---Or NOT
If you hang out in writerly chat boards or groups, there is
a lot of advice bandied about.
Shared experience and help sought and given are wonderful
things.
This is obviously true for all matters of living. But it’s up to us, individually, to sort what is working and what we can (gratefully and respectfully) bypass.
Because the gift
of leading a life includes the burden of being responsible for actions, never
laying it on the person who gave the advice.
I was thinking
about writerly advice I chose not to take, and how that choice served to keep
me running this marathon instead of collapsing after a short sprint.
*Write every day [Almost every weekday is just fine for me]
*Follow writing trends/Don’t follow writing trends [😵Couldn't if I wanted to, as I've never been a trend catcher. Trends are ephemeral things]
*Get a degree in writing [This requires spare money 💸💲 and doesn't in any way guarantee a return]
*Go on a retreat to write [Besides time and money, this is better for the 19th century leisure class than real people living today IMO ]
I’m not dismissing
any of the above. Each of these is fine for somebody, just not for me.
That is to say
that the hard work of learning how you work has no shortcuts.
5 comments:
Taking or not taking advice is akin to finding your own creative voice. No one can tell you what you should or should not write or how you should or should not conduct your writing life. Each of us decelops pur own way of being creative and living in this world and in this time. Hurrah that you have claimed yours!
All about discernment and choosing what resonates and for that you have to know yourself, trust yourself.
Each of us is a unique person and what's right for one person may not be at all what's right for another person. But it's good to listen to advice, because often we do learn from other people's experiences even if we choose to reject the advice.
Just finished reading Lawrence Block's writing memoir, A Writer Prepares. I'm a Block fan since his fiction writing advice column in Writer's Digest in the 70s. He would write about what worked for him, adding a disclaimer that each writer is different.
Each of us has to find our own writing path, stumbling along the way, tripping over advice that doesn't work for us, moving forward one step at a time.
This is all so true.
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