A good bit of advice

I know it's meant well, and I agree with the spirit, but here's the problem.

>If it works, put it in your literary toolbox.

How is the newbie writer to know what works and what doesn't? Indeed, even the writer who has written multiple books faces this. For example, I have five completed novels that I've published. But this current one is a fantasy mystery, and the forms and conventions of mystery are new to me. Not as a reader--I've read plenty--but certainly as a writer. Did I hide the clues well? Do the reveals work? Does the payoff work?

All I can do is exactly what the newbie has to do: damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. No advice, no structures, it's all just plow ahead and fix it in the editing room. One hopes. It's a bit like other art forms. The musician can study and rehearse, but once on stage it's a different world and you don't know until you do it. At least the musician gets live feedback (which can be good or bad). The painter can study technique and make sketches, but until the painting is hung and viewed by the public, all advice is sort of irrelevant.

Now, for the more experienced writer, who has written books in a particular way and now undertakes to do another along the same lines, the advice about toolboxes is spot on. We get to where we have a feel for what might work for us and what won't. We even get a notion about how well and how much it helped once the project is completed. I'm all about the toolbox now. When I was on my first novel, I couldn't tell Shinola from that other stuff; I was just trying to keep from drowning.
 
>That supports my opinion that all writing advice is opinion.
True true. At the same time, any advice--any opinion--can be useful. It's just that one can't predict when it's useful, or for whom it's useful. Someone once said, all advice is worth hearing but not all of it's worth listening to. That's more opaque that in needs to be, but it strikes the right tone. The same advice that I find insightful and helpful, someone else will regard as an utter waste of time. And our two reactions might well be swapped six months from now.

To paraphrase the Bible verse: come, let us opine together. <g>
 
>That supports my opinion that all writing advice is opinion.
True true. At the same time, any advice--any opinion--can be useful. It's just that one can't predict when it's useful, or for whom it's useful. Someone once said, all advice is worth hearing but not all of it's worth listening to. That's more opaque that in needs to be, but it strikes the right tone. The same advice that I find insightful and helpful, someone else will regard as an utter waste of time. And our two reactions might well be swapped six months from now.

To paraphrase the Bible verse: come, let us opine together. <g>
I'm always interested in writers' opinions and experiences about how and why they tackle the general problems we all encounter, even when I have different methods and preferences, but if I want their advice, I'll read their books.

I do have a problem with 'advice' prefaced by 'you must,' or 'you can't,' or anything else of a definite nature. And it annoys immensely - I know it's none of my business - when new writers believe and parrot these commands as accepted wisdom without having tested them for themselves.
 

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