Never Give a Writer Advice
You will be proven wrong.
You will be proven wrong.
I would never be so presumptive as to tell any of my writer friends the right way or the wrong way to write. I surely don't have all the answers.
Maybe that's the impostor complex in me, but nobody made me the president of writers. Nobody is the boss of you, as my kids would say.
And sometimes writers can be a solitary and opinionated bunch of friends.
The minute I try to tell anyone what to do, or they have the perception that I am telling them what to do, they start to resist.
“This is the way I have always done it.”
“This is the way my dad did it.”
“I don't have enough time to do it that way.”
Open resistance. Underground resistance. All manner of resistance.
In addition to the resistance, I have just never pretended to be such an expert on any topic that I could give absolute instructions.
All that I am qualified to do is tell what works for me in a given situation.
For instance, in writing, the topic comes up of practice. Writers have been telling students to practice for centuries.
But the minute I suggest someone write every day, I get the side-eye, and the explanation that I don’t have a clue what all they have to do every day, and I become the villain.
In other words, if my advice dovetails into their existing methods nicely, I am the hero. Anything else, and I am the jerk.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
I don’t pretend that I am the teacher. Anything or anyone can be the teacher. All I am qualified to do is point out what has worked for me. And I do that and enjoy doing that a lot.
I hope I can translate this into my own learning experiences, too. I would hope that rather than resent or make fun of someone with a different process from mine, rather I would learn from it and incorporate valuable parts into my own processes.
Thank you for your time.
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