy typical pants" advice.



10. Writing is like [some other thing]

Even writers—especially the newer ones who give advice so freely—like to fall back on something they're already good at when giving advice. So, writing and publishing is variously like coding, or doing push-ups, or raising a family, or putting on a play, or invading Iraq, or making loooooove, or selling used cars, or like being the best orthodontist in Danbury, Connecticut. It's not like any of those things. It is only like itself. If you don't have enough writer/publisher juice to talk about it on its own terms, don't talk about it.