The Dirty Secret Behind Writing Advice

Cathaoir Synge
Synge's Chair (where Irish writer Synge would retreat & write, on Inis Meain)

I’ll start by saying that I have always advised writers in good faith. I would never suggest a writer undertake something harmful, obstructive, or a waste of time.

But lately I’ve started idly imagining how my favorite author, Alain de Botton, would react if he read advice on my professional blog. (Go follow Alain de Botton on Twitter.)

de Botton writes insightful books about big topics: love, work, travel, architecture, status. He expresses all the things that you’ve felt to be true but could never put into words.

When I imagined him reading my blog, I felt the criticism sharp and quick. Prescriptive, step-by-step advice delivers cheap comfort—that you can reach success systematically—and promotes Panglossian dreams. Such advice, especially when simplified, bulleted, and listed, pushes aside the complexity, difficulty and dilemma of what it means to undertake a writing life.

On the other hand, having read more annals of writing advice than anyone else on the planet, I’m intimate with all the repeated, universal mistakes and destructive attitudes. If you, too, internalized all the (sometimes conflicting) advice from Writer’s Digest, you would be a better writer for it, if only because you’d sooner recognize and maybe avoid the downfalls of every writer.

But the writing itself never gets any easier no matter how much you know or publish. The dilemmas never go away.

There are some technical things every writer should learn to do correctly. Formatting and submitting your manuscript is one thing. Queries might be another. There are lots of bad queries out there, but somehow the talented writers manage to break all the rules and charm agents anyway. That’s what a very talented writer does. But I can’t say that when I’m teaching how to write a great query. I can’t teach the exceptions or pleasing eccentricities (or what can boil down to a matter of confidence or nuance). I teach the rules, even though there aren’t any.

The Writing Advice Book That Would Never Sell
The book I really want to write would encompass the following dilemmas and contradictions:

• Talent vs. Practice (or Discipline). Some people are born to be writers. Others seem to be blessed with the discipline to get better. Can you succeed without any talent? Which quality is more important? And how do you know if you have any talent to begin with? Certainly those with talent need to practice, too—or not?

• Luck vs. Persistence. I’ve seen so many lucky writers—people who were at the right place at the right time. Yet the cliche is that luck favors the prepared. That feels true, though I’ve met a lot of prepared people who never seem to catch a break.

• Confidence/Ego vs. Doubt. I’ve never met a writer who didn’t have self-doubt, though not all will admit to it. We’re always waiting to be revealed as complete phonies. Yet without some measure of outrageous ego—a belief that you have something to say to the world—there’s no way you could justify writing. Writing is not for the weak. The weak ones give up easily, sometimes with the first rejection.

• Professionalism vs. Eccentricity. The writers who are business-savvy and have a flair for marketing & promotion almost always do well. Yet the writers we tend to fall in love with, and the ones we remember, can be the craziest, the most rude, or the most outrageous. Strong personalities sell, too.

• Extroversion vs. Introversion. Extroverts network better and find more people to help them. Introverts are naturally suited to writing and often notice all those wonderful details that extroverts miss. Horrible stereotyping here, but still.

No one really wants to read a heady book on these issues. People want the secrets to success and a positive spin. But the longer I’m in the business, the more slippery it all looks. I know what works for some, but it never works for all. Sometimes I wish I could sit down with each writer personally, and put together a specific plan of attack based on that writer’s talents and strengths.

But you know what? When I do that for some people, they ignore the advice anyway and do their own thing. Our innate (and learned) tendencies, inclinations, habits, and attitudes reign supreme.

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jeff yeager

Jane – Honestly, this is the first truly insightful thing I've read about writing in quite some time. You should write that book. I'd buy it … and you know that's saying something.
-Jeff Yeager, AKA The Ultimate Cheapskate

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Jane Friedman

Thanks so much for the note, Jeff. Your compliment means a lot. Maybe I'll self-publish my unsalable book! 🙂

Lynne Spreen

I'm sensing existentialist leanings here. (You live alone, you die alone, and a lot of times, in the middle, you just have to go it alone.) I especially liked your observ. about sitting down with one writer and him/her ignoring your guidance anyway. I used to see that in my old job as personnel director (HR). Now I see it when I offer gentle suggestions in critique group. People ultimately have to find their own way. You can't get distracted from your OWN mission while trying to help.

Hallie Ephron

I want to buy that book when you write it. SO interesting, every question you pose…but the only one you don't give a clue to which way you lean is the first one. Can a writer succeed without talent? And how can you tell (if that someone has no talent)?

Canonbridge

Perhaps you could approach a publisher who doesn't take submissions from agents and doesn't have a slush pile. We would publish it in a heartbeat, and I know it would be well-received.

To Hallie Ephron below: Yes, writers can succeed without talent. James Rollins is a prime example. I'm halfway through The Judas Strain. I cannot imagine where his editor or his two agents were hiding when that one went to press. It is an interesting plot that required a great deal of research, only to become complete cack through overdoses of passive voice and sentence fragments.

melodyjones

Thanks for this! I love the statements that the dilemmas never go away and that everyone has self-doubt. They provide a certain comfort for me as a writer just now coming into her own, perhaps dulling that ever-present self doubt just a bit.

christygail

I loved this piece Jane! I feel better knowing that some of the oddities that I have noticed in the industry aren't just in my imagination. I agree with pp- I would read that book!

Jan Rider Newman

I nodded after every sentence. You've expressed things I long felt but never heard anyone else say out loud.

Stroppy author

It's true – there is a good deal of luck involved, but you need to recognise the opportunities and grasp them. And you need talent. And – this is one people often come up with – it is useful to have contacts. I have contacts. But I have earned them through publishing books people like. So now I can break all the rules and still get published – but you can't fast forward to that position. We've all done the work along the way. And whether you are introvert or extrovert, whether you abide by rules or break them, whether or not you are eccentric – it doesn't really matte as long as you WRITE REALLY WELL.