Want some writing advice? Ignore any advice

I enjoyed this column by Russell Smith in this morning's Globe and Mail: Want some writing advice? Ignore any advice. Excerpt:

One of the great gifts of the Web is not just the proliferation of writing but the proliferation of writing about writing. Writers are naturally drawn to the idea of blogs – because they are told that blogging will enhance their “brand” or because they are terrible procrastinators or even because, in that rarest of all rare occurrences, they get paid for it. 

And what do writers who blog most like talking about? Not truth, it seems, or how to create emotion, not international geopolitics or science or sex. They want to talk about how to be a writer. 

I have a feeling that if you concatenated all the blog entries from one single week in the United States on how to get published or have confidence in yourself, you would have enough words for a full-length novel. What a dull novel, though.

 

Comments

[Becky Tuch]

Ha! I've noticed this too. (In part because I have a blog that gives writing advice to writers.:) But there is a lot of this sort of thing out there.

[Richard Fancy]

The web is a universe full of dark matter. Anyone hoping to get their work noticed has to do something just to make their star shine a little brighter.
Brendan Behan wrote, "There's no such thing as bad publicity, except your own obituary."
I'd be tempted to jump around naked on YouTube, if I thought people would buy my books.
There has to be a better way, but I haven't found it, yet.