On Taking Writing Advice

by Chris McGinty of AccordingToWhim.com

When it comes to subjects that interest me, I spend a lot of time studying. For instance, I could easily spend most of my day off just reading music history and trivia. I could also spend most of my day off studying writing, and I recently did. On Christmas Eve, I was at work and clicked on a video about mistakes new writers make. I’m not a new writer in the regard that I’ve been writing for over 40 years now. I’m still somehow 37 years old. I doubt I will ever spend most of my day off studying math. I’m a new writer in the regard that I’ve gotten very little feedback from others over the years. Maybe I was making some of these mistakes.

During my time off, I ended up watching a few videos on the subject and read comments to see what other writers and readers thought of the videos. The good news is that I don’t generally make too many of the mistakes that the videos talked about. I’m particularly interested in the mistake of the author inserting themselves into the story. I do that all the time. I might write some posts later examining some of the mistakes, but today I want to focus on writing advice in general.

I think the biggest mistake of new writers is two-fold and seemingly contradictory. New writers don’t listen to enough advice and listen to too much advice. The funny thing is that I think it results in the same problems, because humans are sometimes bad at choosing what advice to follow.

Following advice that tells you how to break into the industry while not following advice that will improve your writing is a mistake. An example would be getting beta-readers, because a publisher suggested you do so before sending in your manuscript; but then getting onto social media and complaining that your beta-readers were idiots who didn’t understand your story. It’s possible that it’s your fault that they didn’t understand your story, but you’re not entertaining the notion.

There are overnight successes. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who accomplished that. I wouldn’t put your hopes and dreams on hold looking for a perfect moment to succeed. On the other hand, you should realize that most people have to write for years, and learn from their mistakes before they succeed. There’s a lot of advice out there. Some of it is just the opinion of the person giving the advice. Some of it is useful.

I think the best advice for new writers is simply this. Write a lot. Listen to complaints about your writing openly and not defensively. Learn from those complaints, even if they seem wrong to you. If one person has the complaint, it’s possible others will. If it’s not something that your story lives or dies by, then maybe a rewrite would be a good thing. You can be divisive on the major aspects. Experiment with the rules of writing. Learn how to work within the rules, so that later when you wish to break the rules, you have a better understanding of why. This might include writing a few trite stories full of clichés, so that later you can find original ideas. Study writing. Don’t use studying writing as a crutch to not write though. When you read an article about how to draw your readers into your story, you’ll get more out of it if you have some stories completed that you can examine. Finally, remember that there is no magic formula for getting your work published. It simply improves your chances if you’re already a good writer. Focus on becoming good.

Chris McGinty is a blogger who often wonders if he’s actually a good enough writer to give advice on writing, but since he’ll probably always wonder that he can either give advice or not give advice. Guess which one he decided on.