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[apiphile]

Bored out of my mind. Have read a lot of articles today and am thinking about the tendency to try to apply advice across the board despite people's radically different situations. Solutions that work for one set of people ("stop whining, pull your socks up, and do the fucking thing") are not the sort that other people need ("stop beating yourself

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

The thing that sticks out for me about generic advice is how much it reveals about the assumptions the advice-giver is making about other people. The less your advice is based on individual circumstances, the more you're talking to your imaginary construct of what people are like, and a lot of people imagine The Generic Person to be deeply lazy, to have no problems aside from those caused by their own bad behavior, and to lack both information and intelligence.

That science as a religion thing...the only way you could make it work as religion would be if it was suddenly no longer science.

I'm pretty sure that, since you're my friend and you write, you're destined to do better than I am professionally. So if I get a story published professionally, you'll be picked up for a book deal. Therefore, I need to send out more stories.

[apiphile]

Yes! None of my damn friends are stupid and most of them aren't congenitally lazy, they're beset with thinking errors, illness, systematic oppression, and a world where "work hard" does not actually get you anywhere unless you already have "know the right people" and "have the right temperament" under your belt. Likewise those "just be kind to yourself and don't force yourself into anything" softly-softly posters don't work on everyone because some of us really NEED kicks in the but: not "you'll never ACHIEVE" ones, just "do the thing, the thing needs to be done".

the only way you could make it work as religion would be if it was suddenly no longer science.

Exactly but my god did the (now-former) Facebook acquaintance take umbrage when I even alluded to that.

... That, Ms Wolfy, is magical thinking. BUT you need to send out more stories anyway. We all do. ;)

[wolfy_writing]

I don't think I've met anyone who fits the common Generic Advice Recipient profile, although I've met a lot of people who tend to blame themselves for being too lazy when they have problems. And yeah, being kind to yourself needs to be balanced with the appropriate level of pushing yourself, and how much pushing depends tremendously on the situation. (I know someone who sometimes gets depressed enough that on bad days she has to make a real effort to put on a DVD and occasionally surf the web, rather than doing literally nothing, so judging what's an appropriate level of effort to ask takes real knowledge of the situation.)

Was it supposed to be more of that "If you say quantum enough, you can declare everything magically possible!" crap?

Speaking of things becoming magically possible, you're saying I don't have the power to make other people succeed at writing? Pfft, next you'll be demanding logic and a comprehensible cause for things!

[apiphile]

Yeah, and the kind of "fits all advice" stuff has a tendency to make people feel pretty shit, too.

PRETTY MUCH. fUCKING JUST SAY "MAGIC"£ ALRAEDF CHOAUDHSCIA

I say... whatever makes you send out more stories.