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

[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.