Writing Advice?

[rowyn]

I read a rather peculiar article by Kristine Rusch: peculiar because one of her themes seems to be that wannabe writers are frequently advised they don't need to practice.

Now, I am aware that (a) authors have often been discouraged by publishers from publishing more than two books a year and (b) new writers tend to be in love with their own work regardless of quality (I have certainly always been in love with mine, even when I was 13 and it was appallingly bad). Certainly "you should practice often" is good advice.

It is also the advice I've heard from literally every source about writing. I can't think of any time I've heard "nope, writing a lot is a bad idea. Don't do that" other than as a rumored thing that gets said to published authors because their publisher doesn't want to 'saturate the market'. I can believe Stephen King hears it. I am hard-pressed to imagine Jane Doe, starry-eyed writing student, is hearing it from her teachers. That "it takes a million words or more to find your voice" line that Rusch's essay says writers don't get told? I have heard that many, many times.

In fact, while I've never heard 'writing lots is bad', I have often heard the opposite: 'you can never be successful if you can't finish at least a book a year, at a minimum: you are obviously not good enough/obsessed enough and never will be'.

So I am curious! Is this a thing that happens to other people and I've just missed it? Has anyone else been advised that it's a bad idea to write a lot if you want to be an author?

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I have not heard 'if you write a lot, you are bad.'

I have heard 'if you publish a lot, you're a hack.'

[rowyn]

Yes! "Hacks are the only ones who publish a lot" is certainly something I've heard. Just never heard anyone try to extend it to how one learns to write. -_-

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

That's a new one on me!

-TG

[rowyn]

Me too!

[tagryn]

Maybe I'm missing it, but my takeaway from the article wasn't that newbies are being advised that a lot of writing isn't needed, but rather that nobody was telling them straight-up that its going to be a long grind, with no guarantee of the big payout at the end, so just to enjoy the journey and the learning process for its own sake (with the analogies to running), because the odds of actually becoming famous are so small that its not really a realistic expectation.

I'd be curious to know what her advice is for someone who sees running, or writing, as a chore that they don't particularly enjoy, but puts in the needed time anyway. There's many people who run who don't particularly enjoy it the way she's describing, but do so for its physical and mental benefits, and more than a few famous authors who by their own admission hated the process of writing, but had the discipline to complete multiple novels (or write daily newspaper columns, etc). I guess its something of a tragedy if someone devotes a lot of time to something they dislike and never sees much reward out of it, but I think that's also another point she's making, that there's other benefits to writing beyond hoping to get published, and that those may actually be more realistic for most writers to aim towards than trying to be the next King, Asimov, or Hemingway.

[nekomavin.livejournal.com]

The habit I had to break when starting out was of over-writing what little I did write. Going back and forth, dithering over this and that, trying to polish it to perfection... when I had no clue what that really meant. It's easy to get trapped that way, and the kick to just write in volume to get the habit down is an important one.

I ran across a sort of parable-like story a little while back that seemed to fit. Imagine a pottery class, divided on the first day into two halves. One half is told they will be graded on their best single item. The other half, graded on the weight of their finished work. The first half went over and over a handful of items, endlessly discussing how to make them perfect. But the second half ended up producing the better work, simply by weight of experience, learning viserally what didn't work as well as what did.

Same trap, really. I agree, I've never heard advice to sit down and focus on writing the perfect story on your first try... but it's a natural inclination for those who haven't seen what it takes. Sort of like someone might see a friend sit down at a piano and rock out an amazing song, and think 'wow, they're talented'... without seeing the thousands of hours of practice that got them there. Even then, there's this awareness that practice is needed.

I wonder if it's something to do with how we're expected to know how to write? To have just absorbed it along the way? Schools aren't teaching it very well (or at all?) any more, if the lab reports I've graded are any indication...

[rowyn]

Now that you mention it: I do recall my teachers stressing 'revision' as a process: that one should write a first draft and then revise through multiple iterations. To the point where one of my teachers insisted I handwrite a "rough draft", despite the fact that I always wrote on my computer and never handwrote anything if had a choice. (This was over 30 years ago, when home PCs were still relatively rare, although not really rare enough to justify this attitude. I wrote my paper on the PC and then copied it down by hand, IIRC, to satisfy the guy.)

So I have gotten some of the 'revise until it's great' writing advice. It ... didn't really stick with me. I never was the sort of person to keep re-writing. :)

[scribblemyname]

She's specifically referring to the difference between being told to write more books rather than polish this one to perfection before you write another book. And honestly, I do see that a lot in the trad writer world: revise, revise, revise with these years-long time periods devoted to one story instead of "good enough is good enough" and move along and write another story. I do see a lot of disdain once you get too prolific, though none for medium/average production. So my experience mirrors yours in reference to small numbers, write your target wordcount daily is common advice, but as regards larger numbers and what to do with those numbers and whether they refer to finished and submittable/publishable work, I've definitely seen exactly what Rusch describes.