You can advise some people to write everyday, you can advise everyone to write someday, but you can’t advise anyone to never write.

Patrick: For me Lori Foster’s advice is terrible. I’ve talked in detail about all my novels before I wrote them. In fact talking about them with Scott and Holly and Maureen and my other trusted critique partners is part of what made those novel ideas solid enough to write.

See my previous post. All writing advice is only good or bad depending on how useful it is to the person taking it. You can advise some people to write every day and it will galvanise them; others and it will fill their heart with despair and send them into a shame spiral.

Lori’s advice would not have worked for me at all. I work things out by talking about them.

The reason is, if I tell someone the plot, my “juice” for writing it kind of gets weaker. I like writing when things are still fresh in my mind. I want to take the energy I have for the idea and put it into the written story, not into sharing it with other people verbally. But everyone is different, maybe talking about it will get her excited for the story?

Either way, good luck with the writing.

p.s. Thanks for keeping such an interesting blog, Mrs. Larbalestier!

“Please, please don’t share your stories with people!”

and

“The problem with sharing is that you dilute your drive to have the story told – meaning IN PRINT!”

http://biiisskuit.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/did-ya-see/

and if you can’t believe Lori Foster, who can you believe?

The fact that she doesn’t have my backstory and character sketches cluttering up her mind — as I do — she’ll often give me a comment completely out of left field, specifically because she’s confused about what I’m trying to do. In fact, the less I explain, the better it works. She’s my I Ching.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked away thinking “Wow, that’s a much better idea… I never would have looked at it that way.” In fact, the less I tell her, the more counter-intuitive — and wonderful — her suggestions.

At work, whenever anybody asks me for help, they’ll say “we’re using this and this and this and we can’t make it do that.” I’ll stop them and say “what problem are you trying to solve?”

In a writing context, it might go like this:

STUDENT What’s more romantic: red roses or white roses?
MASTER What is the problem you are trying to solve, Grasshopper?
STUDENT I’m trying to get these two characters to fall in love.
MASTER Oh, that’s easy. First you make them hate each other.

Maybe that’s why she won’t tell you the plot, Hilary! you’re her I Ching.

As Amanda said sometimes we don’t know where our books are going.

I’m guessing that I read a lot like an editor does when shuffling through the slush pile. The difference is that I’ll keep reading, when the editor would have long since chucked the ms into a return envelope with a form rejection. An editor is probably not going to torture herself by reading an entire ms because she knows something interesting is supposedly going to happen halfway through the ms.

Also, a lot of writers don’t really know where their story is heading. They have to figure it out as they write. Sometimes a critiquer can help this process along by telling what they are seeing so far, and what the ms is leading them to expect and hope for.

I tried to have my husband do a read through of my first completed draft once without really telling him what the book was about, except that it was fantasy, and he marked up the first 50 pages with red ink, which kinda hurt. Maybe it *would* be best if the friend would give more info on the plot, but maybe she’s still shy about saying things like “it’s a vampire love story” out loud. Sometimes it’s easier to write the words than speak them aloud.