Holly Black wisely points out that all writing advice can be bad. And Sherwood Smith writes some excellently out-and-out bad writing advice: “Write it in a week and send it instantly because professionals don’t revise. They get it right the first time.”
That’s like the worst advice ever. Can anyone top that?
The worst I can come up with are all variations on Sherwood’s: “Your first drafts are genius. Don’t change a thing!” Though how about, “It’s always best to invent your own system of spelling. It makes you stand out as a writer.”
I can think of lots of post-publication advice that would lead to career suicide:
- Make sure to email your publicist every day to make helpful suggestions for selling your book.
- Your editor and copyeditor are always wrong. Feel free to entirely ignore their edits.
- Call your agent often demanding to know why they haven’t gotten you on Oprah yet.
- If you are on a panel at a convention make sure you stay on message and steer all conversation back to you and your book. Make sure you bring a great big stack of them to show everyone.
- If your local bookseller doesn’t have your book. Demand to know why. Do they not know who you are?!
I will stop now. This is making my brain hurt. But feel free to suggest more.
don’t use ‘he said/she said’ all the time. it’s boring and makes people think you don’t have a nice large vocabulary. one ‘said’ is OK, the rest of the dialogue attributions should be different verbs (all of them only used once).
oh, and only write what you know, i.e. about your own life and what you have actually experienced.
Characters can never be too omniscient or overpowered. NEVER!
chapter breaks are for the weak and feeble-minded. if people can’t keep up, screw ’em!
but I’ve lived my entire life by the “invent your own system of spelling” part – how ca it be wrong ????
Punctuation is for the weak.
Criticism just means they’re jealous. let the critics natter of trivia—they’re simply too small-minded to comprehend your greatness.
barry is right, chapter breaks are for the weak, just like punctuation, but the story line has to be simple and clean
If it really happened, then you don’t have to worry if it reads believably!
“you have to do it just like this or you won’t get published.”
“kill your darlings.”
uh, they’re my darlings for a reason…
“adverbs are your friend”
“there’s no such thing as toom many ajectives”
let me re-phrase:
“there’s no such thing as too many adjectives”
“never proof read your own writing” – or your blog comments…
That’s terrible bad advice, Parker. I am deeply against injunctions against parts of speech! Will people stop persecuting adjectives and adverbs! What next no articles? A ban on pronouns? Prepositions?! Gah!
from the high, decorative window in my austere yet functional writer’s garret i carefully considered your prudent response to the brash bad advice i innocently offered—and while i was thinking deeply, i clearly observed the cloudless, azure sky delicately reflected in the tranquil, fresh-water pond far below—and soon i was so completely distracted from the earnest task i had recently begun that i had utterly lost the winding track . . .