Writing: Craptastic Advice
There's a lot of writing advice floating around out there--people like to help others, and dispensing advice is a whole lot easier than, say, building someone a new garage. But sometimes you see advice being given (and gratefully received) that makes you bite your lip. Or you see others acting on a bit of advice that you own instinct is to run from far and fast.
Of late I've seen a bunch of examples of one bit of advice that was being circulated for new writers some ten, fifteen years ago, and that was roughly this: if you want to call yourself professional, then you will send out a story a week. At least. And as soon as it comes back, out it goes again.
My instinct has always been that this is bad advice, though it probably feels right to many. Here's the writer, just coming down from the intense high of writing, printing and stuffing and addressing that story while the paint is still drying. (or another metaphor, while the smoke is clearing away.) The intensity of composition is kind of like attraction, which can be so strong that you don't see that the guy, or the gal, is a two-timing snake-in-the-grass who'll not only dump you and laugh, but rob you before slamming the door. All yu can see is that spiffy shape, the long eyelashes, the I shop-at-Hot-Topic smile. "No, this is different," you say. "I can feel it." Righto.
Well, unless you're one of those rare writers who turns out fantastic prose first draft, you don't see all the flaws of that story, you mistake the emotion of composition for the effect of reading it cold. Most of us have to let the story cool off for a while before tackling it again, getting beta readers, polishing yet again...and for all intents and purposes, that is the first draft.
Sending out an unready story I don't think of as "professional," but then I tend to avoid that word anyway, it still smacks of nylon stockings--which I do not own, and refuse to wear--and corporate-speak. But I'm ready to employ it for now, because I know for many it connotes the attempt to form a business-like relationship with one's work, to get the emotion and the hopes and fears out of the way enough to handle to "your art is just a product to me" attitude of the business world.
The second problem is thinking it a professional practice to send a rejected story out a kazillion times. I've seen a lot of argument about that--takes a bunch of tries to find the right market--editors have moods--but something an editor said at dinner the other night got me thinking. She's also a writer, and she said, if a story goes out three times and it comes back with "I liked it but..." she retires the story to rewrite it. Two, if two editors say the same thing about the story. One could be opinion, but two is usually a vector.
Anyway, I thought I'd throw not just those two impressions out, but a general question: what bad advice have you seen handed out under the "professionals do this" header, and why is it bad advice?
Of late I've seen a bunch of examples of one bit of advice that was being circulated for new writers some ten, fifteen years ago, and that was roughly this: if you want to call yourself professional, then you will send out a story a week. At least. And as soon as it comes back, out it goes again.
My instinct has always been that this is bad advice, though it probably feels right to many. Here's the writer, just coming down from the intense high of writing, printing and stuffing and addressing that story while the paint is still drying. (or another metaphor, while the smoke is clearing away.) The intensity of composition is kind of like attraction, which can be so strong that you don't see that the guy, or the gal, is a two-timing snake-in-the-grass who'll not only dump you and laugh, but rob you before slamming the door. All yu can see is that spiffy shape, the long eyelashes, the I shop-at-Hot-Topic smile. "No, this is different," you say. "I can feel it." Righto.
Well, unless you're one of those rare writers who turns out fantastic prose first draft, you don't see all the flaws of that story, you mistake the emotion of composition for the effect of reading it cold. Most of us have to let the story cool off for a while before tackling it again, getting beta readers, polishing yet again...and for all intents and purposes, that is the first draft.
Sending out an unready story I don't think of as "professional," but then I tend to avoid that word anyway, it still smacks of nylon stockings--which I do not own, and refuse to wear--and corporate-speak. But I'm ready to employ it for now, because I know for many it connotes the attempt to form a business-like relationship with one's work, to get the emotion and the hopes and fears out of the way enough to handle to "your art is just a product to me" attitude of the business world.
The second problem is thinking it a professional practice to send a rejected story out a kazillion times. I've seen a lot of argument about that--takes a bunch of tries to find the right market--editors have moods--but something an editor said at dinner the other night got me thinking. She's also a writer, and she said, if a story goes out three times and it comes back with "I liked it but..." she retires the story to rewrite it. Two, if two editors say the same thing about the story. One could be opinion, but two is usually a vector.
Anyway, I thought I'd throw not just those two impressions out, but a general question: what bad advice have you seen handed out under the "professionals do this" header, and why is it bad advice?